Beware of Prices that go ‘jump’ Overnight

Pumpkins, scary movies which are not very scary, fancy dress parties and your door being knocked by little ‘monsters’ every five minutes.

It’s coming up to Halloween again and at Carnabys we’re getting in the mood.

We never, ever trick our clients and we always treat them really well (see what I did there folks?).

That’s why I wanted to use this week’s blog to warn you about a housing horror story I heard recently.

It’s called The Return of the Ghost Gazumper. And it is a seriously scary story.

A seller had agreed a fee with a buyer then a few weeks later raised the price saying they’d received a higher offer from another very interested ‘buyer’. This new ‘bid’ came in after the initial offer had been accepted and the process was very much in motion with surveys having been done, solicitors working on the files etc.

This higher offer came in just before exchange of contracts and the prospective buyer was faced with coming up with thousands of pounds more or suffering the agony of losing their ideal home.

The trouble was the mystery new ‘buyer’ didn’t even exist. It was a ruse to get more money. Gazumping used to happen a lot in previous years and has marred the reputation of estate agents and indeed property sellers.

Thankfully this kind of thing is now very rare but is really, really bad form and we would scare anyone off of trying it. A good agent will not get involved in this sort of phantom offer horror show.

Until next week,

Terry

Terry’s Top Tip: With the clocks going back now really is the time to think about how you can light your home to make it as attractive as possible to potential buyers. Watch out for next week’s blog where I’ll be shedding a lot more light on this subject.