can i gazump a friend? Post Reply

[hightea]

My husband and I have been looking for our next home for ages and ages and have now found something that we both really love and is in a great location for a great primary school.
The difficulty is that someone has already made an offer and it is a friend. I know that we can go a good bit over the asking price but am really torn about whether we should go down this route. I only found  the above out by accident, but I can't pretend that I don't know. My husband wants to push ahead, he says that I am overthinking and all is fair in love and war.
I feel If we go ahead there will almost certainly be friendship troubles but If we hold back and have to start over, I will have a very unhappy husband as well as an upcoming school situation to solve. Would anyone be happy to offer their view? Thank you and have a lovely evening.

[windmill26]

I presume if you are entertaining this you are willing to lose your friend as it won't be just "friendship troubles" On a personal note I think that gazumping shouldn't be legal.It is an unfair practice that often makes what is already a stressful transaction even more difficult and expensive for the gazumped party. From your post looks like it brings out the worst in people..."My husband wants to push ahead, he says that I am overthinking and all is fair in love and war" ...this is hardly a love an war situation!

[RumourMill]

I would think that you are removed as this is a word used by spammer an awful lot if you push ahead. Friendship, no guarantee that someone won't do the same to you, the sellers could change their mind about moving etc.etc. Then it will have all been for nothing and you will minus a friend, maybe even more than one friend. Is it really worth it? Does it have to be this house? Let's face it, houses are pretty similar in this location?

[chorister]

Instead of looking at it as a practical question why not think about the moral implications of doing over a friend?

[muddyboots]

So by the same logic your post could also say “can I steal my friend’s husband” as “all is fair in love and war”....
It’s a shitty thing to do and you know this I’m sure, no validation of the opposite online would make it OK either

[fourlegs]

Several years ago myself and a friend were on the house hunting trail at the same time.

I had leafleted the houses in my road to request that if they were thinking of moving that they give us a heads up as we weren't keen to stray far. A neighbour did just that. We viewed the house night before the agent was due to start showing and loved it. They sellers explained that they wanted everything to go through the appointed estate agent. We made an offer later the following day. The evening of that same day an excited friend knocked on our door to tell me that hopefully we were going to be neighbours, at least until we found our next home. I had to explain that we had literally just made an offer which was hard for her to hear as she had been told that she was the first to view the property. It was very awkward, she was very disappointed, I felt awful etc.
 
Sorry, its a long one!!

 I'm not sure how close friends you are, this was one of my best friends, but if she had gone ahead and made an offer I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't be friends now. 

None of it mattered in the end,  two weeks later the house was taken off the market as the forward chain fell apart. 

I know that this isn't quite the same thing but things do go wrong in the house buying chain and it would have been awful if we had lost our friendship and neither of us had our dream home.

Good luck with your decision. 

[adamgh]

The fact you’re on here asking for advise is enough to reveal your feelings. This is not love, or war. Your husband is definitely lacking integrity here. Whether you want to do the same is up to you, but if there is a genuine friendship here you cannot do that. It’s not right. To be honest gazzumping isnt right when it’s not your friends!

Think with your heart - how does this feel? If you care about your friend at all, you’ll know what to do. When you decide - think about having peace in your heart afterwards- if you achieve that you’ll have made the right decision

[Scottov]

My husband and I have been looking for our next home for ages and ages and have now found something that we both really love and is in a great location for a great primary school.
The difficulty is that someone has already made an offer and it is a friend. I know that we can go a good bit over the asking price but am really torn about whether we should go down this route. I only found  the above out by accident, but I can't pretend that I don't know. My husband wants to push ahead, he says that I am overthinking and all is fair in love and war.
I feel If we go ahead there will almost certainly be friendship troubles but If we hold back and have to start over, I will have a very unhappy husband as well as an upcoming school situation to solve. Would anyone be happy to offer their view? Thank you and have a lovely evening.

