Honestly not sure if I'm being precious about this ....sorry its long but the background, I tried not to waffle honestly...
Talking to a school mum in January and mentioned that we were looking to move closer to the school that year, she said that she was also looking to move. It turned out we had actually both viewed the same house the year before but it had sold before either of us had buyers. She mentioned the estate agent she used and recommended them.
In February this year she told me that she had seen a house she liked and was putting hers on the market and asked if we wanted to view hers. She used a different EA to before as they had valued the house for more. I explained we wouldn't be ready to put ours on the market until March and said we would be interested in viewing if it was still available once we had an offer on ours but made a point of saying that we were sure it would be snapped up (It is a lovely house)
Our house went on the market a few weeks later and was getting viewings but no offers. She started to be a bit of a pest, asking me at least daily when our next viewings were and following up straight after, sometimes before the viewing had even taken place. I stopped telling her when the viewings were booked, was very vague and purposly took a while to respond but she'd find me outside the school 🙄and start asking again.
After 3 weeks of hers being on the market she said she would accept an offer from us even though we don't have an offer on ours, we liked the house and houses don't come up for sale in that area often so we put an offer in. 2 days later she text to say she was very sorry but she had accepted an another from a first time buyer, the house she wanted to offer on wouldn't accept on offer from her unless the chain was complete (perfectly reasonable and sensible) so she had accepted a new offer. We were a bit annoyed as we had said we didn't want to put an offer in until we had sold but honestly felt like we'd dodged a bullet as it was starting to look like the whole thing was going to be a nightmare (she was obviously going to micromanage every step of the process)
It turned out her buyers were even worse than her, turned up to a viewing with 11 people, asked for 2 more viewings after that, phoned the EA several times in the middle of the night, haggled about furniture to be left, stupidly she gave them her number and hasn't had a minutes peace since.
We eventually got an offer on ours and found a house to buy and everything seems to be going through okay. The house we are buying is listed with the EA she originally listed her house last year but didn't use this year, they have no other connection that I know of but he did seem to know about the house she was trying to buy.
She made a few critical comments about the house we are buying and keeps asking me how its going but I've brushed it off and ignored it. She corners me at the school once a week or so asking for an update its usually along the line of "I heard your buyers are quite old, I suppose that's making them slow to respond to all the online forms" or "I saw they were on holiday I suppose that's set everything back a week a now"
Anyway, this week she stopped me again for another update and I gave another vague answer and she said "oh I was just wondering with you using a specialist lender, if that was holding things up?" We are using a specialist lender as we have credit issues, but we received the mortgage offer with no issues and before anyone else in the chain ironically...
How on earth would she know what lender we are using, only the EA and our broker has seen the mortgage offer, so Im assuming for some reason she's still in contact with him and he's sharing the details of the application? Why does she want to know so much about our application and should he be sharing that information? I know its silly but Im already so embarrassed about the credit issues and I hate the thought of everyone knowing.
Is this all a bit strange or am I being precious?