One of the greatest causes of vendor stress in sale by private treaty is an offer falling through before contracts are exchanged.

There are many reasons why potential purchasers fail to commit, but experienced agents are more skilled at detecting and eliminating high-risk offers. While agents are bound by law to submit all offers presented, experienced agents minimise vendor disappointment and loss of marketing time by advising clients not to accept offers they know are unlikely to proceed.

Sometimes offers are made by intending buyers who have not yet placed their property on the market for sale and who need the finance from the sale of that property before they can complete their next real estate purchase. Buyers in this category are most often (not always of course!) just beginning to assess the market. They have found a house they really like almost at once and before they are ready to act. Often they have not done enough homework to know market values and their offers are not based on a genuine understanding of the current market. Some continue to look around while waiting for their own home to sell, even though they have agreed in principle to buy another property. Such purchasers are not deliberately trying to deceive or inconvenience property sellers when they pull out of a sale - they were simply too inexperienced and eager when they made their offer. Some purchasers offer to get bridging finance so they can proceed immediately; however, vendors should realise that in most (not all of course!) cases, the cost of bridging finance and the “what if” factor of not knowing what their own home will ultimately sell for, end up working against the sale.

Since professional real estate agents will advise against taking a property off the market upon the receipt of offers from unqualified purchasers, no loss of time of money is incurred. The harm done by uninformed purchasers who retract high offers is more insidious. Often the offers made by purchasers who have not really researched the market are higher than the property’s ultimate market value; in other words, the price is above what the vendor can realistically expect to achieve. Unfortunately, the effect on the vendor’s expectation is lasting. Most vendors continue to measure all subsequent offers against the high one, even though it fell through.

In the anxiety of undertaking what for 97% of people is their biggest ever financial transaction, it is easy for vendors to forget that no mere offer in itself actually represents market value, let alone a firm sale price - until a qualified purchaser backs it up with cash. If vendors could dismiss unrealistically high offers with the same incredulousness that they dismiss unrealistically low offers, they would sell faster and for a higher price in the long run.