Can an estate agent show my buyer new properties?

Smalltownhypocrite

Your not proceed-able and haven't made yourself so in 4 MONTHS (over 1/4th of a year getting on for half a year you have had them hanging... on average a house sale takes 4 months, they should be expected to have exchanged or even completed by now but are still on the start line). 

People aren't just going to wait on you forever, I get chains are a nightmare and feel for people in them but YOU are the one messing them around (the chain collapsed at you) so of course they can look for other options. They might actually need to move by a deadline and you not finding what you want is not their problem. 

They could do this right up until exchange well after you spend a tonne of money and 6 months+ on it even, you have zero contract with them (unless we are talking Scottish rules). Currently it sounds like if they pull out nothing is lost except 2 months of their time.

As for the estate agent, they dont work for 'you' they work for themselves as its commision and they only get paid by selling, you are messing them around and made them look bad too. They want to get paid, they don't care if its by you or another seller who is actually proceeding.

Smalltownhypocrite

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

Hi all

Long story short… we accepted an offer on our property at the end of June. We had been really transparent with the buyer (we showed them around) in that we would need to find a property to move to before we could sell.

We had an offer accepted on a property about 3 after accepting our buyers offer. The seller also told us that they need to find a property and spoke directly with our estate agent to make sure our buyer was happy to wait, no issues were flagged to us at that point. About 4 weeks later the seller of the house we were had an offer accepted on took the house off the market (end of August) so we are back to looking.

Today, the estate agent that sold our house casually informed me that they had been showing our buyer properties and that they had viewed properties even though we accepted their offer.

Is the estate agent allowed or meant to be doing that? As far as I’m aware, we are paying the estate agent they ought to be working in our best interests and not the buyers. Taking our buyer to new viewings doesn’t seem to align with our interest and seems to be working in that of the estate agent.

I understand that it is up to the buyer if they want to view other properties as we are not in exchange but is the conduct of the estate agent correct? If not, what can I do about it as it’s a total lack of trust for me and makes me question if they had even marketed my house the best they could.

Any help would be appreciated. England

Your estate agent has to show some credibility with the buyer. Plus, it may be that by looking around your buyers come to the conclusion that, however slow you are being, they will stick with you.

Anyway, if I were your buyers, I'd also have given up on you by now. 

Can I ask why? 

We found a house 3 weeks after we accepted an offer, it was just that the seller decided they didn’t want to sell any more. On the same week (end of Aug) we had that house removed from the market the buyer of our house told to us about the survey and so we have booked in the contractors and undertaken the work in September. 

our solicitors are instructed from the first house we had our offer accepted.

I feel like we are pushing this forward on our end, the buyer had a the survey done on our house in August so it’s literally 1 month after being told of the issues it found. 

Granted we now need to find another house which isn’t easy… but we offered on a house on Monday but not heard if it’s been accepted or rejected yet as they had other viewings booked in. We also have 3 viewings booked in for this weekend already. 

Some people come to the forum for advice, whilst others come looking for validation of a particular point of view. You are obviously feeling a bit hard done by at the moment, as your efforts to make an onward purchase keep getting thwarted, and you have my sympathy for that. And the distinct lack of validation must be annoying. 

But I think you should accept that you are perhaps not being entirely reasonable either with your buyers or with your expectations of your agents. You keep saying that you pay the agents, but realistically you have not paid them anything yet, and they might be beginning to wonder whether you ever will. 

I fear that your buyers have lost patience, and they may well decide to buy a different house. Really, after 4 months, with no movement at all on their purchase, who can blame them? 

That’s the thing. There has been movement. We have been unlucky in our purchase for sure. 

We have addressed the issues pointed out in their survey which they told us about in September. We have informed the estate agent that we have had offers on other properties rejected at the moment but we have been viewing.

I would understand if there was nothing going on at all but we have progressed the issues from the survey, we initially found a house 4 weeeks after accepting their offer. We have had offers refused, we have been booking in viewings every week.

I’m not sure what else we can do other than buy any house or rent (which we have been open about from the start that we won’t do that).

A side step is not movement, you are no further in the process and still right at the start.

If you want to save this and sell to this buyer you could just sell and move in to rented etc... or just accept your offer is likely to get pulled soon. Even if you find another house they might not be willing to wait another 4+ months and risk it collapsing again.

