Offer accepted take off market?

katie4

Hello so our house is on the market 3/4wks now we have seen a house we love made an offer it’s been accepted I’m wondering if the agent will take it off the market or mark it as under offer? Bearing in mind we have not yet secured a buyer for our property?

I’m asking as the seller of the house we want his agent has said to me they want to start the process with the solicitors 

is this normal? And if we start that I assume it would be taken off market?

thanks 

Tabieth

Did you ask them to take it off the market when you made your offer? Do they know you don’t have a buyer? 

If I were the seller I’d be reluctant to take it off the market as it could be weeks / months before you are really to proceed. 

katie4

Tabieth said:

Did you ask them to take it off the market when you made your offer? Do they know you don’t have a buyer? 

If I were the seller I’d be reluctant to take it off the market as it could be weeks / months before you are really to proceed. 

No we haven’t asked them too and yes they know we don’t have a buyer. I’d just not heard of agents saying they want to go ahead with the solicitor at this stage

Slinky

I certainly wouldn't stop marketing a property I was selling in these circumstances. The house I can see from my bedroom window has finally got a sold board up; it's been up for sale since August.

Hoenir

Given you haven't found a buyer for yours. The question is why would the vendor wish to stop marketing their property.

WindfallWendy

When we bought our current house we saw quite a few before we had a buyer secured for ours. And whenever we felt we wanted to put an offer in, we were not given any encouragement from the selling agent, since we weren't in a position to proceed. 

What we DID benefit from though was knowing exactly how much the people we were buying from would accept (largely because the house had been on the market for 8 months and I think the selling agent felt the vendor was over ambitious on the price). I wonder if the vendor in your situation would actually be willing to go down a bit, and might be why they want to instruct solicitors pronto ...?

Obviously, you don't have to do what they ask. But you could say "ok, but only if you take it off the market." But you probably also want to avoid paying the initial costs to your solicitor too, just in case something drastic happens and you end up not selling right now.

eddddy

katie4 said:

I’d just not heard of agents saying they want to go ahead with the solicitor at this stage

I expect that the estate agent wants you to 'put some skin in the game' to show that you are committed to the purchase.

If you pay a chunk of cash to a solicitor - it shows that you're serious about buying, and you're less likely to walk away on a whim (because you'd lose that chunk of cash.)


Obviously, you're free not to instruct a solicitor at this stage - but that may or may not make the seller and/or estate agent a bit more nervous.


Perhaps a compromise is to instruct your solicitor, but tell them not to do any work for the moment. Then you can pass the solicitor's name and address on to the estate agent.

Bigphil1474

You shouldn't spend any money on the process until you are SSTC. I always though it's a bit daft putting an offer in anyway if you aren't sold tbh, but until you are proceedable, it would be even dafter for the vendor to remove their property from the market. 

When we were moving last year we did get a bit over excited and go look at properties before we had accepted an offer on ours, but we realised it was the wrong thing to do as we found a house we loved, but couldn't offer and it was sold before we could offer. We just looked on Rightmove after that until we got an acceptable offer on ours.

We did get an offer on our house early on for the full asking price but the buyer wasn't proceedable so we continued to market it, never heard from him again.