Is gazumping fair?

In the Middle Ages in England sellers of goods were constrained to set a 'fair price'. Our modern marketplace is largely unregulated on price so 'fairness' is no longer a common bond. I remember David Cameron yacking on about 'fairness' but no-one could define it unequivocally (including him).

It's not just gazumping though is it there is also the gazundering when buyers at the point of contracts being exchanged then offer less perhaps not in these times of a sellers market, but that is all relative is you are also buying.

High time the system was changed or go for a modern auction then there is no backing out without loss of holding fee.

Definitely unfair. Happened to us twice when we tried to move the first time. I like Ellie’s method or the way it’s done in Scotland (based on knowledge gained from TV shows).

I think it is extremely unfair and if the seller accepts a higher offer after accepting an offer and the buyer has paid for surveys etc, they should be forced to reimburse the loser.
In Scotland this doesn’t happen and the home owner has to have the home survey done

In South Africa there’s no such thing as gazumping and buying/selling a house is very similar to what happens in Australia. Gazumping should be banned.

a bungalow has been on rightmove a few months..it states ' reduced in dec 2021 to £169.950 and adds ' Sold subjected to contracts 'but still available to view' is that to get a higher price? .

My daughter looked at a large terrace house that needed upgrading hence the affordable price. The seller was an old man who had lived there for years. After accepting her offer he had a much higher one from a developer who was going to turn it into bedsits. He turned it down much to our relief saying he wanted it to remain as a family house.

I'm in the process of selling/buying at the moment. The Estate agent advised me not to accept an offer until all the viewings had been done. I was also advised that if I really wanted a specific house, I should go in at the asking price rather than offer less. I have accepted an offer above asking price and the sale is going through all the searches etc at the moment. The vendor accepted my offer, after having rejected one below asking price from someone else, and that too is going through the searches etc. I'm certainly not going to change my mind now if a higher offer comes in. Nor would I sell on the basis of liking a prospective buyer! I had a letter from one who 'loved the house' but offered £25,000 under the asking price. I only saw the people who came to view on my Ring doorbell when I was sitting in a cafe as the viewings were carried out by the agent. Once a price has been agreed, that should be it, no more offers. Quite often it'll be because the agents are trying to get more commission from the sale.

I agree with condemning the unfairness and sharp practice of Estate agents. My son and his partner have just started house hunting and having put in an offer on one house, were pressurised by the estate agent into putting in a higher offer. They refused and luckily had not paid for a survey but were apparently 'outbid'. Similarly a friend's son had the same, refused to offer more, then the estate agent came back to him to say the offer was accepted so he suspected there had been no higher offer and the estate agent was trying it on as they are paid a percentage of the sale price.
As the estate agents are not actually conducting an auction, we do wonder how they are being allowed to get away with what is in fact a silent auction, with prospective buyers being kept in the dark about other offers, if indeed they are being made.

It sounds as though its high time the system in England was changed to that of Australia and Scotland as described by other posters.

Of course it is unfair. It is also a sad part of buying and selling

I was sad that my next door neighbours were planning to move as they have been good neighbours for many years. I heard a few days ago that they changed their minds. I guess they have let someone down in the process, probably 2 lots of people, and it was quite late in the process, but I'm glad they are staying, though feel sorry for their buyers and the people they were buying from. Sadly it is a case of everyone for themselves in the house purchase game.

I'm dreading moving myself, though I will have to do it soon. Our last move involved renting for a few months as the chain wasn't complete and we had a cash buyer we didn't want to lose as well as our children starting new schools in a new area. The previous move to that involved putting everything in storage for 2 weeks and going on holiday as our new house, a new build, wasn't ready and again we had a cash buyer. I hope the next one will be more straight forward, but who knows. It will be the first time I've had to do it alone apart from when I was a first time buyer, so the process is rather daunting! Need to do more de-cluttering first though!

I do think gazumping should be illegal and there is much to be said for the Scottish system.

My grand daughter has been gazumped four times and has now lost her sale and given up on the idea of moving for now! Each time she offered the full asking price, the absolute maximum she can afford, and each time someone offered more! She got so depressed and disillusioned, it is just so unfair!