You keep saying your 'unlucky' but your not really, no more so than anyone. I had to sales fall through (no chain though) but you took a month to find a house originally and now have sat back and took another month. You waste 2 months not proceeding even without the collapse. You getting rejected constantly from offers suggest to you are looking at houses out of you range and offering under or going for low priced highly sought houses which you need to offer high on in bidding wars. You have no urgency even though you are holding everyone else up with no respect for their time.

Our friends just moved in a chain, saw the house they liked and had theirs on the market 2 days later and reasonably priced for a quick sale, accepted an offer in the first week and viewed and offered next day on the house they saw, whole thing completed in 3 months. They didn't spend 7 weeks casually looking around houses going 'oh but I dont like the kitchen' or 'the gardens a little small' or 'it on at £320k but we will offer £260k'. That not time you have in a chain, in person viewings or not you scope the market BEFORE accepting offers.

BungalowBel

When we sold our flat, the conveyancing alone took six months.  So by the time you are proceedable and the conveyancing has gone through, your buyers could have waited a year.

Maybe they want to find someone proceedable.  And maybe your EA has proceedable sellers on their books.  They don't just have you as their clients.

I have never been in a chain and were I to move again would always go for chain-free sales.

GDB2222

jezzer_72 said:

I’m not sure what else we can do other than buy any house or rent (which we have been open about from the start that we won’t do that).

I don't think there is anything else you can do, really. I don't blame you for not wanting to rent, and I certainly don't think you should just buy any house going.

At the same time, I don't think you can blame your buyers for looking around, and I don't think you can blame your agents for showing them other houses on their books.  That was the point you asked about originally, and you've had a fairly unanimous response. 

sheramber

An estate agent wants to make a living by selling a house. 

He has no prospect of doing that with your house as you are not proceedabke. 

If he told your potential buyer he could not show them any other houses they could withdraw their offer  to allow them to. View.

They are probably viewing house being sold by other agents as well, anyway. 

If you want an exclusive service then you would need to pay a premium to the estate agent to cover potential loss of income from sales of other houses. 

saajan_12

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

Hi all

Long story short… we accepted an offer on our property at the end of June. We had been really transparent with the buyer (we showed them around) in that we would need to find a property to move to before we could sell.

We had an offer accepted on a property about 3 after accepting our buyers offer. The seller also told us that they need to find a property and spoke directly with our estate agent to make sure our buyer was happy to wait, no issues were flagged to us at that point. About 4 weeks later the seller of the house we were had an offer accepted on took the house off the market (end of August) so we are back to looking.

Today, the estate agent that sold our house casually informed me that they had been showing our buyer properties and that they had viewed properties even though we accepted their offer.

Is the estate agent allowed or meant to be doing that? As far as I’m aware, we are paying the estate agent they ought to be working in our best interests and not the buyers. Taking our buyer to new viewings doesn’t seem to align with our interest and seems to be working in that of the estate agent.

I understand that it is up to the buyer if they want to view other properties as we are not in exchange but is the conduct of the estate agent correct? If not, what can I do about it as it’s a total lack of trust for me and makes me question if they had even marketed my house the best they could.

Any help would be appreciated. England

Your estate agent has to show some credibility with the buyer. Plus, it may be that by looking around your buyers come to the conclusion that, however slow you are being, they will stick with you.

Anyway, if I were your buyers, I'd also have given up on you by now. 

Can I ask why? 

We found a house 3 weeks after we accepted an offer, it was just that the seller decided they didn’t want to sell any more. On the same week (end of Aug) we had that house removed from the market the buyer of our house told to us about the survey and so we have booked in the contractors and undertaken the work in September. 

our solicitors are instructed from the first house we had our offer accepted.

I feel like we are pushing this forward on our end, the buyer had a the survey done on our house in August so it’s literally 1 month after being told of the issues it found. 

Granted we now need to find another house which isn’t easy… but we offered on a house on Monday but not heard if it’s been accepted or rejected yet as they had other viewings booked in. We also have 3 viewings booked in for this weekend already. 

Some people come to the forum for advice, whilst others come looking for validation of a particular point of view. You are obviously feeling a bit hard done by at the moment, as your efforts to make an onward purchase keep getting thwarted, and you have my sympathy for that. And the distinct lack of validation must be annoying. 

