Estate agent tells me house is mine then phones later backing out!! Help needed!

L121254

Ok this is my first post on the site as I need a bit of help and guidance. Sorry if it seems a bit wordy!!
This is my situation put as simply and as basically as possible.
Me and my partner viewed a house for sale which was for sale at 135k. We put in an offer for the full asking price.Someone else also offered 135k. The other party then offered a higher price,which I now know to be 136k. I also offered the same.
Now I had already have spoke to the estate agents recommended mortgage advisor who had got my decision in principle for me and checked out my financial records. He had also spoke briefly with the other party who had put the offer in and he said the bloke was very apprehensive as to whether he wanted a mortgage at the age of 50. The mortgage advisor was a very genuine sounding guy and said that although myself and the other party had out same offers in thatme and my partner were definitly the better of the two as we we are young(early thirties),good deposit,great financial history and currently renting so no complications when moving.
The vendor had a choice of who to sell to as we were both agreed we wouldn't up our offers. Based on the estate agent and mortgage advisors recommendations they chose to sell to us.
Now this is where I need help!
I got a phone call early afternoon from the agent saying offer accepted by vendor,all good to go. Great,or so we thought.
I got a phone call from the agents later saying bad news,even though we said the house was yours the other guy has insisted we contact the vendor and put forward a considerably higher offer from him so sorry but were gonna have to cancel what we agreed earlier!
I have since found out that they told the other guy that an offer had been accepted and agreed and no more offers were being taken. The guy insisted apparently that his offer was put forward or he would put the offer forward to the vendor directly himself by going round to see them. They said they legally had to put his offer forward to the vendor. Even though the offer put forward by myself was happily agreed by all parties involved!! The vendor has now said they would like a few days to think about this offer and also wait and see if the other party can actually be approved for a mortgage
My question is this,can the estate agent legally just cancel a verbal agreement we had agreed hours earlier just because this guy insisted his offer was put forward to the vendor?
Myself and my partner were gutted as only hours earlier we were told it was ours and we'd finally got our first owned property.
If you have taken the time to read all this then thank you very much and I hope you can answer my question please!

kiddy_guy

Unfortunately until you've exchanged you can be gazumped at any time. No contract exists as all uouve got is the word of fhe EA.

Daerve

The Estate Agent is obliged to let the seller know of all offers, even if a sale has already been agreed.

This can happen all the way to exchange. There is absolutely zero comeback you have what so ever, even if you had spent thousands of pounds in legals and surveys.

Welcome to the house buying/selling hell that is England and Wales.

G_M

Luke2611 wrote: »

My question is this,can the estate agent legally just cancel a verbal agreement we had agreed hours earlier just because this guy insisted his offer was put forward to the vendor?
Yes. As the EA said, he has a duty to put ALL offers through to the seller (his client).

The seller can sell to who he wants, at whatever price he wants.

Until there is a written contract in place, signed and exchanged by buyer and seller, neither side is commited legally.

Fortunately, in Eng/Wales we have a suitably flexible system governing the sale of items worth £00,000s which allows each side to be absolutely certain that this huge decision is fully thought through before a legal commitment is made.

dj1471

There's no such thing as a verbal agreement when it comes to buying property, there's no agreement at all until contracts have been exchanged - either party can change their mind or back out at any time.

HB58

Deleted - took far too long to reply, what I said is superfluous now.

Kynthia

Just be grateful they did this to you before you spent hundreds on searches and surveys.

pinkshoes

All you can do is state that your offer of £136k will stay on the table for 28 days.

ps - DO NOT use the estate agent mortgage advisor. The EA works for the vendor and not you, so it is a mistake to tell them how much money you have!

Surrey_EA

Luke2611 wrote: »

My question is this,can the estate agent legally just cancel a verbal agreement we had agreed hours earlier just because this guy insisted his offer was put forward to the vendor?

In a word, yes.

As others have already said, the EA works for the vendor, and they are legally obliged to put all offers to the vendor up until the point at which contracts are exchanged, regardless of whether the vendor has made an earlier agreement to accept an offer.

moneyistooshorttomention

pinkshoes wrote: »

All you can do is state that your offer of £136k will stay on the table for 28 days.

ps - DO NOT use the estate agent mortgage advisor. The EA works for the vendor and not you, so it is a mistake to tell them how much money you have!

I'd tend to go with this suggestion.

As the gazumper is 50 years old and needs a mortgage - then it may be that he cant get one as easily as he thinks he can. He may have based his last offer on how much money is borrow-able on his salary BUT not taken into account his age.

Voice of experience time - that the first option I thought of to be able to sell my starter house and buy a better one was to grit teeth and take on a mortgage again (in my late 50s). I knew I would be retiring at 60 and would need to use my pension lump sum to pay the mortgage payments between retirement age and my revised State Pension Age (ie gap of about 3 years) - but that I could definitely manage it.

Yes - I really could have managed it okay - but my checks on this seemed to indicate that building societies wouldn't have accepted that - darn them for only taking my age into account and not me (the provably good money manager).

So - in your position - I'd be sitting waiting to see whether mortgage companies would give him a mortgage as readily as he thinks they will. Also - if they do do so - then I bet they wouldn't give him the standard 25 year term. That was another thing that wasn't fair to me personally when I investigated - but "computer said no", rather than investigating me and I seem to recall I would have only got 10/15 year mortgage terms (which meant much higher mortgage payments!).

*********

Summed up = don't give up hope yet. Age discrimination will probably count him out of the picture (unfair as it is). I wouldn't be in your position. I'd be investigating what mortgage deals the gazumper will have open to him and then sitting back and waiting for vendor to reappear cap in hand on my doorstep in all probability.

Hoploz

The verbal agreement you think you had is meaningless. The estate agent is not ther person you have to make an agreement with, it is the seller. All the EA does is work as a middleman passing messages on. He makes no actual decisions.