Four weeks ago we went to see a gorgeous semi-detached house, fell in love with it and put an offer in straight away. The next day someone but a slightly higher bid and we went straight to the asking price. We were then told that the owners were a charity so we would have to wait until the property had been on at least a week before it would be taken off the market.
We waited and in the meantime sent our offer in formally, including all our financial details etc to prove we were valid buyers. We were told there were two other buyers but that we were the highest bid and that one of them hadn't sold their house yet and told to wait. We even asked if we should bid over the asking bid but were advised b the estate agent not to.
After nearly four weeks of waiting, I called the estate agent and was told that it was down to us and the buyers who hadn't sold. We were also told that their bid was higher than ours but reassured we were ok as they still hasn't sold. I was surprised that we had not been informed of this as they are supposed to but assumed it was just because we still held the cards. However, just in case, we raised our offer again as we were aware that in the current market it wouldn't be long before the other buyers sold.
The next day I received a message stating that we had an hour to get ready for closed bids. I asked why the sudden change (it was nearly three weeks since we first made an offer) and was told that the charity made this decision simply because there were two bids on the house. So we put our bid together and sent it. We went fifteen thousand higher and felt fairly confident as we were in a better decision. I then looked online and noticed that the estate agents we were dealing with had sold several properties that day so I called them and asked if the position of the other buyers had changed, they had sold that day.
We were shocked as although our final bid was over the asking price, no one had told us (they're allowed to give us this information) that the situation of the other buyers had changed. We would have gone in even higher if we had known. We just didn't want to unnecessarily as we didn't want to get a bigger mortgage for no reason.
It feels as though the estate agents has purposely delayed us so that they could help the other buyers sell first. Am I being paranoid? Is this acceptable? Should I just except defeat or should I complain that we were not given all the information? Am I just being a bitter loser?