But I think you should accept that you are perhaps not being entirely reasonable either with your buyers or with your expectations of your agents. You keep saying that you pay the agents, but realistically you have not paid them anything yet, and they might be beginning to wonder whether you ever will. 

I fear that your buyers have lost patience, and they may well decide to buy a different house. Really, after 4 months, with no movement at all on their purchase, who can blame them? 

That’s the thing. There has been movement. We have been unlucky in our purchase for sure. 

We have addressed the issues pointed out in their survey which they told us about in September. We have informed the estate agent that we have had offers on other properties rejected at the moment but we have been viewing.

I would understand if there was nothing going on at all but we have progressed the issues from the survey, we initially found a house 4 weeeks after accepting their offer. We have had offers refused, we have been booking in viewings every week.

I’m not sure what else we can do other than buy any house or rent (which we have been open about from the start that we won’t do that).

Both can be true at the same time. You can be doing everything you can AND it can be too longer for most buyers. The end result is the buyer is still at the point of offering, as you need to view, get an offer accepted, go through surveys, searches, etc, the same as if they offered somewhere else. Except with you there's a chance that there's higher than usual requirements causing it to take 4 months whereas another seller may end up being faster. 

The buyer isn't pulling out, they're just looking for the fastest horse, which is normal. 
The agent is just dealing with an enquiry - if they don't, the result for you will be the same ie buyer looking elsewhere, it'll just be with other agents. 

Either you'll get an offer accepted very soon with one of the viewings this week and your buyer will likely come back, or you won't and have time to find another buyer. 

Basically none of this is personal, its just hte end result that matters. 

jezzer_72

Smalltownhypocrite said:

Your not proceed-able and haven't made yourself so in 4 MONTHS (over 1/4th of a year getting on for half a year you have had them hanging... on average a house sale takes 4 months, they should be expected to have exchanged or even completed by now but are still on the start line). 

People aren't just going to wait on you forever, I get chains are a nightmare and feel for people in them but YOU are the one messing them around (the chain collapsed at you) so of course they can look for other options. They might actually need to move by a deadline and you not finding what you want is not their problem. 

They could do this right up until exchange well after you spend a tonne of money and 6 months+ on it even, you have zero contract with them (unless we are talking Scottish rules). Currently it sounds like if they pull out nothing is lost except 2 months of their time.

As for the estate agent, they dont work for 'you' they work for themselves as its commision and they only get paid by selling, you are messing them around and made them look bad too. They want to get paid, they don't care if its by you or another seller who is actually proceeding.

Hi, I have no issue with the buyer looking at other properties. My question is about the conduct of the estate agent.

I’ve informed the estate agents at every opportunity. They know the chain collapsed (we emailed them and had a reply sympathising etc) but when speaking to them yesterday they were suggesting we needed to push our vendor to move the sale forward at which point I reminded them that we are looking for a new property and had emailed them to ask them to let the vendor know about progress on a new property as we know how frustrating it is ourselves when the seller stays quiet (as they did on the house that fell through).

We emailed them about the work that was requested in the survey but again, speaking to the estate agent yesterday they seemed unaware that the work had been done as they asked when is the work booked in to be completed. 

We have also told them that we are Waiting to hear from an offer we put in on Monday (been rejected today) and that we have 3 viewings at the weekend.

I suspect that they have not read our emails (as they haven’t responded to them following the our purchase falling through) and they probably have not communicated the progress we have made to our potential buyer of our property. 

I’ve gathered that they can show our potential buyer new properties and as I said, I’ve got no issue with the buyer looking at other options as I would too… you never know if something will happen that causes you to miss an opportunity entirely.

jezzer_72

Smalltownhypocrite said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

Hi all

Long story short… we accepted an offer on our property at the end of June. We had been really transparent with the buyer (we showed them around) in that we would need to find a property to move to before we could sell.

We had an offer accepted on a property about 3 after accepting our buyers offer. The seller also told us that they need to find a property and spoke directly with our estate agent to make sure our buyer was happy to wait, no issues were flagged to us at that point. About 4 weeks later the seller of the house we were had an offer accepted on took the house off the market (end of August) so we are back to looking.

Today, the estate agent that sold our house casually informed me that they had been showing our buyer properties and that they had viewed properties even though we accepted their offer.

Is the estate agent allowed or meant to be doing that? As far as I’m aware, we are paying the estate agent they ought to be working in our best interests and not the buyers. Taking our buyer to new viewings doesn’t seem to align with our interest and seems to be working in that of the estate agent.

