Keeping for sale property on market after accepting an Offer

So what other taxes should be raised to fill the large black hole abolition of stamp duty would leave? It’s a tax you only pay if you buy a property priced above £250k (ignoring stamp duty on share transfers, would you like that abolished too?).

I have moved many times both here and overseas and the estate agents can be the best and the worst! Once we were moving areas and had visited estate agents in the new area and told them what we wanted and asked for details to be sent to us. I went to have a general look round and the agent had a house in the window fulfilling all our requirements but we had not been sent the details. I went in, asked if they had my details and checked them and then asked why this house details had not been sent to us and they said that as we were not selling through them they didnt put us at the top of the list!! But I have also been into estate agents and if the house is quoting sale agreed, simply asked them to let me know if the sale does not go through for any reason, which I think is acceptable. I did buy one house like this as the buyer withdrew for health reasons and the estate agent contacted us , and we were able to go ahead and buy it , which was good news for the seller in this instance. But I would not dream of trying to gazump or but in on a sale pending

I would be very wary of taking a house off the market as soon as an offer is made. We did that with our Dad's bungalow (SSTC) but when the estate agent rang 2 days after to request buyer's ID to commence the process, he denied all knowledge! The estate agent made the point that if SSTC happens a couple of times and then removed, potential buyers will wonder if there is a problem. Better to put under offer until said offer is further along the line.

I would only accept an offer from a proceedable buyer and would only take the house off the market when I knew they were actually booking surveys etc and had made some degree of committment. People put low offers on multiple properties these days and wait to see what pans out, also unethical of they expect you to take the place off the market. When I'm buying, I make a statement about what I expect, in writing, plus evidence of funds and ask them to take the house off the market etc and most agents do want full evidence of funds etc You'll always get messed about and have discussions about the price, it's the nature of the game. I speak as one who had some cow of a seller let me actually carry out a survey after she had exchanged contracts with someone else! I have also withdrawn from a purchase after a poor survey and been offered a 10k price reduction, which I didn't accept.

Germanshepherdsmum

But one wasn’t a cash buyer - they had a dependent sale which fell through. And perhaps the buyers who pulled out were reliant on a mortgage. I don’t call anyone a cash buyer unless they have the money in the bank - and it’s up to the estate agent to establish proof of available funds.

Estate agents definition of a cash buyer can be very blurred. We sold our house in July last year and had three “cash buyer” offers. We had to decide which offer to accept and when it came to it two weren’t technically cash buyers (although they had nothing to sell). We chose the couple that actually had money in the bank. We purposely didn’t start looking for a house until we completed and only now hoping to exchange today on a house. The last ten months have given us time to look around and find exactly what we want without having the stress of finding a house within any timeframe.

I would expect any house purchase I was making to be withdrawn from the market as soon as the legal work started or survey booked. I’d expect, as a buyer to show intent. I would feel duty bound to proceed as a seller unless I was being mucked around. We are intending getting an electrical survey and the boiler serviced before we put ours on the market and to make critical information available where we can from the get go so there are no nasty surprises and people know what they are letting themselves in for when they make their offer. They will be informed from the start that we will not reduce the price once they have made their offer.

This happened to me I paid solicitor and survey fees then yhey changed their mind

In Scotland once your solicitor has accepted an offer then there is a legal contract in place and if the seller decides to accept a higher bid the seller can be held liable for the original buyers costs or at least that’s what happened to us. We put in an offer which the seller accepted, but then came back and said they had higher offer and did we want to match it, we declined, but our solicitor pursued the to recover our legal costs, so the seller actually lost in the end.

I believe offers in Scotland are usually hedged with a variety of conditions. That isn’t so in England and Wales.

Germanshepherdsmum

Anyone making an offer on a property should insist that it’s immediately taken off the market if the offer is accepted.

We always do this since ending up in a contract race, unbeknown to ourselves, and wasting our solicitors fees.

If another contract is sent out the seller’s solicitor is obliged, under professional rules, to tell the buyer’s solicitor immediately, so a buyer should never be unaware that they are in a contract race. Perhaps the seller was using a shoddy conveyancing outfit.

NotSpaghetti

The house we live in now was taken off the market after the previous offer was accepted and the purchasers messed the vendor around for just over a year. By then they had lost the other house they wanted to buy.

When we came along the day they put it back on the market it was all very quick as we had everything in place.

Something similar happened when we were buying for my daughter. We made a cash offer but the estate agent recommended another buyer's cash offer so we accepted that we'd lost it. However it was close to where we live and I mentioned to the seller that we were still interested if something went wrong.
Sure enough the supposed "cash" offer which had been accepted was not cash at all but dependent on a sale although it took three months to discover this. Since the seller had to move by a given date to get a school place we were able to step in and enable her to move and to get the property that my daughter wanted.

What an absolute disgrace the law is with regard to buying property. The prospective buyer does not have to make a cash deposit, even a modest one, to show good faith. Some 'offers' are made by people who are in a long chain of unknown people, with unknown finances. In my experience, Estate Agents are less than honest about this issue and solicitors don't feel it's their responsibilty to check the chain. Teamwork between solicitors and Estate Agents in non existant. Timescales may be mentioned, but there is no legal timescale for Exchange of Contracts or Completion. No wonder it all goes wrong - unless you have a cash buyer, and that doesn't always work either.
The last time I sold a property I made it clear that I wouldn't accept any prospective buyer who had a long chain behind them. Its better to be fair at the start.
When someone was found, I asked the Estate Agent to verify that they had a deposit, a mortgage and evidence of any other finance needed. The Agent did do that, and the sale went through.

