Vendor rejects higher offers to guarantee sale to local buyer

A first-time-buyer couple in a part of the country renowned for its second homes and shortage of stock has praised a vendor for rejecting higher offers from outsiders.

The identity of the vendor is being kept secret but the couple - Jackson Higginbottom and his partner Holly - have praised the seller who rejected higher offers on the property in Sennen, a coastal area of west Cornwall.

The seller rejected at least two offers, one of which has been described as “massively over the asking price.”

The couple, who are Cornish and met at college in the county, are in their 30s and spent four years saving for a deposit but were frustrated when multiple properties they wanted sold quickly, often to those moving to the area.

Higginbottom told the local Cornish Live news website: ““As soon as you see somewhere you like, it’s gone … When it’s first-time buyer prices, and they’re going like that, you can’t help but think, ‘for God’s sake’.”

He adds: “Online listings vanished instantly, but we did finally spot this one home in Sennen. We hadn’t even thought of looking there as it’s way out of our price range but we went straight to the bank, straight to the estate agent and offered the asking price.”

After their offer was accepted, the couple learned the vendor turned down two separate offers from buyers which were, according to Higginbottom, “massively over the asking price”.

“There’s us thinking we’re really stretching to offer that asking price. We don’t even know the guy, but he has done the bloody decent thing and turned away these offers. For us, we’d paid a higher deposit and took a while to get everything sorted as first-time buyers. He had seven months to hold off from tourists and wealthy cash buyers.”

The surge in interest for rural areas - and Cornwall more than most - has been well reported in recent months.

Rightmove’s director of property data Tim Bannister said in April: “Areas around the … South West are the stand-out seller’s markets right now, and places in Cornwall and Devon are continuing the trend of a desire to move to the seaside and countryside.”

Cornwall overtook London as the most searched for location for buyers on Rightmove with over five million searches in February alone. Six of the top 10 places seeing buyer searches increase the most over the past year being located in Cornwall and Devon, with searches for the village of Stithians in Cornwall up by 224 per cent on spring last year.

You can read the full Cornwall Live story about the couple here.