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How long would you wait?

So, we have had an offer accepted on a property, but the vendors havent found anywhere that they want to purchase. We have waited three weeks so far, but we arent in any particular rush due to being chain free, etc.

However, at what stage would you either start pushing for some progress, or start looking at other properties?
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  • jibbyboo
    jibbyboo Posts: 262 Forumite
    Seventh Anniversary Combo Breaker Car Insurance Carver!
    Partly depends on how much you like the vendors!

    No harm in a gentle request through the EA. Or if you're getting impatient, you could tell them they need to progress by X date otherwise your offer is withdrawn.

    Doing this is a gamble as you may lose the property if there are other people interested.
    Please respond to mine and others' posts with courtesy and kindness- and I will not deliberately disrespect you. Down with the trolls!
  • We havent been able to build up a rapport with the vendors unfortunately as we saw them on first viewing for 10 minutes, and havent been able to see them again. We therefore havent been able to guage very much about them, or how desperate they are to move. how fussy they are about theor next property etc.
  • jibbyboo
    jibbyboo Posts: 262 Forumite
    Seventh Anniversary Combo Breaker Car Insurance Carver!
    Then I would suggest contacting their EA and asking for any updates - be nice and friendly to start. Hopefully the vendors will respond appropriately.
    Please respond to mine and others' posts with courtesy and kindness- and I will not deliberately disrespect you. Down with the trolls!
  • hazyjo
    hazyjo Posts: 15,474 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    They might never find anywhere, so I'd definitely keep a close eye on the market. When you find something else you like (prob just on paper, wouldn't view unless they knew I was still looking), then maybe ask them how they're getting on, and say it's been a while and you're going to have to start checking out the rest of the market...

    Can be done nicely! Just a gentle push!

    Have been in horrible situations like this, and the vendors never found anywhere, kept me hanging on for ages, didn't bother to tell me they were not longer even looking, and then I lost my buyer who'd also been hanging on. Had a couple of blokes view my house once too who had been hanging on for nearly four months and were getting peed off with waiting. Said they felt bad, and really wanted the house they were going for, but didn't know what to do as they'd lost a third of a year and seen other properties come and go...

    Jx
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  • Slinky
    Slinky Posts: 10,716 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    My OH had a six month wait between offer and completion when buying a house where the vendors were retired and looking for a bungalow. Despite being retired, they would only go house hunting at weekends....... took them ages to find something. Meanwhile my OH let his house complete (he was renting a room in the area he'd moved to for work) and was technically homeless for three months in a rising market. Fortunately they did find something in the end, but it got held up another month when the searches revealed that a tree with a TPO on it was no longer in the garden of the property (probate sale, the deceased had probably cut/had it cut down).
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  • Thrugelmir
    Thrugelmir Posts: 89,546 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    CrazyAngel wrote: »
    However, at what stage would you either start pushing for some progress, or start looking at other properties?

    Keep your eye on the market all the time.

    Give the vendors space. As takes time to find a property then agree a deal. Many deals fail to come together on price. So its back to the drawing board.
  • jackomdj
    jackomdj Posts: 3,073 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts
    We pulled out after about 7 weeks when they could not find anywhere. We had been popping into the estate agent each week for updates and told them we would be looking at other properties.

    As it turned out the house two doors away from the one we had offered on came into our price bracket (they reduced it down), we managed to negotiate on this one and pulled out from the original one. However two years later they are till there. The ea did tell me when we withdrew our offer, that he did not think the wife wanted to move.
  • phoebe1989seb
    phoebe1989seb Posts: 4,452 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    edited 26 April 2013 pm30 4:56PM
    We've been in the position where we were the vendors with an offer accepted on our house, our buyers had an early exchange/completion date in mind from the outset and we needed to search for a house some 200 miles away. It didn't help that we went under offer much sooner than we'd expected and being early March, there was yet to be the typical Spring deluge of new properties onto the market.

    However, we'd already prepped a short list of potentials from RM and as soon as we'd accepted the offer on ours we arranged to view about six - our criteria list was very strict so there weren't many suitable ones, although we were looking across several counties......not sure if that made it easier or harder, LOL!

    Initially we had a couple of false starts - two houses we had offers accepted on soon turned out to be far from ideal, so we withdrew our offers.

    By the time we found *the one* - just over four weeks into the process - our buyers were starting to get a bit twitchy that we weren't serious about moving. This couldn't have been further from the truth as it happened, but you can understand them feeling that way - especially as there was a chain of three behind them.

    Not only that but they were totally smitten with our house - there wasn't a anything else remotely like it for miles around, so at the risk of sounding complacent (which we weren't as we were convinced prior to marketing it that it would never sell) it was realistically quite unlikely they would have found another house to buy if we hadn't been serious.

    Once we had found the right house though, it all went fairly smoothly and the process was concluded pretty swiftly - and during the week that had been put forward from the outset, so no-one was disappointed!

    I feel it's always a bit of a difficult *chicken & egg* situation - you're discouraged from viewing (and offering - quite understandably) till you are under offer yourself, yet once you do have that acceptable offer it's all systems go to find a place to buy yourself and if this is a long-distance move or the people concerned are elderly etc it can take a bit of time to get off the starting blocks......
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  • We are in the same position as you, except we're over 4 weeks waiting now. What we have done is keep an eye on the market, but frankly everything that has come onto the market since has either been structurally flawed or overpriced so we're happy to wait for now. The EA has given me regular updates with how many properties the vendors will view this week etc. If something comes up that is nice on the inside AND outside we will view, but we won't be seriously considering pulling out and making an offer on another property unless the vendors of that property are in a better position.

    So I'd be keeping one eye on the market, but keeping the pressure on the EA to give you regular updates so that the vendors don't start taking you for granted. If you do find something else you like and the vendors are in a better position well then you have a tough decision to make but at least then you have options.
  • We're in a similar position except it is people above the people we are buying from in the chain that can't find anywhere. Its been 9 weeks now!! We are starting to get very frustrated. Not really sure what we can do as our hearts are set on the house. However, we are aware that if we don't do somethign soon we could wait another 10 weeks and then it all could collapse!

    Sooo stressfull!!
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