Buying a Repro House

[AmeliaLincoln]

We are First Time Buyers and have had an offer accepted on a house. We have a mortgage in principle, a solicitor and a homebuyers survey ready to go.

However, the estate agent has still been showing people round and we have been 'outbid' or gazumped. Firstly, we were told to make a closed higher bid and see if we could outbid the new buyer, and then they let us know the new price. Where do we stand? If we make a higher bid do we have the right to ask the property to be taken off the market?

We have invested time and money into this reprocessed out. Any comments welcome.

Thank you.

[Adam Long]

It's a difficult situation, if you didn't ask for the property to be taken off the market then the estate agent can still show it to others if the vendor asks them to. On the other hand from a moral point of view should they have done this no.

I guess the bottom line is that you need to make offers subject to the property being taken off the market and the seller will either agree to this or not but generally they will agree to this.

Don't forget that the estate agent works for the seller and therefore needs to get the best price for the property they can and if this also increases their commission then I'm sure that they wont mind !

[clairec]

Hi
In most cases repo companies will not allow the agent to remove the property from the market, you can offer subject to it being removed but for them to do that you would normally need to offer the asking price. Even if the property has been removed the repo company request that your offer needs to be advertised in the local press for everyone to see. So if it's on at 100k and you offer 90k and get this accepted they advertise that an offer of 90k has been accepted on this property which basically gives everyone the opportunity to offer 91k and outbid you. Just remember that someone has had a property repossessed so the bank cannot be seen to decline higher offers.
The only way to get around this is put your strong position forward and if you really want the house offer them want they want to remove it. Normally repo properties are a good buy anyway so you shouldn't be paying over the odds.
Otherwise sit back and wait most sales fall through and you could pick it back up further down the line, but also be prepared to lose it.
All the best.

[AmeliaLincoln]

Thank you for all your advice. We actually lost the house to a higher bidder today. We ended up offer 10% over the asking price and it still wasn’t good enough to secure the deal.

We ended up being drawn into a bidding war, and being in a worse position for winning the lot in the first place.

The estate agent are now going with a bid the same as ours, but for cash not a mortgage.

I don’t think there is anything else that can be done.

Thanks.

[Dan S]

Im sorry to hear about that Amelia.

Don't get too disheartened. You did everything correctly and Im sure you'll find an even better property.

The fact Gazumping is a legal practice continues to be an issue but it sounds like you'll be a battle-hardened first time buyer after coming prey to it!

Dan

[Catherine666]

Amelia,sorry to hear of your misfortune with the house the same thing happened to me after agent showed me around this repo and I offered the full asking price and was so happy (I was so green) agent telephoned me next day to say 'good news' my offer had been accepted by this company I was over the moon as I had everything already in place etc we were ready to go. Suddenly within a few days, and after instructing my solicitors/surveyor and passing all info on the agent she said, oh someone has offered a higher price she did not ask me if I wanted to increase my offer or anything like that and told me she could not do that as it was all settled. The whole matter was in my mind fishy as when initially showing me around this house she had mentioned that her parents were interested in the house as a buy to let for pension reasons ?. I have got over all this now and am looking at other places that are not actually repo's but selling at good prices there are so many i'm now getting confused at which one I want and of course I can only buy one lol. My experience has been lately there are some great estate agents but some I would not touch with a barge pole ever again.
Good luck from Catherine666