Vendor and EA do not want to issue MOS

putopao

Hi,
we were told that our offer were accepted but the seller would need to find a property first. However, it got us questioning if they are serious about selling as the EA said they cant issue MOS yet until the vendor finds something first.  We are FTBs so no idea about this. Are they serious or just testing the market ? Because based on what i have read here and online, MOS are just a document confirming the price agreed therefore if they are serious we should have it as soon as they accepted our offer. 

anselld

What would you plan to do with it if you had it?
The advice would be to do nothing until you are in a complete chain so the MOS is of little use at the moment.

putopao

Atleast i would know that my offer has been accepted rather just holding onto the EA’s word? 

eddddy

putopao said:

Atleast i would know that my offer has been accepted rather just holding onto the EA’s word? 

To get a little more reassurance, you could send an email to the EA saying something like the following, and see how they reply (and chase them if they don't reply) :

"Further to our telephone conversions on xx/02/2020, I am pleased to hear that my offer of £x for [property address] has been accepted by the vendor.

I note that the vendor has instructed you not to issue a memorandum of sale at this time, so can you please confirm that you are no longer marketing the property, the property will immediately marked as "sold subject to contract" in all listings, you will not arrange any more viewings, and you will not be disclosing the amount the the vendor has accepted to any other parties."

warby68

No reason to doubt what you've been told.
What you do know at the moment is that sellers need to find a property. It is common to get your property sold before getting serious about your onward move. Hopefully they have some to move forward with but you might need some patience.
Testing the market would probably involve stopping short of accepting any offers.
Chains have to be complete before anyone can progress much unless someone is willing to break the chain, for example by moving into rented. This is not what your vendor currently wants to do. It may change. It may not.

putopao

The vendor has not instructed any solicitors yet. So it is clear that they don’t want to spend anything until they find a property. Hopefully they are really active viewing houses. 

Chilli6

The vendors of my house hadn't even started looking when my offer got accepted. I knew I would need to be patient and was prepared to wait a few months for them to find something. Meanwhile I didn't start anything apart from making sure it had SSTC marked on it. 
I was still checking rightmove every day in case a chain free house came on that I liked just as much. 
Fortunately 3 weeks after my offer was accepted, they found a chain free house so I've now instructed the solicitor, had my mortgage offer and working towards survey

PasturesNew

The MOS is just a bit of unimportant paper frippery - however, in your case it is important because you have been told that the seller has not yet found a house to buy.  At the moment, therefore, you are not buying a house - you have made an acceptable offer on a house where the buyer's now going to look to buy another house and if they find one then they'll sell theirs to you. 

It's all a bit tenuous at the moment. 

You will have to wait and see if they do find something, but, in the meantime, I'd continue viewing/looking at others "just in case".