We've been offered £20,000 more than we accepted just as we are about to exchange...

[Janey972]

The offer has come from a couple who viewed our property about 7 months ago but couldn't sell. They now have an offer on theirs from someone who is in rented accomodation and have put in an offer on ours.
In April we accepted an offer on our property, our buyers (and their buyer) have been delaying and delaying the exchange (every day the last few weeks they have been saying we will exchange tomorrow). We are absolutely fed up. I don't know what to do now. The extra £20,000 would be amazing but the thought of going back to the beginning of a chain is awful!
What would you do?

i agree you should give your current buyers 24 hours to get their act together but dont feel bad about accepting new offer after that time.

we accepted an offer back in december 07 for our house and then received an increased offer from another person the following day - we stuck with the original one even though the transaction hadnt got started. Karma and all that....

Of course the other really mean thing you can do is say that whoever exchanges first, gets the house....

My parents had a contract race situation happen to them after they had put in an offer on something and then the vendor started getting weird. He then turned round and said it was a contract race and whoever crossed the line first would get the flat. Luckily my parents were buying without a mortgage/chain and managed to exchange within 48 hours of being notified that this was the situation - if you have a good conveyancer, it can be done!

It is THE most heinously stressful process though, so I do sympathise!

What did you decide Janey?

(oops, am Janey 172 today!) - am in a cunning disguise as am regular and this makes it very obvious who I am!

Anyway, after we told our buyers about the new offer, miracle of all miracles everyone was ready to exchange yesterday.

Dh and I had a think about it overnight but we decided it was too risky to go with the other buyers. Not only were there no guarantees that chain would be solid (sales collapsing all the time in this market) but also we reckon that when they had their mortgage valuation survey done it would be unlikely that the valuation would be as high as the offer they had put in so we could have ended up with a heap more stress, a massive delay and no extra £20,000 at the end of it. In the worst case the chain could have collapsed, we could have ended up back on the market and if all the doom and gloom is true and the market sinks even further it would have been a nightmare.

We exchanged this afternoon and although it's scary that we are now committed it's a huge relief to have finally done it

I'm pleased for you. Roll on completion now!

Thanks Unavaible

Unavailable

Congratulations - great news and a much less stressful decision all round!