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Offer accepted - is this frowned upon?

Hi,

We have had an offer accepted on a property, had memorandum of sale come through and instructed solicitors (though no searches etc. have been done), but have this week seen a house come up for sale three doors down from where we are renting at the moment..

It looks even more like the sort of thing we are after, and being in the same close is perfect in terms of location. We've booked to view today, and could potentially be interested in putting in an offer.

I appreciate that legally we can pull out any time before exchanging contracts on the first property, but wanted to see if there could be any other negative ramifications? Could it give us a bad name amongst the local estate agents for example?

I should add that the chain on the first house is still to be closed. The vendors of "our" house have had an offer accepted elsewhere, but the vendors of that one are still to find somewhere. Are we pretty safe to pull out at this early stage if the second house lives up to our expectations?

Thanks in advance.
«13

Comments

  • cloo
    cloo Posts: 1,291 Forumite
    Eighth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    If the second place is right, then you should pull out of the first ASAP. Yes, it will annoy and upset the owners, inevitably, but the best behaviour in the situation is to be honest and say 'Sorry, something more appropriate came up unexpectedly', and do them the favour of getting out of the way as soon as possible.

    Agents just want to make a sale, so unless you pulled out multiple times, I doubt you risk a 'reputation'.
  • silvercar
    silvercar Posts: 49,936 Ambassador
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Academoney Grad Name Dropper
    You may upset the estate agent for pulling out, that may impact any offer you make in the future through the same agent.

    You may have incured some legal costs.

    Other than that you are free to do what you want before exchange.
    I'm a Forum Ambassador on the housing, mortgages & student money saving boards. I volunteer to help get your forum questions answered and keep the forum running smoothly. Forum Ambassadors are not moderators and don't read every post. If you spot an illegal or inappropriate post then please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com (it's not part of my role to deal with this). Any views are mine and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.com.
  • We haven't paid the solicitors anything yet as we've instructed them to wait for the say so when the initial chain is complete.

    As mentioned we are viewing the second place this evening, and have every intention of progressing quickly with offers etc if we like it. Neither of us like the idea of pulling out of the first sale, but the other place could be perfect for what we initially set out to look for.

    We're first time buyers so just wanted to check the rules if we were to go ahead with the second place.
  • csgohan4
    csgohan4 Posts: 10,600 Forumite
    Ninth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    you got to do what's best for yourself, its probably the biggest purchase you will ever make, so dont have any regrets
    "It is prudent when shopping for something important, not to limit yourself to Pound land/Estate Agents"

    G_M/ Bowlhead99 RIP
  • davidmcn
    davidmcn Posts: 23,596 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    cloo wrote: »
    I doubt you risk a 'reputation'.
    unless the first sellers start b1tching to the neighbours about you...
  • Margot123
    Margot123 Posts: 1,116 Forumite
    Better to risk temporary upset now than to spend many years regretting that you didn't back out of the original purchase.
  • Cakeguts
    Cakeguts Posts: 7,627 Forumite
    Sixth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Go to the viewing first before you decide to pull out on the first house. If all goes to plan then withdraw offer the offer you have made. Doing it this early without a complete chain won't make much difference to anyone.
  • This the problem then isnt it? I agree you should pull out as soon as you can, but also think this is why the country needs to make the offer and acceptance more formal with penalties..

    But till that law comes, do the seller a favour and withdraw so they can restart the process.
  • Thanks for all the replies so far.

    I wouldn't be withdrawing our current offer before we know where we stand with this second place as the original house is more than suitable for what we are looking for - it's just that this other one could be even more suitable for what we want. I don't think we'd have "many years of regret" if we pressed on with our current purchase.

    We're not actively looking for other properties, it's just we saw this one had come up and we thought we'd better take a look. Will see how it all goes tonight and then consider our options.
  • You are doing exactly what we did when we purchased our first house.

    We had made offer on one and then on paper the perfect house came up for sale a week after our offer was accepted.

    We went and viewed and had a long chat about it over a weekend afterwards and actually decided that whilst the house we had not offered on was nice we actually felt more "at home" in the first one despite house 2 ticking more boxes.

    Go and look and even mentally move your stuff in if you need to,theses no harm in doing that.
    Hopefully when you are actually in the other property you will get a feeling one way or the other.

    If you go with house 2 then you need to let house 1 know quickly.
    Theres nothing wrong with pitching one house against the other but what you don't want to do is start making a habit of it so don't continue looking once you've made this decision now!!!!
    in S 38 T 2 F 50
    out S 36 T 9 F 24 FF 4

    2017-32 2018 -33 2019 -21 2020 -5 2021 -4 2022
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