Offer accepted, now paranoid about being gazumped!

kittykitten

I'm a FTB and had an offer accepted on a huse late yesterday - so late that I haven't actually spoken to the estate agent - he left a (long and rambling) message on my mobile saying the sellers had accepted my offer, etc etc etc.

Problem being he said they now need proof of deposit and the agreement in principle from my prospective lender, at which point, according to his message, they will take the house off the market for a fortnight for surveys, if survey not completed during this time they'll then put the house back on the market, if survey completed within the two weeks they'll keep the house off market. It was a very long voicemail!

Probalem being I'm going away today and am not back til monday, so can't really tackle the paperwork until at least monday afternoon, more likely tuesday. As it stands at the moment there have been no other offers on the house, but it's such a bargain I'm paranoid something will happen this weekend! Trying to get hold of mortgage adviser, and also estate agent, to seeif we can speed this up a bit, but no luck yet - what time do these people drag themselves into work?!

My main problem is that the house is also on the market with another estate agent. When the one I'm dealing with say the house is off the market once I've provided paperwork, does that mean the seller is obliged to take it off the market with the other agent as well? Or could I still be gazumped that way?

I'm a very paranoid gibbering wreck at the moment!

GAH

Personally I think the agent is being quite fair, they will take the property off the market for two weeks to get a survey booked.

Most agents will leave the property on the market for othe rpotential buyers to view while people are normally trying to get their surveys booked in.

You should quite comfortabley be able to get your application done and survey booked within two weeks, you just need to be on the lenders case.

The thing with gazumping is, it can happen anytime upto exchange, a buyer that viewed the property previously can put in an offer anytime, but really you can't worry about this, you just need to concentrate on getting things done ASAP if you want the house

Mallotum_X

Gazumped, in the current falling market... Not very likely, there is far more 'Gazundering' going on than Gazumping at the moment. I really wouldnt worry.

PasturesNew

Gazumped? I found a house last night advertised at £180k, that was £385k, I've not rushed to view it ... not much gazumping going on nowadays.

kittykitten

I know, I'm paranoid!
Anyway, update so far: saw the mortgage broker again yesterday, agreed on a mortgage and have agreement in principle (Santander if anyone's interested,) now waiting for them to organise survery etc etc. Got letter from estate agent today basically saying they're not actively marketing the proerty but if seller asks them to begin marketing it again they'll be obliged to.

So now the waiting begins....

InkZ

Ask the agent to tell the vendor to take it off with the other agents.

Having just been through the process of selling and now buying I can assure you that the seller is just as worried about you pulling out as you are of being gazumped.

kittykitten

Thanks again for all of the positive messages I've had on here - I wish I was as confident of this happening as you lot are!

I'm going to get straight on the phone to the EA tomorrow to ask the vendor to take it off the market with the other agents, but I'm not hopeful of my chances, particularly as I ended up bartering them down to 2k under asking price (well 19950 if we're going to be picky!) as that was literally the most I could raise a mortgage for, but it's on market for offers over 2k more than I've paid with other EA.

aliamber

Not very likely to happen BUT it happened to me last week. After several weeks of discussions with the EA and direct with the vendor we were able to accept an offer on our place so were able to put in an offer on our 'dream home' which was accepted. Two days later, someone comes in from nowhere with the asking price - which the vendor accepted!

I find it sly and underhand on the part of both the vendor and EA. A week later and the estate agent has still not been able to confirm to me that the other buyer has the funds in place to proceed! Hope it falls through for them - it will be about the 3rd time during trying to sell their house. I will be loathe to get involved in this chain again even if they come crawling back. There needs to be some honour and trust between people when buying/selling houses.

The galling thing is that the vendors actually admitted it had happened to them earlier in the process, so they felt really bad doing it coz they knew how we felt!

hcb42

OP - the jitters won't go away until you exchange unfortunately, so the sooner you can get to that point, the better!

aliamber

Surprise, surprise - our rival buyer wasn't able to prove they had funds available a week after making their asking price offer and gazumping us. So our purchase is now back on but only after we have had to offer a couple of grand more to get the house taken off the market.

I wouldn't be surprised if the other buyer was completely fictitious - concocted by either the vendor or the EA to try and squeeze more money out of us - and their evil plan worked!

Mallotum_X

aliamber wrote: »

Surprise, surprise - our rival buyer wasn't able to prove they had funds available a week after making their asking price offer and gazumping us. So our purchase is now back on but only after we have had to offer a couple of grand more to get the house taken off the market.

I wouldn't be surprised if the other buyer was completely fictitious - concocted by either the vendor or the EA to try and squeeze more money out of us - and their evil plan worked!

Why did you agree to pay more, you should have threatened to pull out. I wuld be extremely tempted to go back to them with a revised offer of less than you had previouslt agreed to pay. You really shouldnt let them rip you off like that.