Lowering your offer on a house - acceptable or not?

I thin it's become a pretty common thing to do (it even has it's own name - gazundering). I'd go for it - the worst they can do is say no.

Not illegal but pretty frowned upon. I am in Scotland so the practice may be different here but if I was your lawyer I'd have to pull out from acting for you if you pulled a stunt like that.

I couldn't do it, no.

You made an offer. They accepted it. House buying moves fairly slowly I'm afraid.

Personally, I think that it is totally unacceptable.

Most of you agreeing with me so far then! Doughnut, we know that house buying moves slowly but normally the climate and prices would not have changed so drastically in a short space of time. That is my H's perspective on it anyway.

I'm in Scotland so probably different. We lowered our offer by £5k after our offer had been accepted, however that was due to the survey and offer was subject to survey. House was valued £5k lower than what we'd offered, we didnt want to buy a house that wasnt worth the value and needed it to value at the survey price for mortgage reasons (very tight budget, couldnt afford anything else other than the 5% deposit for mortgage really)

They accepted it no problem, but dunno if they would have been so easy going about it had it not been because of the survery.

Where you've had an unsatisfactory survey that is entirely different.

Are you FTB?

Hi Nik, that is a good point. The survey may not value it as high as our offer, in which case we would have to lower it. I think for me that is the only way I would feel comfortable about it.

You make an offer based on the market at the time. If your husband doesn't want to buy when prices are falling then wait until he thinks the market has bottomed out.

How would your husband like it if you were buying when the market was good and your seller upped the price just before you exchanged. this is no better.

No we're not FTB's. We own a flat that we will be letting out, but we do not have a lot of money and I'm on maternity leave so any money saved would be a great help.

At the moment surveryors are being extremely cautious and it may come back at an undervalue therefore you can justify lowering your offer. Until you have that then I would hang fire.

You presumably knew they were falling when you made the offer though, and offered accordingly. You decided on what you wanted to pay. They said that was fine. Totally unacceptable to change your offer now it's going through, IMHO. If you don't want it, pull out but don't shaft them while they're over a barrel.

Prices were going up really fast when we bought our house. No-one would think of offering more money even though it was probably worth more in the 4 or 5 months we waited from offer acceptance to exchange.

Not acceptable in my book and it would make me think twice about the whole transaction. It's ok to reduce the offer in line with what the survey comes up with though.

Thanks all, you have confirmed my feelings!

Not illegal, but in my view bad practice.

You put in an offer for what the property was worth to you. Would you risk losing the property for the sake of a couple of grand??? If I was your seller I'd pull out I'm afraid!

We're in a very similar situation, but based our offer partly on the fact we would be putting down a 10% deposit because of the mortgage we applied for. However the 10% products have all been withdrawn and we'll be required to make it up to 15%, that makes the deposit 30k instead of the original 20k we budgeted for. In light of this we have reduced our offer and are now waiting to hear back from the vendors.

I'm not disagreeing with your sentiments, I do think it's bad practice. But on the flip side would you really turn away a buyer who doesn't have a chain, in this market, for the sake of couple of grand?!

I think it's unlikely we will do it, unless the survey throws something up.

We would. We're in Scotland just now and although things are better here, we couldn't afford to lose any money rigt now as 2k would put us in negative equity.

Oh I understand that Oriana, but would you really tell them that you didn't want to deal with them anymore, or would you just not say that a lower offer is not acceptable but you would proceed at agreed price?

My H is of the view that if we make a lower offer and they say no then we will just carry on at the agreed price. I think it's unlikely that they would call off the deal all together.

But anyway it doesnt really matter as unless the survey disagrees with the offer / value then we wont be changing our offer.

3 weeks is hardly anytime in the housebuying process really is it ? The market is still falling but hasnt changed dramatically from 3 weeks ago when your offer was made.

I have dealt with chains where the process has taken months (over 6 mths in one case) and in that time the market had changed completely. In that particular case the reduction in offer, although not pleasant, was justified. We are talking about a house worth £850,000 so the market having dropped by 5% since the offer was made was a huge amount of money!