I understand that it is up to the buyer if they want to view other properties as we are not in exchange but is the conduct of the estate agent correct? If not, what can I do about it as it’s a total lack of trust for me and makes me question if they had even marketed my house the best they could.

Any help would be appreciated. England

Your estate agent has to show some credibility with the buyer. Plus, it may be that by looking around your buyers come to the conclusion that, however slow you are being, they will stick with you.

Anyway, if I were your buyers, I'd also have given up on you by now. 

Can I ask why? 

We found a house 3 weeks after we accepted an offer, it was just that the seller decided they didn’t want to sell any more. On the same week (end of Aug) we had that house removed from the market the buyer of our house told to us about the survey and so we have booked in the contractors and undertaken the work in September. 

our solicitors are instructed from the first house we had our offer accepted.

I feel like we are pushing this forward on our end, the buyer had a the survey done on our house in August so it’s literally 1 month after being told of the issues it found. 

Granted we now need to find another house which isn’t easy… but we offered on a house on Monday but not heard if it’s been accepted or rejected yet as they had other viewings booked in. We also have 3 viewings booked in for this weekend already. 

Some people come to the forum for advice, whilst others come looking for validation of a particular point of view. You are obviously feeling a bit hard done by at the moment, as your efforts to make an onward purchase keep getting thwarted, and you have my sympathy for that. And the distinct lack of validation must be annoying. 

But I think you should accept that you are perhaps not being entirely reasonable either with your buyers or with your expectations of your agents. You keep saying that you pay the agents, but realistically you have not paid them anything yet, and they might be beginning to wonder whether you ever will. 

I fear that your buyers have lost patience, and they may well decide to buy a different house. Really, after 4 months, with no movement at all on their purchase, who can blame them? 

That’s the thing. There has been movement. We have been unlucky in our purchase for sure. 

We have addressed the issues pointed out in their survey which they told us about in September. We have informed the estate agent that we have had offers on other properties rejected at the moment but we have been viewing.

I would understand if there was nothing going on at all but we have progressed the issues from the survey, we initially found a house 4 weeeks after accepting their offer. We have had offers refused, we have been booking in viewings every week.

I’m not sure what else we can do other than buy any house or rent (which we have been open about from the start that we won’t do that).

A side step is not movement, you are no further in the process and still right at the start.

If you want to save this and sell to this buyer you could just sell and move in to rented etc... or just accept your offer is likely to get pulled soon. Even if you find another house they might not be willing to wait another 4+ months and risk it collapsing again.

You keep saying your 'unlucky' but your not really, no more so than anyone. I had to sales fall through (no chain though) but you took a month to find a house originally and now have sat back and took another month. You waste 2 months not proceeding even without the collapse. You getting rejected constantly from offers suggest to you are looking at houses out of you range and offering under or going for low priced highly sought houses which you need to offer high on in bidding wars. You have no urgency even though you are holding everyone else up with no respect for their time.

Our friends just moved in a chain, saw the house they liked and had theirs on the market 2 days later and reasonably priced for a quick sale, accepted an offer in the first week and viewed and offered next day on the house they saw, whole thing completed in 3 months. They didn't spend 7 weeks casually looking around houses going 'oh but I dont like the kitchen' or 'the gardens a little small' or 'it on at £320k but we will offer £260k'. That not time you have in a chain, in person viewings or not you scope the market BEFORE accepting offers.

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it. We did do pretty much all of your suggestions. We knew what the market was like prior to putting our house up for sale.

we viewed some properties before putting our house up but most of the time we weren’t being allowed to view as they wanted proceedable buyers only. We accepted an offer mid June (our house went on the market on the 9th June offer accepted like 10-15 days after). We offered in mid July and had the offer accepted about a week later. We instructed solicitors the same day and progressed all the paperwork work for legal checks. 

The estate agent was notified of all of this. 

Mid August we chased for an update from the vendor to be told they were still looking and hadn’t had an offer accepted. The next week we undertook our mortgage application. The week after the vendor pulled the house from the market and we got the survey information from our potential buyer the same week. We booked in repairs that have now been completed at the start of Oct. We are about 2 weeks after the works were done. 

