Is there a reason to delay a decision on an offer?

Bigphil1474

If you haven't sold your house yet, then you aren't proceedable and the vendors would be daft to accept your offer. Only proceedable offers would normally be accepted before the house is taken off the market and become SSTC - Sold Subject to Contract. If I was your vendor, I'd be telling you something like we'd accept your offer but aren't taking the house off the market until you are proceedable.

booksandbikes

You can always chase the agent to ask for an update. We had ours offered on, on a Thursday but we didn't accept until the following Monday, as we had a viewing lined up over the weekend. Could be they are waiting to see who is more proceedable, or if the next viewer has a higher offer.

AlexMac

Hard to say; we once upped our offer on a Monday, after refusal of our first one over the weekend by the seller. Waited til Friday, then, just before going to “best&finals” with another Estate Agent on our second choice, rang the original EA to moan that, having presumably been refused again, it would have been courteous of ‘em to let us know. 

“Oh! Didn’t anyone tell you?  They accepted your offer early in the week!”  Grr! Sheer incompetence. 

Contrasting with my Selling Agent’s efficiency when I sold once 20 years ago. All done and dusted in 5-10 minutes on the phone (I remember it well; I was in a B&Q car park)
 -them (via the EA); an offer £15k under asking?
 -me; try to coax £10k more 
 -them; (via the EA) £5k more; that’s all we got?
 -me; Agreed! 

Amusingly, they subsequently became friends and asked “why was that so easy?” 

Good luck; chase that lazy Agent 

ReadingTim

I'd give the EA a chase if I hadn't heard after a week, but there's no reason to worry.  Equally, there's no reason to put your own house hunting on hold, so I'd been on viewing properties, and even making offers on other places

TractorFactor

Just to bring a conclusion to this.

We had the estate agent they're using round to ours for a survey.
They are confident our offer will be accepted and we'll have ours on the market next week.

robatwork

That's not quite the conclusion!

In any case with all these type of questions, you need to put yourself in the other person's shoes. If you're selling maybe you'd wait to see too. Never overestimate anyone's common sense either.

Mutton_Geoff

TractorFactor said:

Hello

Made an offer last Friday on a house.  I appreciate it's been the weekend and the estate agent told us there was someone else viewing on the Saturday.  But we haven't heard anything as yet.

Really nervous about this but don't know if anyone can give any reasoning as to why someone may decide to wait to make a decision?

Is no news a good thing?
A friend said that they didn't outright reject it so it could be good news.  We also know the house was being viewed on the Saturday by another party so the seller may be waiting to see if they put in an offer.

Estate agents are paid by the vendor, not the purchaser, so play them at their own game. Ask them if there is any progress as you've found another property with another agent that actually looks better than this one and you'd like to put an offer in on that one. "Out of respect and to save time wasting, how was this offer looking before we pull out?"

TheJP

TractorFactor said:

Just to bring a conclusion to this.

We had the estate agent they're using round to ours for a survey.
They are confident our offer will be accepted and we'll have ours on the market next week.

Sorry but that is not a conclusion and sounds to me as bait to get you to sign up with them to market your house. 

Mutton_Geoff

TractorFactor said:

Just to bring a conclusion to this.

We had the estate agent they're using round to ours for a survey.
They are confident our offer will be accepted and we'll have ours on the market next week.

Estate agent - survey?

They're measuring you up for a contract, not to survey your house.