Please help - house purchasing nightmare.

Sonia246

Thank you - the land registry suggestion is an excellent one that I hadn't thought of. Will pursue that right away.

So, filed a complaint with my solicitor...well, their head office... and suddenly everything has kicked into action. She is furious with the EA and thinks that everything has been mismanaged, and is now chatting to the manager there directly, and is also going to try liaising on my behalf with the seller's solicitors, and essentially re-pitch my bid on the basis that we could exchange within two days (and apparently complete by the beginning of next week).

Even she implied that I probably should have got it for a bit less that the other vendor, with one of my previous offers, given that I can complete so soon....which of course makes me even more peeved with the EA (although I'm not allowing myself to get too miffed until I hear what exactly went on and what was passed on to the corporate client).

Was tempted to lower my offer back down again, but then I thought that, given that the corporate client hasn't been won round yet, that might be asking a bit too much.

She obviously couldn't make any promises, but at least if they say no to her, I'd like to think that she'd pass on a 'reason' of some sort (whatever that might be......)

somethingcorporate

Had a somewhat similar situation myself on a lovely place. We were bidding against an "investor" and the EA didn't want to generate a bidding war so asked for final offers. We ended up matched with the investor, neither were cash buyers but we had mortgage in principle and deposit in place however the EA said on the morning of final offers that they required proof of funds to recommend our offer and given we were out of the country and the deposit was across a few accounts we couldn't do this. Yes, thanks for the warning EA.

The EA recommended the other offer and a few weeks later we had a grovelling phonecall from the EA asking us whether we were interested at our first offer (some £25k less than the final bid) as the "investor" had backed out. Unfortunately for them we had just completed on a property in the next street over at a much better price - the house is still on the market 4 months later.

All fun and games in this house buying lark!

Sonia246

Gosh how awful for you And how mean (and, frankly, foolish) of the EA.

Although....it sounds like it definitely worked out for the best in the end! It must be nice to look across the street at the worse property that you could have had at a much higher price

It just goes to show that these offers fall through any time. If the other bidder does get preference, who knows....I might be getting a grovelling call myself in a few weeks time...

....I wish....

For the mean time, I'm holding tight. It's surprisingly hard to be objective in situations like this - I never thought it would be quite this fraught!

These posts have been so helpful already, though - I feel as though the solicitor has been spurned into (very useful) action, and at least now if it all goes pear-shaped I'll feel as though I at least tried to do something about it...

Thank you so much

Trollfever

Are there any independent legal bodies I could/should consult with regards to all of this?

You may like to consider a phone call here:

http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/

Is this a "friends of friends" repo?

Sonia246

Thank you, I hadn't actually heard of the ombudsman system before, so much appreciated. I'm going to wait until I hear back from the solicitor today, and then if it's still sounding fishy I think I'll get in touch with them.

It's not a friend of a friend repo from my point of view (I found the property online and have no connection to it), but it might well be for the EA/new buyer....

Grr...it had better not be....

(she says wondering what on earth she could do about it if it were)

Ah - ombudsman! :rotfl: