We've withdrawn our offer!

Eejay

Update: It all worked out and we'll be moving in once it's ready - we're having it rewired, a new boiler, re-plastered and a new kitchen and bathroom More details on page 5!

After all the hassle we've had with the EA, we've decided to withdraw our offer. They gave us until Friday to get the surveys done or else they'd be 'advising their client to put the property back on the market', despite refusing to answer any of our questions/concerns. We had tried to get things moving along and the mortgage application was finally going through, but I object to them threatening us all the time despite a lot of the 'issues' being out of our control. It felt good to tell them to get stuffed

It looks like everything is going well with the property my husband is selling and it should be completed at the start of July, which is good news!

I've been looking at other properties but unfortunately my husband seems to expect a mansion in a place practically full of terraced houses (we're restricted to certain areas due to relying on public transport), so I'm not hopeful we'll find anything any time soon. If, by some miracle, we do manage to find something, is it easy to change the mortgage for the new property - or would we have to go through the whole process again?

pinkshoes

Does the vendor realise what a pain the EA is being? I'd send them a note why you are withdrawing your offer...

Annie1960

pinkshoes wrote: »

Does the vendor realise what a pain the EA is being? I'd send them a note why you are withdrawing your offer...

I agree. This EA sounds really difficult to deal with. Nobody benefits from this.

Eejay

I emailed the vendor about a week and a half ago after a forum member suggested it, and let him know of some of the problems; he said that he hadn't heard about many of the issues but that he'd contact the EA the following day and sort things out. The EA then emailed and said that we'd "somehow acquired their client's email address" as though we'd broken the law, and started pestering about the surveys/searches again. At this point my husband said he wanted any further contact to go via the solicitor. Today he got an email from the solicitor saying that the EA had been in touch with her and that she wasn't going to act as a 'go-between' (I suspect the EA has got on her nerves too - she's very interfering and rude) but that the EA had said we had until Friday to get things sorted.

I understand that we could have done things a bit quicker, but they have had about a week and a half to respond to concerns about a lack of information in the Property Information Form - they told us this was "no reason to delay surveys", but I don't see why they couldn't just send the information (the solicitor said that at the very least she expected the paperwork to be signed). We didn't expect them to answer every single question, but there was more they could have filled in, particularly regarding the tenants - they seemed especially reluctant to provide any information about them! They also claimed that the vendor living abroad was the reason the PIF was poorly filled in, despite us having a printout of an email confirming that their own 'property inspector' had answered the questions.

It's really annoying as things would probably have progressed quite quickly in the next few weeks with the mortgage application being processed and the money from the sale of the other property, but I couldn't cope with her absolutely disgusting attitude. She's been mardy with us for weeks (her 'kind regards' soon changed to 'regards' at the end of every email, and the things she was saying were quite snappy and rude) and I don't see why we should put up with a supposed professional treating us like dirt and twisting the truth to suit herself.

botchjob

P*ss or get off the pot, as they say.

m_13

We had a combination of the agents from hell (they say that they are different to other estate agents but it turns out that's not in a good way) and a terrible seller.

The estate agent wouldn't put forward our offer as they said the seller wouldn't accept it. The house had been on the market for 18 months with no offers over a certain figure but when we raised our offer to over that figure, mysteriously they then had a higher offer from a previous viewer! Turns out that offer wasn't proceedable but the estate agent said it was only fair to let them know as the person making the offer was desperate to buy the house. Very helpful.

The seller then took over a week to reject our offer saying that if somebody else had offered more then they were happy to wait for what they wanted even if it took another year. I don't think they want to sell at all and when we downloaded the property information from the Land Registry we can see there are 7 charges on the house; they'd probably be left with nothing. At one point the seller said they hadn't been responding to calls from the estate agent because they'd lost their mobile telephone in the loft.

When we chased a response to the offer on the day the estate agent told us they would have an answer, we were accused of harassing a grieving family and told to stop ringing. Strangely since they finally told us our offer hadn't been accepted, we haven't heard from that agent again despite allegedly being hot buyers.

The estate agent never sent out a single piece of paperwork even acknowledging our offers and couldn't produce the EPC. Instead they just kept telling us that the EPC was changing because the seller was putting in loft insulation. They avoided emailing and putting anything in writing to us and insisted on speaking on the 'phone. We'd never use them.

Annie1960

Which ombudsman does the EA belong to (by law they must belong to one)?

You could report them.

http://www.tpos.co.uk/downloads/TPOE27-1%20Code%20of%20Practice%20for%20Residential%20Estate%20Agents%20(Effective%20from%201%20August%202011).PDF

Eejay

They replied today and said the paperwork was being filled in again by the vendor's relative and our solicitor should have it by now (she hadn't received it yesterday, but my husband is trying to get through to her now to see if she's had it today... rather than making excuses about why it wasn't filled in, why not just tell us they were sorting it?!), and are we sure we want to withdraw our offer. They also pointed out that they wanted to exchange contracts as soon as possible so that they could issue notice to the tenants. They don't seem to have any issue with that (and the solicitor doesn't seem overly concerned either) despite people on here being horrified.

I just don't know what's going on with it all, it's becoming a total and utter joke. My husband still likes the house but I'm getting to the point of despising it for all the hassle it's causing!

Gwhiz

I would not be exchanging contracts until notice has been served on the tenants and they are actually out!!

Seller seems to want his cake and eat it.

Wi88le

Gwhiz wrote: »

I would not be exchanging contracts until notice has been served on the tenants and they are actually out!!

Seller seems to want his cake and eat it.

THIS. Do not exchange with tenants in place

The tenants will have a notice period, could be 2 months and even if issued correctly they don't have to leave until the court makes them.

Any suggestion of a quick sale and completion by the ea should be ignored. If you still want to exchange with a tenant in place I suggest you read other threads on here about this or start a new thread specifically about this as you need to understand the implications of doing so.

Eta threads on vacant possession

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4997323

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4997216

Eejay

I got a lot of advice about it on other threads I made so I am quite wary. I just don't understand why the solicitor doesn't have any concerns - I think the EA is also the LA so I can understand them encouraging it, but the solicitor should surely know better?

We aren't part of a chain so it doesn't really matter in one way if it does take a while for them to leave as it'll save us paying council tax for two properties up until February, but it could take ages to get them out - beyond February. At that point it would definitely become an issue.

I get the impression that the vendor is just doing as he's advised by the EA, and my husband is even questioning whether the solicitor he is using was one recommended by the EA. They seem to be taking an abnormal interest in everything to do with the property and yet expecting us to progress ASAP with very little information.

In the email today the EA said from an offer being accepted to completion normally takes 6 to 8 weeks which I think is an exaggeration - I've seen numerous examples of it taking longer than that. I know we have held things up a bit (mostly unintentionally) but they seem to want us to be quick and dilly-dally at their end (serving notice late, taking forever to resend completed forms, etc).