Suspected fake house offers

[SimonB]

Originally Posted by mitch84

We’ve just had another offer accepted with a purple bricks property, I can’t say I enjoyed the purple bricks experience, trying to get to view it for example, but they have been very cut and dried with offers etc, went to under offer immediately, and then Sold STC as soon as I provided solicitors details etc.
We have since heard some info re the other agents from local builders/developers as DH runs a sandwich shop so feeds them all every day.

What we believe happen is that it was on the market for a long time, letting the sellers lower and lower the price and expectations.
We offered £114k as we were willing to take on a real project. We phoned the agents to offer it, and they came back to us saying the minimum was £118k. We don’t believe the £118k was necessarily real.
We think that the agents were going to let the vendors know we offered £114k then a developer friend offers £114.5k, as they didn’t think we’d go that high on a property with no central heating, no inside toilet etc.
When we offered £118k, I think they phoned the developers straight away, and they went in at 118.5k.
We don’t know for sure, but we have heard rumours of dodgy practice, so we have a sneaking suspicion
Anyway it got a sale for the vendors of over what we were willing to go to (even by a little bit) so not all bad

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At least it sounds like you’ve got the satisfaction of costing the developer an extra £4K. Shame the estate agent will get a slightly higher commission though.

[mitch84]

Originally Posted by SimonB

At least it sounds like you’ve got the satisfaction of costing the developer an extra £4K. Shame the estate agent will get a slightly higher commission though.

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I know! More money for the owners though too I suppose 😄

[Tinkerbell]

Originally Posted by shack69

This is what i dislike about the English system. if you make an offer and its accepted that should be binding on both parties subject to survey.

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Here in Spain, once an offer has been agreed a private contract is drawn up. A date for completion is set for both parties, and a deposit negotiated between the two parties is put in escrow. The deal is IF the buyer pulls out then they lose the deposit UNLESS there is a legal issue with the property, if the seller pulls out the pay DOUBLE the deposit to the buyer to cover costs. Here it is usually the buyer that has a solicitor not the seller

[mitch84]

Originally Posted by Tinkerbell

Here in Spain, once an offer has been agreed a private contract is drawn up. A date for completion is set for both parties, and a deposit negotiated between the two parties is put in escrow. The deal is IF the buyer pulls out then they lose the deposit UNLESS there is a legal issue with the property, if the seller pulls out the pay DOUBLE the deposit to the buyer to cover costs. Here it is usually the buyer that has a solicitor not the seller

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I wouldn’t want to be a seller without a solicitor though here, there were odd little complicated things with our last house. I’m definitely glad we both need solicitors. Ours are excellent anyway, DH has used them on 2 properties with his ex wife, and then we bought our current little house with them