How long to wait for offer to be accepted?

londonmaiden

Thanks all for your replies, @TheCyclingProgrammer best of luck, I know exactly how you feel it is soul destroying!

All things considered, we are still viewing other properties and will just have to wait and see but it does not fill you full of hope if the offer is accepted of a smooth sale transaction. And yes I am not entirely convinced the email went through to the vendor as quickly as we'd hoped. I wonder if they've been waiting to see if any other offers came through or how many requests for viewings they've had so they can tell the vendor. Thing is if the vendor wants to hang on then that is fine, just please let us know to put us out of our misery. When you have nothing to go on it is painful!!

TheCyclingProgrammer

Well, we finally heard back. We didn't get it. Two people offered above the stamp duty threshold in the end. I'm disappointed, but I don't feel the property was worth more than £250k anyway. It just seems like we'll have to go through this any time a half decent property comes up...

firebird082

TheCyclingProgrammer wrote: »

Well, we finally heard back. We didn't get it. Two people offered above the stamp duty threshold in the end. I'm disappointed, but I don't feel the property was worth more than £250k anyway. It just seems like we'll have to go through this any time a half decent property comes up...

Sorry to hear that, but at least you haven't wasted your money if you didn't think it was worth more than that. We were in the same situation and offered over the SDT and I'm still a bit annoyed that we had to do so, after the seller claimed to be happy with £250k (but I still think it's worth it).

Anyway, sorry OP, thread drift...

londonmaiden

Sorry about the bad news @TheCyclingPrammer, I feel your pain, this has happened to us 4 times previously, we stretched our budget as far as we could go but I think you've done the right thing if you don't think the property is worth more than £250k. Unfortunately until the market dies down a bit, which I think and hope will happen over the next 6 months this is the reality of house buying in certain areas.

For what it's worth I put in another call to the EA and they were very apologetic, still no news from the vendor and insistent no viewings are being done, will just have to wait and see!

londonmaiden

Just heard back, the vendor has declined our offer and is now saying that he wants to do an open house! So basically you cannot win! You offer full asking price straight away which then makes the vendor realise that he can get more money! As a buyer you are completely played by the housing market! We now have the option to go back and ask him how much he wants to increase our offer or just pull out. And the EA knew this a couple of days ago but wanted to wait to find out why he had declined our offer as they thought he should accept it, before telling us! Also we don't think we should increase our offer by much as the mortgage valuation might fall short! Aargh!!

DRP

seems in a lot of areas a 'best and final offer' situation is what every vendor is aiming for. Unfortunate for you, but difficult to blame them as it maximises their sale price.

londonmaiden

Yes, incredibly frustrating. I never knew buying a house would be so utterly soul destroying.

harrys_dad

Whilst we have a Govt pumping money into an overheated market, very few restrictions on hot foreign money using London housing as an investment vehicle, and supply nowhere near matching demand, greedy sellers have the upper hand unfortunately. What they don't realise is that most of those sellers are also buyers, usually further up "the ladder" so the gap between the rungs (their "price to change") is actually getting bigger and costing them money.

OP you have my sympathy.

londonmaiden

Thank you.