Estate agent cancelled house viewing

gadget88

So in 2024 I viewed a house but was told I hadn’t sold so couldn’t go ahead. In 2025 I offered on a house and sold mine within one viewing and one day. They pulled out. Now in 2026 despite explaining this to the other agent I had a viewing booked and later cancelled as they wanted a chain free sale despite the seller offering elsewhere without selling. Another example is a few weeks back I emailed about a house and it took 2 weeks to get back and by then my finances had changed and I wasn’t willing to bid that high anyway. Anyway I do have funds to move large number of savings however I have found issues with agents. Many will sell without having sold first but the one agent I mentioned seems to favour first time buyers yet the market I’m going for price wise favours chains as it’s higher than first time buyers. So bottom line is I believe moving isn’t going to be a good move. Selling and renting a similar property even to later buy a rental would be £700 more than my current mortgage.

Woodstok2000

Erm.....What?

TadleyBaggie

Do you have a question, or was it just a rant?

elsien

It’s not the agent deciding, by the way it’s the vendors who are instructing them and making the decisions about who they want to view.

Is this a follow on rant from your one earlier in the month?

Bigphil1474

Chains are usually built from the bottom up. If you try and sneak into the middle of the chain you can cause all sorts of problems. It's more like a queue than a chain, and woe betide anyone who joins a queue in the wrong place.

RelievedSheff

We are in the process of selling our house at the moment. It is now under offer but we instructed our agents to only allow viewings from people that were proceedable, so either first time buyers or people with a completed lower chain.

This was on the back of our offer on a lovely house being declined due to not having a completed lower chain. The vendor of that one was happy with the price we offered but quite fairly wouldn't accept our offer. She lost out however because we continued looking at houses and had an offer accepted on a beautiful house that suits us better, the vendors of this one were happy to accept our offer based on timescales involved. They are moving out of the country and we are happy to work around their timescales which gave us plenty of time to find buyers for ours.

As it happens we found first time buyers for our house just a few weeks after we had our offer accepted.

Agents will only do what their clients ask them to do.

Mr.Generous

You offer then 2 weeks later finances have changed? I have come across buyers like this, and I suspect so have the agents. Good luck.

saajan_12

So in 2024 I viewed a house but was told I hadn’t sold so couldn’t go ahead. In 2025 I offered on a house and sold mine within one viewing and one day. They pulled out. Now in 2026 despite explaining this to the other agent I had a viewing booked and later cancelled as they wanted a chain free sale despite the seller offering elsewhere without selling. Another example is a few weeks back I emailed about a house and it took 2 weeks to get back and by then my finances had changed and I wasn’t willing to bid that high anyway. Anyway I do have funds to move large number of savings however I have found issues with agents. Many will sell without having sold first but the one agent I mentioned seems to favour first time buyers yet the market I’m going for price wise favours chains as it’s higher than first time buyers. So bottom line is I believe moving isn’t going to be a good move. Selling and renting a similar property even to later buy a rental would be £700 more than my current mortgage.

Sounds like you're basically describing that people are different in how desperate they are and how much they're willing to shift from the convention. Yes, people are different.

That doesn't really affect that if you want to move and own property, then you can wait longer and line up a chain or break the chain by selling, moving into rented and then buying. Nothing about this suggests renting and letting at the same time - its the worst of both worlds in terms of income tax, hassle of getting repairs done, legal risk, capital gains tax, etc.

sheramber

If you have not accepted an offer on your house you are not in a position to proceed with buying.

If sellers don’t want the hassle of viewings to those who are not in a position to proceed that is their decision.

The agent has to follow their instructions.

gadget88

I understand sellers like a first time buyer but

1. My house would sell in a day. Already proved that.
   
2. I would be offering 20-30k over home report to offer an advantage over a first time buyer. I have cash in bank.

Thats what happened last summer I had sold it quick but the sellers new build wasn’t ready so she pulled the sale of the house I went for and said no I don’t want to move at all.

I know from previous sales last year my offer was a record offer for that area never had any first time buyer paid that price. To sell up split the chain and rent is expensive and frankly ignorant that people expect to do this. And the fact I am paying an extra premium on the price is surely enough. Personally even if I was selling for whatever reason and anybody offered me x price I would take the highest. Done this twice already I always took the highest offer for obvious reasons (higher deposit for next place!) so yeah if they want to turn down 20k over home report or even 30k good luck!

gadget88

Also given this happened with this agent 3 times and the one I proceeded with was another agent was telling. Clearly this particular agent advises smaller chains and lower prices.