This sounds harsh, but would you buy a car expecting not to pay a cash deposit, not providing any proof of how you would pay the full amount and not being able to stick to a timescale?

In Australia, once you make an offer on a property, you have to have a survey within an agreed time. If that is acceptable to you, you do then have to agree a date for Completion and pay a deposit, which you will lose if you back out.

Germanshepherdsmum

If another contract is sent out the seller’s solicitor is obliged, under professional rules, to tell the buyer’s solicitor immediately, so a buyer should never be unaware that they are in a contract race. Perhaps the seller was using a shoddy conveyancing outfit.

I think that the vendor had pushed his solicitor to issue another contract, although whether or not the estate agent was aware we do not know. We had said our offer was dependent on us not being in a contract race - this practice was rife in our area in the early 1980's.
It took us several weeks to discover what was going on, but fortunately we did not need a survey or a mortgage inspection so at least we had not paid for that. We pulled out immediately our solicitor discovered what was going on. I should add that this was some years ago and I still feel irritated that it was allowed to happen.

And you are quite right, it could well be that he was using a cheap conveyancing company.

In my experience they are strangers to ethics.

semperfidelis

What an absolute disgrace the law is with regard to buying property. The prospective buyer does not have to make a cash deposit, even a modest one, to show good faith. Some 'offers' are made by people who are in a long chain of unknown people, with unknown finances. In my experience, Estate Agents are less than honest about this issue and solicitors don't feel it's their responsibilty to check the chain. Teamwork between solicitors and Estate Agents in non existant. Timescales may be mentioned, but there is no legal timescale for Exchange of Contracts or Completion. No wonder it all goes wrong - unless you have a cash buyer, and that doesn't always work either.
The last time I sold a property I made it clear that I wouldn't accept any prospective buyer who had a long chain behind them. Its better to be fair at the start.
When someone was found, I asked the Estate Agent to verify that they had a deposit, a mortgage and evidence of any other finance needed. The Agent did do that, and the sale went through.

This sounds harsh, but would you buy a car expecting not to pay a cash deposit, not providing any proof of how you would pay the full amount and not being able to stick to a timescale?

In Australia, once you make an offer on a property, you have to have a survey within an agreed time. If that is acceptable to you, you do then have to agree a date for Completion and pay a deposit, which you will lose if you back out.

Our last sale went through pretty smoothly. We sold without marketing so there were no time-wasters and our experienced estate agent was very competent, checking details of funding before he would even bring a buyer for a viewing. This was during early 2020 when lockdown meant that viewings were limited.
I agree with you about chains, even if you are told that all the properties are under offer there is so much to go wrong. I prefer to sell and exchange first, then go in as a cash buyer to avoid any disappointments or messing about. I didn't mind a couple of months living somewhere else whilst my belongings were in storage.

Germanshepherdsmum

In my experience they are strangers to ethics.

I agree.
My son bought his first house from someone who was using one of these companies and our solicitor never spoke to the same person twice. There didn't appear to be anyone within the company who was actually responsible for the sale.

The last house we sold was to a youngish couple, with children. They had sold their house, so no chain but as the sale was going through our estate agent contacted us to say he had received a higher offer. EA was quite astounded when we said we would stick to the sale we had agreed. I suppose he was thinking about his cut of the sale price.

Usually estate agents keep it there book, unless, you have asked them to take off the table after your offer has been accepted.

If deposits were non-returnable the idea might be feasible.

Germanshepherdsmum

Anyone making an offer on a property should insist that it’s immediately taken off the market if the offer is accepted.

We took our Suffolk cottage off the market when an offer was received. That person said it was too far from the river as she withdrew her off. She then came back again when we refused her offer.
This was in a period when the World Cup was on (England stood a good chance) and the school holidays at started so not a good time

Unfortunately ReadyMeals, no deposit is taken until contracts are exchanged, unless you are buying from a developer when you will be required to pay a small non-returnable reservation deposit.

Years ago we made an offer on a property after accepting an offer on ours. The issue was that a person further down the chain kept delaying the exchange. He abused his position as a chief inspector of police ( allegedly trustworthy?) to keep asking for dates, for asking that his daughter (who did not live with him) be added to the sale etc. So in the end - the day before the exchange but no agreement on a date- we pulled out. In hindsight it was the best thing but if he had not messed us around the sale could have gone through. We had spent thousands of pounds on legal costs as did our buyers but they did not help us by not pressing him for a firm date in the months of the sale.

The system in England is seriously flawed. Three months ago we had a buyer for our house and they suddenly pulled out at the point of exchange of contracts. At the eleventh hour, and after several viewings, they decided our house and garden were too large and just walked away. This was devastating for us as we then lost the house we wanted to buy as we were no longer "proceedable". The final straw was having to pay a substantial bill from our solicitor for the work they had done to get to the point of exchange. Understandable but painful for us. To cut a long story short, after 6 months of ups and downs, and hard work preparing to downsize, we are exhausted. We cannot face going back into the fray of the housing market and will stay put. Not what we had hoped for in our 80s. Advice to others: don't wait until you are 80 before taking steps to downsize.