Me and wife are on the property ladder, we saw a house we liked online but it was sold STC. Unfazed, we enquired on the current sale price. The estate agent refused to disclose the sale price and instead said we are welcome to put forward an offer which may be rejected or accepted.
I find this whole concept strange with houses. Why can I not just know the figure? What’s the point of having a mystery sale price? Do I just continually put in offers until one is accepted…? I can only imagine its to stop an offer of £301k on a property sold for £300k but following this logic you’d be stupid to accept silly buyers playing that game anyway. Maybe someone can help me understand this process?
15 comments
The contract is between them and the owner. The owner will not want people to know what has been offered on their property.
You however can put any bid in you want and they are under contract to let the property owner know it.
You’re basically asking for confidential information and they wont do that.
Its stupid because technically(maybe legally?) they have to inform the seller of every offer. Wouldnt they make more on a higher priced sale?
Normally a house that is sold STC is off the market.
If you put in an incredibly high offer, the agent might recommend to the vendor to do the dirty on the existing offer.
Normally, very few houses are still advertised when sold STC, it’s just they are in the process of beng taken off the site/ out of the window. E.g. in a physical estate agent maybe they are still in the window why the next illustration/ poster is being prepared, so as not to leave a blank space. Or they are there to make the agent look good that they did a sale.
It’s unprofessional for an estate agent to tell a buyer what other offers have been made on a property, if the agent is a member of a body e.g. propertymark, it may be against their code of conduct which can lead to the agent losing their membership with the body.
Will some do it? Of course but the majority will refuse
It’s a private transaction. Unless you’re the buyer or the seller it’s none of your business. And gazumping is a shitty practise.
It’s just confidentiality.
For all they know, you might personally know the owner and are feigning interested to be nosy
>The estate agent refused to disclose the sale price and instead said we are welcome to put forward an offer which may be rejected or accepted.
This is odd. It is very unusual for someone to offer on a house without a viewing.
If it’s just curiosity then you can wait for net house prices.
If it’s because you want to make an offer then fill your boots but you get to do it like everyone else. Make your bid and see what happens.
Imagine going to an auction and the other bidder had to tell you their ceiling was £50. You’d bid 51.
And re your comment about the agent getting more? They’ve done a fair bit of work so far. New offer means they start again…if you turn out to not have the funds, they’re stuffed.
A client ready to exchange is not someone you piss on 🙂
What if it happened to you? You’re about to exchange contracts and the agent puts a sign up in the window “being sold for £234k. £235k and you can buy this house”.
What do you think about it now….?
I think it’s a shitty practice, to go and out bid someone who’s just managed to secure a home.
Not only that but also you’re the reason prices are rising faster than they need to.
But the answer to your question is very simple. First confidentiality.
Second and most important in my opinion: You don’t know what to bid. So they can essentially let you go up without you knowing if you’re paying a fair price because you don’t know what it’s going for. So they can keep you going up until its worth the pain of disappointing another potential customer.
The agents would essentially risk losing a client for you. The home owner would risk you pulling out despite having an almost sure thing with the current buyers and the buyers would not trust either again and so if you drop out, they lose the sale and a client.
Meaning you need to be way above to make it worth their while… and if they’re lucky, you’re dumb enough to bid without knowing what the house is worth and pay over the odds for it.
However, if they tell you what it’s gone for, you’re likely to feel you’re being ripped off if you pay £50K over. But if you don’t know… then maybe you don’t realise you’ve paid 50K over and so you’re happy and so is everyone except the original buyers.
If it’s already sold, why do you care what it sold for?
If you really want this house why don’t you just offer what you can afford and see what they say. You know the asking price, you can just ask if it went for more than asking. The money may not be the only thing the buyer is considering. They may have other considerations such as wanting a quick sale, not wanting to have to wait another X months for surveys etc. They may be in a chain that would be delayed by a few months, their buyers may pull out etc.
Also, I know £10k is a lot of money in isolation but if accepting a further offer was going to cause me a lot of stress and issues, I’d probably turn it down and continue with what I had.
Some people say it’s for privacy but the real reason is they don’t want someone to knock on the owners door and gazump their buyer losing them fees (as they didn’t introduce).
Could just knock on the door and ask the owner, so you know if it’s within your budget
You can find the previous sale price as a matter of public record, then use a different calculation to work out how much it should/could have changed