Interested in a few 'Sale agreed' properties...

lauraland

Hi all,

I was hoping some of the more experienced property buyers and sellers on here could offer some advice.

I have been checking out properties on various websites and a few that have caught my eye are listed as sale agreed. Am I right in my understanding that this means that an offer has been accepted, although contracts have yet been signed? If so, would it be acceptable to register my interest with the estate agent in the event of the sale falling through? I'm not too sure of the etiquette in such situations.

One particular property has been at 'sale agreed' status since November 2011, according to property bee - is this an oversight by the EA to update the listing or can some property sales take this long?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

g_attrill

I found that many EAs would leave popular properties up even after the sale was completed just to get new customers. It's possible that Rightmove charges in blocks of listings so it doesn't cost them any extra to leave a few sold properties up.

Better_Days

I accepted an offer on my house in third week in October. Once the buyers had appointed a solicitor and arranged a survey it was marked Sold STC on RM. We didn't actually complete until 1st Feb (long chain and be prepared for long delays if the CofE are a buyer/seller).

So OP, a property can legitimately be marked 'sale agreed' for quite a while. Certainly no harm in registering your interest, especially if you can move quickly - the sale may fall through and if you can step in and preserve the chain you may get a good deal.

I did ring an EA about a sale agreed property that had actually been sold for over a year and they hadn't bothered to update their website, and 'sale agreed' and 'sold' is good advertising on RM.

ognum

lauraland wrote: »

Hi all,

I was hoping some of the more experienced property buyers and sellers on here could offer some advice.

I have been checking out properties on various websites and a few that have caught my eye are listed as sale agreed. Am I right in my understanding that this means that an offer has been accepted, although contracts have yet been signed? If so, would it be acceptable to register my interest with the estate agent in the event of the sale falling through? I'm not too sure of the etiquette in such situations.

One particular property has been at 'sale agreed' status since November 2011, according to property bee - is this an oversight by the EA to update the listing or can some property sales take this long?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Try checking the land registry information available on many websites free, it usually takes 2 to 3 months from completion for the information to be available but you will be able to find out if it is sold or still going through the sale process.

hazyjo

How would you feel if you'd spent money on a survey, solicitors, mortgage product, etc and two months into your purchase, someone came along and basically gazumped you. Trust me, it's not nice.

No, it's not the done thing. Not to say it's not done, but it's not something I would do as a buyer, or as a seller. I'm selling at the moment and if someone came along and offered us even £20k more, I'd tell them I'd get in touch if the sale fell through, but I wouldn't be gazumping anyone. And if I lost a house I had wanted to buy (or at least view), I would be telling myself it wasn't meant to be.

Karma, and all that...

Jx

lauraland

Thanks for the replies - I hadn't thought about sold properties being a good advertising tool and/or attracting new customers - it makes a lot of sense. Good to hear I can still register an interest though - it seems all the properties that have really caught my eye so far are all sale agreed, just hoping a few similar houses pop on to the market

lauraland

hazyjo wrote: »

How would you feel if you'd spent money on a survey, solicitors, mortgage product, etc and two months into your purchase, someone came along and basically gazumped you. Trust me, it's not nice.

No, it's not the done thing. Not to say it's not done, but it's not something I would do as a buyer, or as a seller. I'm selling at the moment and if someone came along and offered us even £20k more, I'd tell them I'd get in touch if the sale fell through, but I wouldn't be gazumping anyone. And if I lost a house I had wanted to buy (or at least view), I would be telling myself it wasn't meant to be.

Karma, and all that...

Jx

I'm not talking about gazumping anyone, I'm a big believer in karma too. I am more wanting to register an interest in a property so that in case the sale fell through I could be notified ASAP and take it from there.

elletee

hazyjo wrote: »

How would you feel if you'd spent money on a survey, solicitors, mortgage product, etc and two months into your purchase, someone came along and basically gazumped you. Trust me, it's not nice.

No, it's not the done thing. Not to say it's not done, but it's not something I would do as a buyer, or as a seller. I'm selling at the moment and if someone came along and offered us even £20k more, I'd tell them I'd get in touch if the sale fell through, but I wouldn't be gazumping anyone. And if I lost a house I had wanted to buy (or at least view), I would be telling myself it wasn't meant to be.

Karma, and all that...

Jx

To be fair to the OP they did say they would just ask to be told if the sale fell through ...

Slinky

We sold a flat that the agent (a lettings specialist) left on the net for over a year with SSTC on it!

phoebe1989seb

Slinky wrote: »

We sold a flat that the agent (a lettings specialist) left on the net for over a year with SSTC on it!

Similar story here - we bought our previous house in Nov 2007. It had been for sale with several different agents and approximately six months after we'd completed it was still showing on RM with a couple of these. It was a characterful house not typical of the area, so I guess they left it showing to attract interest in their other stock, which by early 2008 were beginning to stall.......

When we attempted to *express an interest* in a house that went to auction a week or so before we put our house on the market, didn't sell, then unfortunately went under offer at the same time we accepted an offer on ours, we were rebuffed by the agent (possibly on the instruction of the vendor). When the sold info appeared on the land registry etc it had sold for £40k less than our intended offer - extremely annoying as it was a lovely farmhouse ripe for restoring, but their loss at the end of the day........something better will inevitably come along

Slinky

The flat we sold in 2010 has sold again almost exactly 2 years later. Something must have gone horribly wrong for the buyer to want to get out really quickly, he sold for 45% less than what he paid, and we're talking a properly here that was only 5 figures to start with. Others in the block are selling for way higher than he did.