Wow

I can’t imagine even thinking this is ok. If your husband is so easily able to justify this then I’d be wary of where else his moral compass is askew

Of course what you’re talking about is not ok, and no rationale will give you the high ground

Do it if you must, but at least own it. And don’t be surprised if Karma has something to say later on

[Kirstie’s Mom]

I hope your husband never has to overthink his marriage . He doesn’t sound particularly honorable

[dudette]

I was in a similarish situation a few years ago. We were house hunting - found one we liked and put in a fairly low offer. It was turned down, we didn’t offer again and a few months later a friend who was house hunting put an offer in. I can’t remember the exact sequence of events but I think their offer was accepted and then they had to pull out for some reason (maybe they couldn’t sell their own house). The agent then came back to me and asked if we wanted to offer again (the offer my friend had agreed was lower than our first offer) - but I just said that I knew the person who had made the offer (she wasn’t a close friend but close enough for me not to want to do the dirty on her) and didn’t want to take the house away from her. The agent said exactly what your husband said but I disagreed. She eventually bought that house and we found a much nicer house so it worked out fine. As others have said - you will definitely lose your friend over this so think very carefully.

[NJTA]

When I think of gazumping I assume an offer has already been accepted and the sale is going through. If your friend has had an offer accepted on the house and the sale is going through then I would be inclined to steer clear as I don't feel this is an 'all is fair in love and war' situation. 

If your friend hasn't had an offer accepted then I would speak to your friend and ask her how she feels about it. Explain the situation and say you don't want to get into a bidding war with her because there is no point in you bidding her up or vice versa. You may find your friend can't afford it and she would rather you have the house than neither of you have it. 

If it's a good friend then there are lots of houses and there may be other mutual friends where there is further fall out.

Good luck!

[Scottov]

I was in a similarish situation a few years ago. We were house hunting - found one we liked and put in a fairly low offer. It was turned down, we didn’t offer again and a few months later a friend who was house hunting put an offer in. I can’t remember the exact sequence of events but I think their offer was accepted and then they had to pull out for some reason (maybe they couldn’t sell their own house). The agent then came back to me and asked if we wanted to offer again (the offer my friend had agreed was lower than our first offer) - but I just said that I knew the person who had made the offer (she wasn’t a close friend but close enough for me not to want to do the dirty on her) and didn’t want to take the house away from her. The agent said exactly what your husband said but I disagreed. She eventually bought that house and we found a much nicer house so it worked out fine. As others have said - you will definitely lose your friend over this so think very carefully.

More about losing your soul than just your friend

[Platypus]

I think you need to be clearer on what you mean by gazump. 

You say the friend has made an offer, but not whether the offer has been accepted. If it has, then offering more in hopes that the seller will break the agreement in favour of you is really horrible. It's so dishonourable, I know estate agents who will tell buyers they disapprove. Do you really want lower morals than an estate agent would display towards strangers, when you are talking about a friend? And it may not just be one friendship harmed, in that scenario, either, because they'd be unlikely not to tell people about it and quite honestly, I'd not feel the same about someone able to do that to someone they were meant to care for, either. 

It's knottier if you don't mean gazumping at all, but instead a competing offer. That's socially very awkward, but not wrong per se. We all bid what we can afford for the home we want. That's how house buying works in a hot market, and isn't gazumping. In that situation, I'd consider how much the friendship means, because you'd be likely to lose it, fair or not. So much emotion is tied up in housing. But if it's still on the market, then it's not wrong, no. And realistically, it could be that neither of you have the winning bid, because if you both love it, and the seller is yet to accept your friend's bid, then probably so will other people. 

Finally, in practical terms, I'd also consider how rare such a house is likely to be. I mean, this is a lovely area, but unless you are talking crazy money, you're presumably talking about the sort of terrace that is commonplace. If so, then you are unlikely to find this is a once in a lifetime chance because the housing stock is fairly homogenous. As a child, I always knew the layout of my friends' houses, because it was my own. Most in the Honeywell catchment were. Is this house really worth the social consequences, quite apart from the moral issue?