I’m not sure what else we could have done. We have viewed houses most weekends since august save for when works were being done. Some houses sold before we went to view so the viewings were cancelled and in our area there were weeks in sept when less than 10 or 20 houses in total never mind bedrooms and budget.

jezzer_72

saajan_12 said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

Hi all

Long story short… we accepted an offer on our property at the end of June. We had been really transparent with the buyer (we showed them around) in that we would need to find a property to move to before we could sell.

We had an offer accepted on a property about 3 after accepting our buyers offer. The seller also told us that they need to find a property and spoke directly with our estate agent to make sure our buyer was happy to wait, no issues were flagged to us at that point. About 4 weeks later the seller of the house we were had an offer accepted on took the house off the market (end of August) so we are back to looking.

Today, the estate agent that sold our house casually informed me that they had been showing our buyer properties and that they had viewed properties even though we accepted their offer.

Is the estate agent allowed or meant to be doing that? As far as I’m aware, we are paying the estate agent they ought to be working in our best interests and not the buyers. Taking our buyer to new viewings doesn’t seem to align with our interest and seems to be working in that of the estate agent.

I understand that it is up to the buyer if they want to view other properties as we are not in exchange but is the conduct of the estate agent correct? If not, what can I do about it as it’s a total lack of trust for me and makes me question if they had even marketed my house the best they could.

Any help would be appreciated. England

Your estate agent has to show some credibility with the buyer. Plus, it may be that by looking around your buyers come to the conclusion that, however slow you are being, they will stick with you.

Anyway, if I were your buyers, I'd also have given up on you by now. 

Can I ask why? 

We found a house 3 weeks after we accepted an offer, it was just that the seller decided they didn’t want to sell any more. On the same week (end of Aug) we had that house removed from the market the buyer of our house told to us about the survey and so we have booked in the contractors and undertaken the work in September. 

our solicitors are instructed from the first house we had our offer accepted.

I feel like we are pushing this forward on our end, the buyer had a the survey done on our house in August so it’s literally 1 month after being told of the issues it found. 

Granted we now need to find another house which isn’t easy… but we offered on a house on Monday but not heard if it’s been accepted or rejected yet as they had other viewings booked in. We also have 3 viewings booked in for this weekend already. 

Some people come to the forum for advice, whilst others come looking for validation of a particular point of view. You are obviously feeling a bit hard done by at the moment, as your efforts to make an onward purchase keep getting thwarted, and you have my sympathy for that. And the distinct lack of validation must be annoying. 

But I think you should accept that you are perhaps not being entirely reasonable either with your buyers or with your expectations of your agents. You keep saying that you pay the agents, but realistically you have not paid them anything yet, and they might be beginning to wonder whether you ever will. 

I fear that your buyers have lost patience, and they may well decide to buy a different house. Really, after 4 months, with no movement at all on their purchase, who can blame them? 

That’s the thing. There has been movement. We have been unlucky in our purchase for sure. 

We have addressed the issues pointed out in their survey which they told us about in September. We have informed the estate agent that we have had offers on other properties rejected at the moment but we have been viewing.

I would understand if there was nothing going on at all but we have progressed the issues from the survey, we initially found a house 4 weeeks after accepting their offer. We have had offers refused, we have been booking in viewings every week.

I’m not sure what else we can do other than buy any house or rent (which we have been open about from the start that we won’t do that).

Both can be true at the same time. You can be doing everything you can AND it can be too longer for most buyers. The end result is the buyer is still at the point of offering, as you need to view, get an offer accepted, go through surveys, searches, etc, the same as if they offered somewhere else. Except with you there's a chance that there's higher than usual requirements causing it to take 4 months whereas another seller may end up being faster. 

The buyer isn't pulling out, they're just looking for the fastest horse, which is normal. 
The agent is just dealing with an enquiry - if they don't, the result for you will be the same ie buyer looking elsewhere, it'll just be with other agents. 

Either you'll get an offer accepted very soon with one of the viewings this week and your buyer will likely come back, or you won't and have time to find another buyer. 

Basically none of this is personal, it’s just hte end result that matters. 

Thanks for your reply. I don’t think it’s personal but if you read the two responses above this, we suspect the agent has not communicated with the potential buyer as their communication to us has been full of a lack of information, wrong information or not knowing things that we have told them about via email and telephone. 

