Offer on a house neither accepted or rejected

patricia..xx

We put an offer in on a house end of Nov. We can get no answer from the EA about whether it is acceptable.

The EA tells us there is a higher offer than is in the same position and we should submit our best offer now. I suspect this is rubbish and we would be bidding against ourselves. I have asked the deadline for best offers and there isn't one.

At the moment we are continuing to look at other houses but they are quite few and far between. Any advice on what we could do to speed them along - we were expecting to have it agreed or not within 24 hours. Or would you assume vendors are timewasters and likely to mess you about later and withdraw the whole thing. What I am not going to do is increase the offer until they formally say no to the original one.

Anyone had a similar experience?

Seabee42

You have your reasons for being suspicious of increasing your bid but I would generally treat any bid that has not been accepted as insufficient. (I accept waiting to hear but not 2 months).

The_White_Horse

if you're not that bothered, tell the EA that your original offer stands and will be on the table for 48 hrs. Otherwise it is gone. The sellers can then go with the better offer if they want to.

00ec25

I agree with White Horse, they are playing you for a fool. Get tough, give them a deadline and stick to it then walk away. Its rare for you subsequently to never find a better house ...

Paully232000

I would agree with the above.
Go along with the EAs premise of submitting best and final offers, but use the same amount as you put in the first time. See where that gets you.

pinkteapot

Two options:

1. Say your original offer is good for another X days and then you're withdrawing it if it's not accepted. But this only works if you're really willing to withdraw your offer and forget the house.

2. Say it's on the table until such time as you find something else.

Personally, if you want the house, I'd go with #2 and keep looking until then.

Our buyers offered less than asking price on our place. At the time, we hadn't yet found anywhere to move to. We said to them that we'd keep it on the market in case we get a better offer, but that if we didn't get one by the time we found somewhere to buy that we'd go back to them. We found a house to buy about a month later and hadn't had higher offers in the meantime, so then accepted their offer. But we were up-front with them about what we were doing and obviously they were free to find something else instead while they waited for ours.

If the vendor hasn't found a house themselves yet then they may be in no rush at this point.

Doozergirl

Is it possible the house is a repossession?

googler

The_White_Horse wrote: »

tell the EA that your original offer stands and will be on the table for 48 hrs. Otherwise it is gone. The sellers can then go with the better offer if they want to.

Do this.

No offer is made in Scotland without a price, the entry date, and a limit date on the availability of the offer, typically

"This offer unless earlier withdrawn is open for verbal acceptance by 5pm today with written acceptance reaching us no later than 5pm on the fifth working day following the date of this offer and if not so accepted shall be deemed to be withdrawn."

If you're not happy with the current system in E&W, lobby your MP for change.

patricia..xx

Thanks for all the advice. We have made it clear we are still looking at other houses. I am not sure whether setting a deadline/withdrawing would be effective. i.e. we have been looking since October and this is the only house we have been interested enough to put in an offer. Although I'm not too bothered either way whether we get it, obviously I would still like to buy it or we would have withdrawn altogether.

The house is empty but not a repossesion. They've owned it years so doubt there's a mortgage so no huge incentive to sell quickly that I can see.

The longer it goes without it selling makes me think that our original ceiling price was too high. So by hanging on for all this time the sellers could potentially be selling it for less that we would have offered.

AdrianC

Nobody just sits on an offer for two months. If they were going to accept it, they'd have accepted it.

Whether there really is another offer or not is almost irrelevant. The vendors don't want to accept your original offer. If you want the house, you'll have to offer more.

patricia..xx

So I'm being naive in thinking that they are sitting on it as they would accept it, but are holding out for more as it'd only just gone on the market, and if they don't get a better one they are keeping it open?

Mmmn, this advice is not going to go down well with my husband. He is of the opinion that we tell them to shove it already