Many moons ago, house sold, we traveled 180 miles to search for another with only 2 days to find and make a decision (although we did know the town extremely well). We were shown 3 properties and settled our hearts on one of them, we were then totally shocked when the estate agent informed us that although another purchaser was at the point of exchange of contracts we might have success with a rival bid. You can guess what we decided (and the 2nd choice turned out to be a far better choice anyway). Forward 22 happy years to when we put that on the market guess which estate agent we didn't use!

Gazumping isn't fair, no. But until the law changes, and far fewer people have to watch every penny, it's going to continue.

lemsip

a bungalow has been on rightmove a few months..it states ' reduced in dec 2021 to £169.950 and adds ' Sold subjected to contracts 'but still available to view' is that to get a higher price? .

Yes, I would think it is. The thing is areas define selling price, my same house in Oxford, less garden, is for twice what mine is worth in my little town. So you can really only sell it for what the area dictates, otherwise you will enter the negative equity when coming to sell.

It's unfair but happens all the time and depends on the seller's whim.
Sometimes if a house has been on the market for some time or a quick sale is needed to enable the seller to move on, I can see why it happens.

Scotland system is indeed much fairer. If your offer on a house has been accepted by the solicitor acting for the seller, you cannot change your mind the house is legally yours and it's up to you to sell and pay costs if you change your mind.

The system is hopeless and the people who profit are the estate agents who encourage this behaviour as it increases their commission.
We want to sell our house this year and I am thinking of including a clause in the sale contract which stipulates that the buyer cannot reduce the price shown in the sale contract at any time.
We could include a clause that we will not increase the sale price either.
Has anyone ever tried this?

It can be a stressful time my dd and partner bought a house recently the owners were let down by the first couple. So they managed to buy it it’s a lovely Victorian house at the end of our road which is nice. We live in SE London and you probably know this is one of the most expensive places to buy a house
never the less she already had a flat to sell and her partner sold his house so there mortgage was not to bad. The only thing is the mortgage company valued it at less then the estate agent had so there was a lot of time wasted there while waiting.

Daughter inlaw did same thing when selling her flat. Couple put in an offer and a dr made her a bigger offer and she excepted it. As she said more money in her pocket and that’s life. Win some lose some. Before my son was married he had same done it him and he was gutted when someone put in a higher bid and he then went after a different house and got that one. He still owns it but he rents it out. Him and his wife have a different house together. He told how he felt when it happened to him but she still went and did it.

It isn’t Estate Agents that “Gazump”, it’s owners. EAs have to pass on ALL offers by law, they can’t filter out late bids. EAs are far more interested in getting a sale to completion than messing about after a sale’s been agreed.

that is the reason why you can buy insurance against a sale falling through. We did back out of a sale and purchase several years back - not due to gazumping but because the person at the bottom of the chain ( an ex chief police officer) kept telling lies . I could not stand the stress so it cost us thousands but i felt so relieved and more in control

I moved last year and finally found a nice bungalow. Agent was really nice but sellers were mares. The agent actually told me to offer £10K LESS than I was going to, he knew they wanted a quick sale and he wanted them off his books. Sale went through, one happy buyer. Had bad move before that though, as my buyers pulled out on exchange day. I cried all day.

Yes I agree with Elie, the open house system is more workable because would-be buyers know in an instant whether they're likely to be successful or otherwise with a bid. We were gazumped in the early 80s, had spent money on the survey, and even encouraged my parents to buy a smaller property on the same idyllic canalside development. We had so much riding on our purchase that we offered the asking price with no attempt to chip. However, we assumed naievely that the seller would instruct the estate agent to take it off the market but no so and when the estate told us that our offer had been rejected about a month down the line because someone had come along and gazumped us, we were desperately unhappy. This meant my parents pulled out of their purchase. Fortunately, we found something and somewhere nicer for both families, but it's not always that simple. Personally, I believe that if an offer has been accepted at the asking price, the seller should be forced to take the property off the market and not entertain any further offers.

I think it’s really lousy to accept a gazumping bid…your word should be your bond