Isthisforreal99

jezzer_72 said:

saajan_12 said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

GDB2222 said:

jezzer_72 said:

Hi all

Long story short… we accepted an offer on our property at the end of June. We had been really transparent with the buyer (we showed them around) in that we would need to find a property to move to before we could sell.

We had an offer accepted on a property about 3 after accepting our buyers offer. The seller also told us that they need to find a property and spoke directly with our estate agent to make sure our buyer was happy to wait, no issues were flagged to us at that point. About 4 weeks later the seller of the house we were had an offer accepted on took the house off the market (end of August) so we are back to looking.

Today, the estate agent that sold our house casually informed me that they had been showing our buyer properties and that they had viewed properties even though we accepted their offer.

Is the estate agent allowed or meant to be doing that? As far as I’m aware, we are paying the estate agent they ought to be working in our best interests and not the buyers. Taking our buyer to new viewings doesn’t seem to align with our interest and seems to be working in that of the estate agent.

I understand that it is up to the buyer if they want to view other properties as we are not in exchange but is the conduct of the estate agent correct? If not, what can I do about it as it’s a total lack of trust for me and makes me question if they had even marketed my house the best they could.

Any help would be appreciated. England

Your estate agent has to show some credibility with the buyer. Plus, it may be that by looking around your buyers come to the conclusion that, however slow you are being, they will stick with you.

Anyway, if I were your buyers, I'd also have given up on you by now. 

Can I ask why? 

We found a house 3 weeks after we accepted an offer, it was just that the seller decided they didn’t want to sell any more. On the same week (end of Aug) we had that house removed from the market the buyer of our house told to us about the survey and so we have booked in the contractors and undertaken the work in September. 

our solicitors are instructed from the first house we had our offer accepted.

I feel like we are pushing this forward on our end, the buyer had a the survey done on our house in August so it’s literally 1 month after being told of the issues it found. 

Granted we now need to find another house which isn’t easy… but we offered on a house on Monday but not heard if it’s been accepted or rejected yet as they had other viewings booked in. We also have 3 viewings booked in for this weekend already. 

Some people come to the forum for advice, whilst others come looking for validation of a particular point of view. You are obviously feeling a bit hard done by at the moment, as your efforts to make an onward purchase keep getting thwarted, and you have my sympathy for that. And the distinct lack of validation must be annoying. 

But I think you should accept that you are perhaps not being entirely reasonable either with your buyers or with your expectations of your agents. You keep saying that you pay the agents, but realistically you have not paid them anything yet, and they might be beginning to wonder whether you ever will. 

I fear that your buyers have lost patience, and they may well decide to buy a different house. Really, after 4 months, with no movement at all on their purchase, who can blame them? 

That’s the thing. There has been movement. We have been unlucky in our purchase for sure. 

We have addressed the issues pointed out in their survey which they told us about in September. We have informed the estate agent that we have had offers on other properties rejected at the moment but we have been viewing.

I would understand if there was nothing going on at all but we have progressed the issues from the survey, we initially found a house 4 weeeks after accepting their offer. We have had offers refused, we have been booking in viewings every week.

I’m not sure what else we can do other than buy any house or rent (which we have been open about from the start that we won’t do that).

Both can be true at the same time. You can be doing everything you can AND it can be too longer for most buyers. The end result is the buyer is still at the point of offering, as you need to view, get an offer accepted, go through surveys, searches, etc, the same as if they offered somewhere else. Except with you there's a chance that there's higher than usual requirements causing it to take 4 months whereas another seller may end up being faster. 

The buyer isn't pulling out, they're just looking for the fastest horse, which is normal. 
The agent is just dealing with an enquiry - if they don't, the result for you will be the same ie buyer looking elsewhere, it'll just be with other agents. 

Either you'll get an offer accepted very soon with one of the viewings this week and your buyer will likely come back, or you won't and have time to find another buyer. 

Basically none of this is personal, it’s just hte end result that matters. 

Thanks for your reply. I don’t think it’s personal but if you read the two responses above this, we suspect the agent has not communicated with the potential buyer as their communication to us has been full of a lack of information, wrong information or not knowing things that we have told them about via email and telephone. 

To be blunt, the only relevant facts are you are no further forward than you were in June, the buyer is (rightfully) getting twitchy. You seem in no rush to buy (you can view properties outwith weekends you know) and you want everything on your terms.

As others have said you are fortunate the buyer hasn't walked.