Estate agent - pressure to start searches

happylucky

pisco wrote: »

Hi all,

I wonder if I could ask for some advice. We viewed a house in the autumn, put in an offer and had it accepted. After supplying our DIP, ID etc to the estate agent to finalise removal from the market, we were told a higher offer from another party had been accepted instead.

This vendor has been mucking you about since day 1.

Their behaviour is neither normal nor appropriate.

It is absolutely not OK to take control of your side of this process and make you feel harassed or pressurised or uncomfortable about the biggest financial transaction of your life. Perhaps they had the impression you would roll over and take it having agreed to their request regarding conveyancing agreement...if so, it's easy enough to correct that perception

Trust your instincts! You may be FTBs but you know what good manners and normal business practice should look and feel like. This is not it. The council tax and travel excuse is not valid...I'm quite sure the EA offers a (paid) vacant managed service so vendor does not need to check on the property and council tax....sad fact of life and not your problem.

I would be reading that survey very, very carefully and be extremely sure that your final agreement is something you are genuinely happy with before signing.

pisco

The consumer unit wasn't up to modern spec, so a new one has been fitted and some brickwork in a drain has been repaired. The main issue was that a chimney had been removed and the chimneystack not supported. The original survey raised the point that there needed to be 'evidence' in place that the chimneys were adequately supported. The vendor had brackets installed in the loft over Christmas and a structural engineer signed off the works in mid Jan. There was then a further delay waiting for the hot water tank to be reconnected (it had to remain disconnected for the structural engineer to be able to inspect).

The estate agent is arguing that we should have been able to have surveys etc done straight after Christmas, whereas we're arguing that there was no point until the work was finally complete and our surveyor could see the house as it would be when we bought it. f the original survey raised the lack of evidence/documentation as an issue, it seemed silly to carry out our survey when we knew that the same evidence still wasn't in place.

pisco

happylucky wrote: »

This vendor has been mucking you about since day 1.

Their behaviour is neither normal nor appropriate.

It is absolutely not OK to take control of your side of this process and make you feel harassed or pressurised or uncomfortable about the biggest financial transaction of your life.

^ THIS. This is exactly what I feel about it. Thank you!

pisco

(Although, actually, my first post is not well phrased. To be fair to the vendor, he didn't actually formally accept our first offer - the estate agent told us that the price we'd offered was acceptable and that the house would be removed from the market if we could show we had a solicitor the vendor was comfortable with. We indicated that we were planning to use the Nationwide's conveyancing service and did not receive a reply or acknowledgement for three days from the estate agent, at which point we chased and discovered an alternative offer had been accepted instead. We'd been under the impression that our first offer had been accepted but, interestingly, had to complain to the estate agent before they sent us a formal record of the offer ever even having been made. So I've inadvertently been a little misleading there, apologies.)

richy999

pisco wrote: »

the weird thing is that the house is being sold empty. The estate agent is arguing that the vendor resents having to pay council tax and has to keep travelling to it to check on it, but we're talking about waiting a couple of weeks for the survey results - hopefully nothing more.

I just feel that something very odd is going on here that I'm failing to grasp and I'm hugely uncomfortable with it.

I guess the vendor is panicking, having recently spent money on putting things right with the house. Perhaps he is struggling financially… has already moved to a new place and has 2 sets of bills to pay and maybe even an expensive bridging loan.

None of this is your problem though and he is behaving very aggressively.
I guess a successful house sale involves an element of turning the other cheek from both parties but he seems to be slapping a little harder than is acceptable.

The_Earl_of_Streatham

pisco wrote: »

... if we could show we had a solicitor the vendor was comfortable with...

Sorry to quote selectively but you choose a solicitor who is paid for by you and represents your interests (and possibly the lender's). The seller and his (estate) agent get no say in the matter.

The whole business of starting searches early looked suspicious and struck me as a ploy to get you to spend more money ahead of an agreed sale to make one more likely.

I'm sure all the other replies will have reinforced the idea that you are in the driving seat in this transaction, if it goes ahead it's because of your approval and your (lender's) money. Let me add to them; stand your ground, don't settle for anything less than you are comfortable with. You'll be stuck with the consequences for a long time. If you are forced to move on you'll be surprised how many houses actually qualify as "house of your dreams".

Given what's happened so far, if it were me I'd be going through that survey with a fine-toothed comb and looking very carefully indeed at the searches.

Best of luck.

pisco

Woooh! Nice email from the estate agent saying there was never any intention of us paying any more than we'd originally agreed to and saying 'this was not intended to pressure you, just to help'. Have written back to let her know that the fact that negotiations seemed to have turned confrontational had caused us serious doubts as to whether we'd want to buy the house in those circumstances.

I wanted to take the time to thank all of you for your replies and kindly advice. You have no idea how much you were helping keep me sane!

fed_up_and_stressed

The_Earl_of_Streatham wrote: »

Given what's happened so far, if it were me I'd be going through that survey with a fine-toothed comb and looking very carefully indeed at the searches.

Best of luck.

Agree with this wholeheartedly, in fact i suggest the list the estate agent gave you about what issues the original survey had brought up should be winging its way to your surveyor in advance of him going out so that your surveyor can take special note.