Making our first property offer

We found a property that we wanted to make an offer on just three weeks into our search. On reflection, we should have done more preparation before we made our first offer. See my post on preparation in the blog post named, Learning from our mistakes and the initial preparation needed.

I thought it would be helpful to share our story. Unfortunately, this story doesn't have a happy ending but there were a lot of learnings!

We had actually contacted the estate agent to see another property that we saw listed on Rightmove. She mentioned that there were some other properties nearby that might be of interest so we viewed them too.

For ease, let’s name the flat that we liked “Property 1”. After the first viewing of Property 1 on Wednesday, hubby and I agreed that we liked it because of a number of factors, such as location, age, size and condition. We sent across our follow up questions for the estate agent and asked to arrange a second viewing.

On Thursday morning, we were informed that the property was part of a chain and the owner could potentially lose his onward purchase if they didn’t have an offer that same week and may take the property off the market. Needless to say, that put us in panic mode since we were new to all this!

As a result, upon the advice of the estate agent, our second viewing was arranged for later in the week (only three days later!). We flagged that we would need the answers to all of our queries by then. The landlord was prompt in providing the information, which was helpful. At this point, I couldn’t quite believe that timescales had suddenly accelerated and we could potentially be making an offer only three days later!

By Thursday afternoon, we were contacted again by the estate agent with responses to our queries and were informed that the seller had received an offer on the property. We were advised that if we were interested in making an offer, we should do so before the second viewing on Saturday.

By this point, we were starting to feel stressed and pressured. As a first-time buyer, it’s pretty daunting to consider making an offer after one viewing since buying a property is a big step.

Hubby and I discussed it in the evening and agreed that we needed the second viewing, especially since we wanted our parents to view the flat and give us their thoughts on it. We replied back on Friday morning to explain that we would need to view the flat again before making an offer.

On Saturday, at the second viewing, we were told that the owner was interested in taking the offer they had received earlier in the week and would only consider our offer if it was at the asking price.

A few hours later, we called the estate agent and we made our first offer! We also sent an email to confirm the amount of the offer, property address and that we had an AiP. We were also asked to include the deposit amount. I’m not sure if this is standard practice and we didn’t feel comfortable doing so we provided a rough figure (deposit of over X amount). It would be helpful to hear the experiences of others on this matter? Please do leave a comment!

Making the offer was both exciting and scary as it is such a large sum of money. There was growing nervousness as we waited for the estate agent to call us back.

When we heard back, he said the owner was considering the offers and over the next few hours, there were a number of calls back and forth between us and the estate agent.

In a nutshell, the owner wanted us to show commitment that we wanted to buy the property and that we were prepared. We were asked the following:

• Are you ready to instruct a solicitor or conveyancer?  

If you have read my earlier post on initial preparation for buying a property, you’ll know we hadn’t actually got this far in our research…

• How will you be getting a mortgage (directly with a lender or with a mortgage broker)? 

Again, we hadn’t decided on this. In hindsight, we probably should have had an answer to the first two questions so we could give the seller more confidence in us and show we were prepared!

• Can you put down a few thousand pounds as a deposit to show your commitment?

I think it was this question when alarm bells started ringing as this didn’t feel like a reasonable request. From our experience, there were reservation fees for the new builds that we looked at but as Property 1 was not a new build, we felt this was an unusual request.

My understanding was that a deposit is paid during the conveyancing process before the exchange of contracts. I hadn’t heard of paying a deposit to show commitment. A few thousand pounds was a lot of money especially when we didn’t know if this was standard practice. When we asked questions on how this would work (e.g. who would hold the money, what happens if the sale falls through and would we get our money back) but it wasn’t explained clearly. 

After frantic googling and calling family, we decided that we would not agree to this request. I read useful articles from HomeOwners Alliance: Should you pay a pre-contract deposit? and 'Are you a serious buyer? Estate agents can now ask you to pay up to prove it' from the Guardian.

From our perspective, the details of how this deposit would work had not been clearly explained and there was too much risk for us. We explained that we had shown interest and commitment, especially as we had agreed to the owners request of making an offer at the asking price when initially we weren’t intending to.

• We were asked by the estate agent to write an email to tell the owner more about us and how we were excited to buy the flat and our intention to buy.

This request gave me flashbacks of writing a personal statement for university. We felt that if the owner needed such reassurance from us, going ahead with the transaction didn’t feel right for us. As a result, we pulled the offer on the same day.

Due to the above, I felt stressed, frustrated and vulnerable. There was a lot of anxiety as I didn’t know what was usual practice. I also felt we were rushed to make decisions and that no one in the process really had our interests at heart. That day felt like a rollercoaster of ups and downs and is the reason I ended doing a lot more research going forwards as I didn’t want to be in such a position again. 

I hope our experience has given you some food for thought!

Jess