Has this estate agent overstepped the mark?

[Secrethouse]

Evening everyone, thank you for reading. I think I need a little perspective (and to vent), as we're caught up in a house purchase with an incredibly intrusive vendor and estate agent.

We put our offer in and had it accepted 2 weeks ago. It was made clear to us by the agent that we needed to move quickly - the vendor is insisting on 6 weeks from offer accepted to completion (!)

We are chain free, and have said we will do everything in our power to keep to those timings. The agent was happy with this and we have proceeded with mortgages, searches, the usual things.

So far we are 2 weeks in, and we have kept to our word. Our estate agent has been in close contact with me and has had a complete update of everything. Today however she (without asking me), called our mortgage broker and basically made veiled threats about how the vendor can proceed with another interested party if timings are not kept to, and wanted to know the ins and outs of our mortgage, exact timings, etc. I also feel annoyed the agent suggested to our broker that our lender was not the fastest and maybe we should go with another lender who will underwrite a loan faster !!!? Our broker obviously explained her job was to advise us of the best product for us and not the best product for the vendor.

I am annoyed at having been taken out of the equation in terms of communication, and annoyed my broker was hoodwinked (or assumed) that the agent had my permission to call.

Is this not ridiculous behaviour? We are going at break neck speed with everything, and have shown this with our actions. All the vendor and agent are doing is making a stressful situation even worse. My back is up, and I am at a loss to understand what the enormous pressure and rush is all about. The vendors no longer live at the property but do still have a mortgage against it.

As they know every detail of our circumstances would it not be reasonable to expect an explanation for the unnecessary harassing to complete in a very short timeframe.

Estate agent is out of line.

Mortgage broker has been massively unprofessional though. They should have checked with you, and only given platitudes anyway.

The Estate Agent is no doubt under huge pressure from the vendor. And yes they do 'sales chase' by ringing solicitors and mortgage brokers.

I think you are entitled to know why there's a rush. But the fact that you knew and accepted a six week deadline from the outset makes it a bit irrelevant tbh.

Good luck with it.

That sounds unreasonable to me, (of them not you).

You can't comment on why the vendor needs to sell fast - they may have a loan that needs to be paid back by a certain date - or something. They have accepted your offer because you are chain free and can movefast - but they need to be sure. However , I wouldn't be impressed with the calling of the broker and would complain about that.

Good luck.

Our mortgage broker didn't actually give away any real information, apart from confirming we have our offers in principle and which lenders we are using. The agent already had this information from me.

ThroughThickAndThin01 - agree they do need to chase, and do, but it sounds as if they were doing a bit more than progress chasing.

We didn't accept a 6 week deadline, we said we would move as quickly as we could but obviously cannot predict how long mortgage companies will take to underwrite, etc. We said we would do everything on our side as quickly as possible, which we have. We instructed solicitors and requested searches the day our offer was accepted for example.

We had exactly the same thing. Short chain very pushy seller insisting we exchanged in 6 weeks. Both banks and solicitors said that was ridiculous. In the end I held firm. We were already part way through the process and they wouldn't find anyone that could go any quicker. I made the timings on my terms and all was fine. Stand your ground and go at your pace

It's such a stressful process, compounded if it's your dream house and you feel you have everything to lose if it falls through. I think the estate agent is under pressure from the vendor. The vendor seems desperate to rush though, their finances might be on a shoogly peg.

Wishing you good luck.

The EA needs to be in contact with the professionals though. It wouldn't be very professional of them not to be. Although the threats etc aren't on.

I am in a similar situation, as a vendor selling to a FTB, and want a quick conveyancing as i am currently paying rent where I currently live, and mortgage on the empty property, as well as two lots of council tax and insurances. My estate agent is liaising with the purchaser, currently we are 7 weeks in and all searches, surveys etc are completed and awaiting a mortgage offer before we can exchange.
The estate agent works for me, I am paying them and I guess they are as keen as me to complete the purchase as that is when they get paid.
I don't see anything suspicious about wanting a quick sale, particularly as I have had one sale fall through and I accepted a low offer on the premise that we went for a quick completion.
I would have thought however that you are entitled to some sort of confidentiality re your financial advisers.

So far I haven't really reacted to the constant chasing. All I can do is give updates and keep working with our mortgage company and solicitor.

I suppose the vendor could turn around at some point and say they are pulling out because we are too slow, and if they do we'll have no choice but to accept it. I'm not sure if we have any recourse to recover the several thousand pounds we have already spent.

We are 2 weeks in Rhino, and already have a mortgage offer expected this week.

I understand the agent wanting an update but they should have checked with me first, and I also find it ridiculous for the agent to suggest we go with a higher interest rate because a certain lender is apparently going to be quicker to underwrite. I don't remember agreeing that they would dictate who we take a mortgage out with!!!

Maybe if you haven't reacted to the chasing maybe that's why they are putting pressure on the broker.

Unfortunately you can't recover any costs. The system isn't great from that point of view.

Op, that behaviour from the estate agent is common I'm afraid.
I listen to it every day, drives me mad.
No advice, only sympathy.

