We made an offer...

SunnyCat

After seeing a number of houses and going back to see our favourite yesterday, we emailed the EA with an offer in the evening. Now, obviously this is a bank holiday, but the EA we were dealing with is the owner of the business so we were hoping he might see the email and send it on to the owners... Should we not expect anything until Tuesday the earliest? If so, then from then - how soon should we expect to hear back?

Cakeguts

You will hear back when the sellers of the property have decided if they want to accept or not.

Albala

I understand your sense of urgency, but though you might be lucky, unless the office is open on BH Monday, I wouldn't realistically expect anything until Tuesday.




We once tried to offer on a house on Saturday morning of a BH after a viewing the Friday evening before, which is a bit different. The main branch of the (local) EA, which was open, wouldn't even make a note of our asking price offer because the satellite office dealing with it wasn't open that day. The poor sellers had been on the market for over a year (which began to surprise us less after this response).


We were very cheesed off about it- we had a very impatient FTB for ours ready to go, and didn't want to lose the sale or the house we'd seen, so we dug out the number of the sellers, and contacted them direct- something I would never do normally. The sellers were livid when we told them the EA had refused to even note our offer. We made a verbal offer to them, and they agreed on the spot. (It all went well, BTW and we bought the house.)


Good luck with your offer.

eddddy

• The seller might want a day or two (or sometimes more) to think about it.

• If they have more viewings booked, the sellers may want to wait until they're done.

• Following your offer, the EA might want time to phone around everyone else who's viewed the property to tell them that an offer's been made - to see if they want to offer more.

• Also - some EAs like to delay telling buyers that their offer's been rejected, to allow the buyers time to work themselves up into a frenzy wondering what's happening, so that they will be desperate to offer more.

It's probably best to try not to seem too desperate, and not to react impulsively, if your offer is initially rejected.

ognum

I would contact the EA at about midday on Tuesday confirming he has the offer and asking for a time scale.

Don’t be inpatient.

Mickygg

I know what it's like you just want an answer now.

It's in the best interests of all parties for the EA to get back to you ASAP but it can take time for reasons people have mentioned above.

Whatever you do don't chase first thing Tuesday if you haven't heard give it a few days. If you appear eager then this will be passed on to the seller's and they may think you have a higher offer in you.

Wait, then if you don't hear by Wed call them up to check they received the offer.

Marvel1

The EA is probably enjoying the bank holiday to spend time with family and switching off business until Tuesday.

warby68

If you've only emailed so far, I would make a follow up phone call when they're open to bring it to their attention, not to chase for a response so soon but just to make sure its being dealt with promptly. There might be a backlog of emails after a holiday.

Unfortunately noone has control over how long a seller will take to respond - could be 5 minutes , could be 5 weeks.

Now is a good time to master the art of patience - very hard but absolutely vital in the house buying game.

Albala

warby68 wrote: »

If you've only emailed so far, I would make a follow up phone call when they're open to bring it to their attention, not to chase for a response so soon but just to make sure its being dealt with promptly. There might be a backlog of emails after a holiday.

Unfortunately noone has control over how long a seller will take to respond - could be 5 minutes , could be 5 weeks.

Now is a good time to master the art of patience - very hard but absolutely vital in the house buying game.

^This.
Sellers can take time to reply for all sorts of reasons. If the sellers are splitting up, for example, or there are several beneficiaries under a will, it really can take weeks!