Agent has accepted more then 1 offer

goodwithsaving

Walk away. House buying is stressful enough and do you really want to give any money to people who treat their buyers like this? I know there are few houses about at the moment (depending upon your location) but something tells me they'll be looking for new offers right up until exchange regardless of what you have spent until that point. If you can ever pin them down to exchange.

babychan_2

eddddy wrote: »

So your options include any of the following:

- Withdraw your offer

- Accept the EA's terms and proceed

- Only proceed with a verbal assurance from the EA/Vendor that no other offers are proceeding, and that the property is being taken off the market

- Ask the vendor's solicitor (via your solicitor) to confirm that no offers are proceeding, and that the property is being taken off the market

- Insist on a formal 'lock-out agreement', which will ensure the vendor cannot accept any other offers for a set period of time. (Obviously the vendor must agree to this.)


But your solicitor is likely to charge a few hundred pounds for drawing up a lock-out agreement (and a devious vendor can just delay things until the agreement expires).

If you're interested, here's info about lock out agreements:

(The doc is from a random solicitor's site, I don't know them, and I'm not recommending them.)

I did ask about taking the house off the market but they said they are allowed to keep the house on the market till a survey is done so they wont do it.

I really didn't like the attitude of the person who I spoke to I needed to know the cost of the council tax and how many months it was for she just replied we don't know you need to ring the council yourself and ask them for it. Its like they have a don't care attitude cause we know the house will sell so we don't need to push and sell it.

Missus_Hyde

babychan wrote: »

I did ask about taking the house off the market but they said they are allowed to keep the house on the market till a survey is done so they wont do it.

I really didn't like the attitude of the person who I spoke to I needed to know the cost of the council tax and how many months it was for she just replied we don't know you need to ring the council yourself and ask them for it. Its like they have a don't care attitude cause we know the house will sell so we don't need to push and sell it.

From the sound of it the vendors are greedy and unreliable; I would echo the suggestions of the other posters and walk away and don't look back.

It doesn't seem as though the house, however much you like it, is worth all the stress and hassle.

audigex

Doing what you're "allowed" to do and doing what you "should" do are very different things

A good number of vendors will leave a property on the market until they're fairly confident of the sale, but this one absolutely smacks of seeing if a better offer comes along.

The vendor is either greedy, or is unhappy with the offers so far and hoping one comes along closer to what they really want

There will be other houses. Unless this is the only house you want, or is a superb deal, forget it - you'll probably just end up throwing money after your wasted time.

m_13

Our house (the one we bought) stayed on the market until the survey was done. Then we had eight weeks to complete and just made it. Even if somebody takes a property off the market that doesn't stop somebody knocking on the door and offering them more. It's up to you how much you want the house.

babychan_2

m_13 wrote: »

Our house (the one we bought) stayed on the market until the survey was done. Then we had eight weeks to complete and just made it. Even if somebody takes a property off the market that doesn't stop somebody knocking on the door and offering them more. It's up to you how much you want the house.

But was your offer the only one they accepted at that time?

SplanK

Is it a company or a bank that's selling it? If its a 'corporate client', they tend to list with multiple agents and will keep advertising the property. They will also list the highest offer on the adverts to see if anybody wants to offer more on it, which they can do. However, there will usually be a cut of point IE race to survey where no further offers will be taken to prevent excessive costs on the sellers side.


Although its a crappy thing to do, there is nothing stopping them accepting multiple offers and not even telling you about the other offer and let you both race to exchange without either knowing!

babychan_2

SplanK wrote: »

Is it a company or a bank that's selling it? If its a 'corporate client', they tend to list with multiple agents and will keep advertising the property. They will also list the highest offer on the adverts to see if anybody wants to offer more on it, which they can do. However, there will usually be a cut of point IE race to survey where no further offers will be taken to prevent excessive costs on the sellers side.


Although its a crappy thing to do, there is nothing stopping them accepting multiple offers and not even telling you about the other offer and let you both race to exchange without either knowing!

Even though the ombudsmen said they are only to accept one offer?

Okydoky25

I was purchasing a property last year. Offer accepted everything going through. I called the agent to advise we had our mortgage offer following our survey to be told they were no longer dealing with the sale and it was being sold through another agent! Called 2nd agent to be told they had another offer which was accepted and tough basically so we lost the house and all the money spent on survey etc!

m_13

babychan wrote: »

But was your offer the only one they accepted at that time?

They had already accepted an offer before ours but she had failed to meet an exchange deadline. The vendor instructed them to market it again. Getting the contract and paperwork back from her solicitor was one of the problems as the vendor's solicitor was hopeless and they wouldn't reissue it.