My buyer has an agreement in principle, but I understood they don't get the formal offer until surveys, searches etc are completed.
6 weeks is almost asking the impossible, as I said we are 7 weeks in but have only just received the final search, so even 8/9 weeks is pretty good going by my reckoning.
It is unfair, the burden of costs is on the buyer and the seller can pull out with very little expense. It's been like this for years. To be honest I don't know why in this age of technology it still takes so long to get searches etc, it doesn't help the solicitors always seem to write each other letters rather than email!
I have found it all so stressful I am seriously considering continuing to rent rather than go through purchasing somewhere!

Searches are generally back within two weeks Rhinosaurus

Good to hear the timings on your transaction Rhino. 6 weeks does seem crazy particularly when they will know how long searches take to come back.

In our case it works in our favour as there's nothing that can be done until the searches are back, but I believe we already have some of them.

Good luck with your sale. I hope this house will be our last one!

Did you post the other week about this house?
There was a post about someone finding their dream home that was empty and the price seemed too good to be true but the vendor was insisting on a very fast sale?
I seem to remember the op having to take out a bridging loan and being worried because it'd been empty for a year.

There was a hold up on one of the searches, which only came back last week, I believe the others came back quite quickly. The survey was on 12th September, I am getting a bit jittery why the mortgage offer isn't in, so can see where the OPs seller is coming from, although the EA does seem a bit over zealous in this case!

We were ready to complete 4 weeks and 3 days after offering on the house we just bought, our vendors wanted a super quick sale too (their timeline was 4 weeks!) but everyone was nice about it and the EA was helpful for both sides. That timeline included getting a full survey done. We did choose a lender known for quick decisions though. In the end it took 6 weeks, because there was a problem with the vendor's own purchase, ha!

I'm not complaining though. They felt really bad about the extra delay and left us all of their beautiful curtains, which would have cost us thousands to replace at the same quality.

Basically my point is that it is possible, go as fast as you can but don't compromise on anything at your end, they won't have anyone who can move faster than you as any new buyer would need to start from scratch. And there is no bloody need for the EA to be a pain in the arse. I think I would be inclined to tell them to back off or you might be reconsidering the whole thing.

Two weeks in and it sounds like you've done loads. Don't allow the estate agent to bully you. Agree with pp, searches usually back within a couple of weeks. Some lenders are taking ages to issue mortgage offers at the moment eg. 3-4 weeks from valuation survey. I think you're perfectly entitled to ask why there's such a rush.

To a pp, yes it is frustrating when solicitors sometimes use letters instead of emails. But bear in mind that most solicitors have upwards of 80 different transactions at any one time. On each transaction they'll have the client, the other parties' solicitor, the estate agent, and if a purchase usually the mortgage broker and the mortgage lender to deal with as well. If 5 minutes is spent on each file each day, and they have 80 files, that's over 6.5 hours of their day gone already. Most solicitors are only paid for 7.5 hours a day (although most do hours and hours of overtlme for free). The only way to time manage effectively is to deal with the less urgent stuff by letter. Emails are only quicker if you can manage the constant stream of them coming in. I get over 120 emails a day. If I answer each one individually and as soon as I get it, I won't get any actual work done and no-one's matter will progress, I'll just spend all day answering pointless, time-wasting emails! Can you tell I've had a good day

We just purchased a house and vendor said 4 weeks. It took months but only because of issues you won't have.

Have you tied the vendor in so as part of the contract he can't accept other offers? We were one or two weeks in (paid for searches) when vendor accepted higher offer. We couldn't match as they were FTB. We were lucky because the same house style came up for sale round the corner but with less work needed. Ironically us and other couple bid on both houses and they also won the more expensive one as they were FTB. We got our original house back.

I hope you don't have to go through that kind of farce. Then there was more with our buyer but you are chain free so fantastic stuff.

If someone else does put an offer in, you can always do a race to contract and as you are chain free and two weeks in, you'd probably be fine.

I would also say don't allow the estate agent and vendor to bully you and I would be telling them that to, after all you are giving them your money!! Don't let them force you to make short cuts and give in to demands. We had this situation last year, vendor kept threatening to pull out etc so we let things go that we should have pursued on the survey and completed. Wish we had told the vendor to look for someone else as a year on we have a house with loads of issues that they were trying to conceal. Never again will I be forced to move faster than I want to!

This sounds very similar to our house purchase. It turns out that the seller wanted to move quickly as he had built up thousands of pounds worth of debts and wanted to flit the country. We're still getting bloody debt collectors' letters a year later.

Hold your nerve. Even if the vendor tries to go with another buyer, you're still 2 weeks ahead of anyone else.

God, I hate moving house.

We haven't yet reached a point where they are trying to get us to speed past proper checks and searches etc. If that does crop up we'll just have to call their bluff. I don't think it's in their interest to find a new buyer, even a cash one will need to send off for searches and start from scratch.

Whimsical, can we actually tie the vendor in to not accepting other offers? Sounds ideal if we can but I'm not sure how if we haven't exchanged contracts yet.