Offer on a sale agreed house

We have recently made an offer on a sale agreed house. We had been interested in the house before Xmas but our approval in principle arrived too late. We were recently in touch with the EA who told us that the buyers were having trouble gathering the money and that the sellers were losing their patience. Always accorging to the EA, the sellers seem to be ready to drop the original buyers and go with someone else. The EA said the sellers would not go below a certain price (about 65k below asking) and we decided to make our offer and match the not-go-below price adding that it had it was on the condition that there would not be a bidding game with another interested party (we don't need to sell anything whereas the other party do).

Apparently the sellers had given the buyers a deadline, which we are not really clear about but should have expired by now. Every time we have spoken to the EA he has told us that he has recommended the sellers to go with us but has never given us a yes or a no from them, so the last time (Thursday) we said that Saturday was our last offer. Never heard from him. We will probably speak to him tomorrow Monday. It has all started to smell to me. We seem to be in the strongest position, the EA seems honest, we don't want to lose this opportunity but don't want to be waiting forever either. The longer we "let" them wait the better chance for the original buyers to solve their problems.

Any suggestions as to what we could do? Would it be a good idea to lower our original offer (say 10k less) with a 1 or 2 day life to let them feel the pressure? There are other houses out there.........

Estate Agents play games. Play the game with them. Phone the Estate Agent & tell him you are dropping your offer by €10,000 this week followed by a further €5,000 for each of the following weeks.

Remember its a buyers market

the EA seems honest

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They are great actors and... liars.

They are probably stringing you out as long as possible to see if the other party can resolve their problems.

I am not sure of the wisdom of dropping the price. Tell them you want to put an offer in on another house and you will submit the offer on Wednesday if they don't accept your offer by then. You will withdraw your offer as soon as the other party accepts your offer.

Brendan

Don't get emotionally attached to the property. There are literally thousands of possible alternatives to choose from.

Don't pay more than you originally intended to pay.

This is only make a bad situation worse. If the house is sale agreed then it's better to stay out of it. If the sale falls through then you can make any offer you like, you've already played your hand by showing how much you are willing to pay. If the sale falls through the sellers will probably be willing to drop the price further.

The estate agent doesn't work for you so think about that.

Thanks for the replies!

Pope John 11 said:

Estate Agents play games. Play the game with them. Phone the Estate Agent & tell him you are dropping your offer by €10,000 this week followed by a further €5,000 for each of the following weeks.

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We called the agent yesterday and lowered our offer by 10k.

Brendan Burgess said:

They are probably stringing you out as long as possible to see if the other party can resolve their problems.

...Tell them you want to put an offer in on another house ...

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That's exacly our feeling. So we have told him we will be putting an offer in another house in the next couple of days, which we actually are.

UFC said:

Don't get emotionally attached to the property. There are literally thousands of possible alternatives to choose from.

Don't pay more than you originally intended to pay.

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Thanks for the reminder!! When the house is the right one it's very easy to forget those things!!

Bronte said:

This is only make a bad situation worse. If the house is sale agreed then it's better to stay out of it. If the sale falls through then you can make any offer you like, you've already played your hand by showing how much you are willing to pay. If the sale falls through the sellers will probably be willing to drop the price further.

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But we don't want to be waiting indefinitely for this house. So we've done as above.

Our rationale is that if the initial sale falls through at any stage they will still have our (lower) offer. If they still want to wait and eventually the sell goes through, it doesn't really matter what we do now. By doing as above we are hoping to put a little bit of pressure on the sellers to seriously consider us as buyers and put them in an uncomfortable position: wait and risk not selling now at the right price for them or not wait... It feels cruel from our part as I write it, to barge in on someone else's agreement like that (which as I understand has already been broken by the buyers), but times are hard and we are not a charity, I suppose. Right or wrong decision? Who can tell?

So it's a week since our last offer and we've had no word whatsoever from the EA! We are thinking of approaching the sellers directly, either in person or by letter, and letting them know what's going on, that we have put an offer in but are having problems communicating with the EA. Are there any laws or good reasons against it?

iamaspinner said:

So it's a week since our last offer and we've had no word whatsoever from the EA! We are thinking of approaching the sellers directly, either in person or by letter, and letting them know what's going on, that we have put an offer in but are having problems communicating with the EA. Are there any laws or good reasons against it?

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Personally imo you would be better to walk awy and look somewhere else there is just too much messing going on. I am speaking from similar kind of experience and have recently bought a lovely house.

Ea's are never honest , as someone earlier said just good actors. Best of luck with whatever you decide

+1

Walk away

Ring the estate Agent, Withdraw all offers. There's something amiss if you, the buyer is being messed around

Could be a case that the house for sale is in negative equity and that there is a problem with the bank accepting the offer.

I concur with the posts above walk away - sounds like way to much hassle. These things happen for a reason in this case a warning.

Just to close this off, thank you all for the replies. Original buyers seem to have solved their problems, which is just as well because we had decided to run away from this one. Oh, and we finally managed to get in touch with the EA more than 10 days after putting in our offer and when asked, the excuse we got was a load of b*ll*cks!