I don't know if I'm being precious, but I'm really annoyed!

[Squitch]

Me and DP are just in the process of buying our own home. I live in the town where it is and DP lives 150 miles away (a whole other story).

We put the offer in and had it accepted and the next day DP instructed solicitors and told the mortgage company to go ahead and start sorting out the mortgage. Now I don't know if these are things that we should have done before putting an offer in or not (having never bought a house before) - but our mortgage advisor advised us to do it this way so we just went along with it.

Anyway, things are ticking along nicely - last week we had a formal letter of acceptance from the estate agents (after speaking to our solicitors) and as far as we were concerned everything was as it should be.

Last night (at about 8pm) there was a knock on the door and at it stood the vendor of the house. I said hello a bit quizically and he apologised and said that the estate agents had called him and said that they suspected we had cold feet and wanted to pull out as they hadn't heard anything from us. I reassured him that this wasnt the case and that the estate agents had written to us last week and apologised if it was dragging on a bit. He looked a bit confused and said that it was fine and that he was actually thankful that it was dragging on as the house he is moving into isnt quite finished and that there was no immediate rush to move.

I am now really annoyed! I am annoyed with the estate agents contacting the vendor instead of us (they were happy enough to ring my DP about a kazillion times ago when they were waiting for the offer) - but mostly I'm annoyed that they gave my address to the vendor. I have had NO dealings with them at all - DP has done it all. All correspondance goes to his address (in fact I'm quite confused how they got my address, though I do have an unusual surname so they could have looked it up I suppose). Is this normal? Should the EA be giving out addresses of people who aren't their clients? I have brooded on it all day and just wanted to know if I was overeacting before I phone them.

Many thanks (and sorry for the essay)

Sounds very dodgy to me, I would be mightily pissed off. Call them now!!!

Assuming you're buying the house together, your DP will have passed your details to the solicitors and the mortgage company to enable the contracts to be drafted, the credit checks to be run, etc.

This information will then have been passed to the vendor's solicitor, and the vendor would have received documents to fill in/sign from their solicitor containing the information.

The EA might also have received copies and will have been in contact with passing details to and from solicitors, so they could have legitimately got the address on file because of that. I doubt they went specifically sniffing around for your address.

I would still call them up though and give them an earful about telling the vendor they suspect you have cold feet just because they've not heard from you! If they suspected that, they could have called you, not spread unfounded rumours and sent the vendor scurrying to your door.

Still not sure if the estate agent should have made such odd comments to the vendor though ! Have you called btw?

While your address will have been on documents sent to the vendor (but not your number which is presumably why he doorstepped you) it sounds like gross stupidity on the part of the agent to spook the vendor. Unfortunately you will have to wait to complete before you tear him off a strip..... or risk them thowing an intentional spanner into the works.

Thanks all, no I haven't phoned them, but have spoken to DP and he's going to phone them in the morning, he will be much much more polite than me - I really don't want any spanners in the works.