How long to wait for seller to get offer accepted?

nervousftbuy23

Jittery first time buyer here!

I had offer accepted on a property that was on the market for over a year. It was a good price and I received my full mortgage offer within a week of offer accepted. I am chain free myself, currently renting.

Its now been nearly 4 weeks and the seller hasn’t yet had offer accepted on a property, in fact according to the estate agent they have only done two viewings.

Is this normal that they take a month or two to buy somewhere? Should I say they need to buy somewhere by this date or I’ll pull out?

Thanks in advance.

ReadingTim

It's entirely up to you, but you may want to educate yourself on how chains work before you start throwing around deadlines.  You shouldn't also make ultimatums you're not prepared to follow up on, so have a think about whether you'd really pull out of this, or not.  

nervousftbuy23

ReadingTim said:

It's entirely up to you, but you may want to educate yourself on how chains work before you start throwing around deadlines.  You shouldn't also make ultimatums you're not prepared to follow up on, so have a think about whether you'd really pull out of this, or not.  

I am educating myself by posting this thread on this forum

I was intending on asking how long it took others for their seller to get offer accepted on a property as I’ve never bought a house before so would be good to get an idea about timescales 

propertyrental

It's not that long. It can take a while for your seller to find the right property, let alone have an offer accepted.

All depends how much of a hurry you are in. Plus of course how long it will take you to find somewhere else, get a new offer accepted and then.... wait for your new seller to find somewhere...

In buying/selling property, it's essential to have patience. Or drive yourself mad with stress of course as the alternative!

I waited 10 months for my sellers to find somewhere, but a) I was in no hurry b) their house ticked all my boxes (and took me 3 years to find!) and c) they'd warned my upfront they were looking for a bungalow (always in short supply)

But everyone's circumstances are dfferent.

Brie

You don't know what else might be happening in those people's lives.  Might be ill, on holiday, busy with work, etc.  Maybe they're busy looking online for possibles and are just not finding something that ticks all their boxes.

fyi - last time we bought and sold we made an offer at the end of June, accepted an offer on our place the next day, ran into problems with the sale, had to put out of the offer we'd made beginning of August.  Didn't find another place that we liked until early October, had another offer on the place we were selling which we accepted, they dragged their feet about surveys, problems with the leasehold and on and on.  Finally moved mid February.  And in the middle of that I started a new job.  So just a bit of stress.

RHemmings

Reading the OP makes me glad that I went for a property that is currently empty. To me it just seems wrong that someone can accept an offer on a house and then start looking. It took me well over a month to find a property, offer, and be accepted. If I was waiting on a seller to find a property and offer, I'd feel that I was waiting for a potentially extended period of time. 

ReadingTim

RHemmings said:

Reading the OP makes me glad that I went for a property that is currently empty. To me it just seems wrong that someone can accept an offer on a house and then start looking. It took me well over a month to find a property, offer, and be accepted. If I was waiting on a seller to find a property and offer, I'd feel that I was waiting for a potentially extended period of time. 

If you need to sell your current house to afford to buy the next one, how can you look that place when you don't know how much you have to spend? (i.e. how much you'll get for the current place)

And what seller would accept an offer from someone who doesn't yet (or possibly ever) have the means to pay for it?  

That's why people don't start looking properly beforehand.  

RHemmings

ReadingTim said:

RHemmings said:

Reading the OP makes me glad that I went for a property that is currently empty. To me it just seems wrong that someone can accept an offer on a house and then start looking. It took me well over a month to find a property, offer, and be accepted. If I was waiting on a seller to find a property and offer, I'd feel that I was waiting for a potentially extended period of time. 

If you need to sell your current house to afford to buy the next one, how can you look that place when you don't know how much you have to spend? (i.e. how much you'll get for the current place)

And what seller would accept an offer from someone who doesn't yet (or possibly ever) have the means to pay for it?  

That's why people don't start looking properly beforehand.  

I can understand those reasons from the seller's point of view, but I can't imagine putting myself into the position of the buyer indefinitely waiting for a seller. 

Surely sellers will know +/- some percentage what they are likely to get, surely they could be looking at and maintaining a list of what's available. So that they're ready to view and offer pretty much immediately they get a firm offer.

What surprises me is the language 'start looking', which is used an awful lot. To me it implies that the sellers are sitting around doing nothing in the meantime until they get an offer, and then they start the process. 

If my current purchase falls through, I'm going to be ready to ask for viewings within minutes, and make another offer within days depending on what I see when viewing. Why wouldn't a seller be similarly prepared?

Brie

RHemmings said:

If my current purchase falls through, I'm going to be ready to ask for viewings within minutes, and make another offer within days depending on what I see when viewing. Why wouldn't a seller be similarly prepared?

Unfortunately some sellers are not very serious.  When we were FTBs about 25 years back we put in an offer on a house and then discovered that the sellers were serial offenders who put their house on the market every few months because it was fun to get driven around (they didn't drive) by an estate agent to view other properties.  They'd get an offer and then pull their place off the market and then start up again some time later.  

RHemmings

Brie said:

Unfortunately some sellers are not very serious.  When we were FTBs about 25 years back we put in an offer on a house and then discovered that the sellers were serial offenders who put their house on the market every few months because it was fun to get driven around (they didn't drive) by an estate agent to view other properties.  They'd get an offer and then pull their place off the market and then start up again some time later.  

That's really unfair. It's playing with people's emotions, and finances. 

I never got driven around by an estate agent. Does that still happen 25 years later? For most of my viewings, I walked. 

Returning to the topic, someone who is living in a house they own and where they don't have to move for work or something has little to lose. Even if they aren't playing games.  If I was buying from a live-in seller, I'd want to see some sort of urgency. 

ManuelG

I was once that seller. It took us four months, I think, after offer accepted.

And that was lucky, there just weren't there properties we wanted.