Doing The Deal
I have accepted an offer on my house - what happens next?
When you've accepted an offer on your house, now is the time that your solicitor and your buyer solicitor get involved, or they could be using a license advancer. It's also a very good idea to have an exchange of letters between you and your buyer, just outlining very simply the name and address and postcard of the property, the price which has been agreed, but also add that it is subject to survey because they will probably want to have a survey done. And they may well want to renegotiate the price after the survey comes back.
At what point is the deal legally binding?
When doing the deal for a house, the deal is legally binding and final on completion, which is the date when the buyer takes possession of the property. However, once contracts are exchanged between buyer and seller, there are penalties if the buyer or the seller then pulls out of the deal.
I have accepted an offer but another buyer has just offered more - what can I do?
If another buyer has offered a higher offer after you have accepted another offer there is nothing legally to stop you accepting the higher offer and rejecting the first offer that you received. However, this is know as "gasumping" and will make you extremely unpopular. If you want to behave ethically towards your buyers it may well be that it's worth discussing with both the buyers that you have, that you have now received a higher offer, and see whether they come up with a higher offer, and if they do, well then you've made a few extra thousand pounds. If they don't then it's really up to your conscience whether you accept the higher offer or not, and again, it may all come down to whether the higher offer is in a good position to actually proceed with the purchase or not.
After seeing the results of the survey my buyer wants to reduce his offer - what can I do?
If your buyer wants to reduce his offer, on the back of the results of the survey that they have received, there are several things you can do. You can certainly ask the buyer what are the things that concerned them in the survey and you can offer to put them right yourself. This can often be cheaper than accepting a lower price, 'cause quite often buyers use the excuse of the survey to actually reduce the price by more than the value of the works that need to be done. That certainly is one strategy. The other strategy is to get quotations for the work that might be needed to illustrate that it's not actually going to cost the buyer quite as much to put right, as they originally thought.
My buyer has dropped out - what can I do?
With regards to doing the deal, if your buyer has dropped out, the first thing you should do is contact the other people who made a lower price offer on your house to see whether they would like to make another offer. The next thing to do is perhaps contact all the people, the viewers who seemed keen and ask them whether they would like to come and see the house again. Have a look at your marketing strategy and see whether there are any improvements you can make. Buyers do pull out of deals; this does happen and is a hugely irritating thing.