If the survey had shown something wrong with the property that might affect its true value or highlighted some remedial work that needed doing at significant cost to you then I would again say a reduced offer is justified.

If your H is just now feeling that he could have got it for cheaper then tough - he should have negotiated better at the start lol!

Good luck - hope you get the house !

Personally I wouldn't do this as in my mind it's not morally acceptable. It's entirely different to reduce your offer based on a survey, we did this when the survey showed up some issues. There's no way I'd just offer a lower price for the sake of trying to get a few extra £'s off.

I think gazundering is about as acceptable as gazumping but people seem to be doing it.

My mate is selling a flat in London and has told several "buyers" where to stick their money after suddenly reducing their offer half way through the sale and I can't blame her.

Sorry, I thought that I had typed more than that, but it has vanished.

I said that I would say no chance to them dropping the offer, but it would shake my trust in the buyer somewhat and I would worry that as we got closer to the date, they might do it again. I think I would then have to push for a quick exchange and if they refused, I would be putting my house back on the market.

As everyone else said, obviously dropping after the survey is totally different, but if you're only three weeks into the house buying process I wouldn't risk losing the whole thing for a couple of grand.

I was going to post exactly that.

I agree with many of the views here. 3 weeks isn't very long when buying a house. If there is a problem with the survey then of course you will have to adjust your offer.

However, the views given on Hitched differ from the moneysupermarket forum - over there they would say go for it and agree with your husband and say that vendors are not in any position to refuse offers (well not all vendors obviously).

Morally though, I think you are right.

If the survey throws up something that would have a negative impact on the value of the house then yes, absolutely and I think it would be good practice for them to reduce the price accordingly.

However, you and your husband made the offer knowing full well the state of the market and that it was going to continue falling. If you felt uncomfortable outlaying the funds you should have made the lower offer at that point. Three weeks isn't a long time - that's not moving slowly in a house transaction at any time!

I have to say I fully agree with you here and not your husband. If I were the vendor I would not be willing to drop the price at all and it would strongly make me reconsider how I dealt with the transaction further down the line

I really hate this practice and think it's just unacceptable unless there's a valid reason like the survey showing something up. We are desperate to sell at the moment and have taken a huge hit on the price to get an offer - we have made it clear to our buyer though that it's as low as we're prepared to go and if he reduces for no good reason then we'll be calling off the sale. My dad did the exact same thing a few months ago too.

If our buyer tried it and then reverted the original offer after we'd rejected the lower one we would definitely view him in a different light, and although we'd carry on with it, I'm not sure I'd take it off the market until contracts had exchanged. As it is, we're leaving it on until the surveys have been done - too many sales are collapsing for us to risk it.

If you want to re-offer a lower price (assuming the survey does not throw anything up) the better time to do it would be a day or two before exchange. They will be under a lot more pressure to accept the new lower offer as they won't want to start the whole process again if they're desparate to sell. Also if they're in a chain it will put more pressure on them to accept as they won't want to lose their new place/break the chain.

You need to weigh it up. It's not a nice thing to do but it's legal.

Personnally, I wouldn't bother for a few thou as I dont think it's worth upsetting people and creating bad feeling for that. If the market changed a lot by the time exchange came around I'd do it if I could save £10k+.

Thinking about this more, I can see where your Husband is coming from. With all the hype in the media etc. It is expected, in some areas for house prices to drop even further, so unless you have a decent deposit you (I say you but i mean generally IYSWIM) then you could be in negative equity within a year or so. (I'm getting a lot of this from moneysavingexpert - it's not something I am 100% factual on).

Some people unfortuantely are facing very tough times and may need to sell their house or suffer bankrupscy or/and repossession. These people would take another drop in price even after an original offer was made. This is because they have no choice. This said, it does not make it morally right, I don't believe it is fair to play / gain from others misfortune - however, it seems to be the way of the world at the minute.

What emma numbers said.

I think it's a moral question, not a legal one - between you and your conscience. I don't think I could do it personally, but H probably could.

L
xx