BUYING A HOUSE - HELP NEEDED

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Hi,

Me and my partner put an offer in for a house Monday this week. We first got told that he works offshore so they struggle to have contact with him, and can only communicate with him through email. Since then, we have been told he has replied and said he wants to check with mortgage advisor. This was Wednesday. It is now Friday, and we have still heard nothing and the estate agent has been out all morning and was yesterday so we literally have to wait all day for her to call and say 'no contact still, sorry'. We have offered only 2,000 under asking price so it's a good offer and we are in no chain, so can't understand why I feel like they don't want to sell this house. It's driving me mental. I am 25 weeks pregnant so this is not the time I want to be worrying all day and night!

Do we pull out or do we wait this out? There are no other houses I am interested in either. & we have seen the house and seen that the man who we want to buy it off got home from working offshore yesterday.

Please give me some advice, I feel like I am losing my mind!

Thank you

I would give them an ultimatum. Tell them you are looking for an answer by 5pm on Monday or you'll be withdrawing the offer.

I can understand that he may not be abe to check email and will have to send on messages and then wait for a reply but that should be plenty of time.

he's going to need to be contactable if he wants to sell the house. So if there's this much messing about at this stage, you are looking at the transaction from hell.

Thank you for replying!

That's what our plan was, but we've not been able to even speak to the estate agent today. We were going to tell her this morning we want an answer by 5.30 today or if not we will withdraw, but obviously now we can't do that, because it's not fair to give her only 2 hours to get back to us, and that's if she even rings us back today!

He's had 5 days now to speak to his mortgage advisor, and now he is home he can make calls so it shouldn't be longer than today that he needs now surely.

This is our first time buying a house, and it's so stressful!!! :(

Special subject - thanks for replying! yes that's exactly what i thought, how long will this whole process take if he can't even give us a yes or a no to an offer within a good time period. I am feeling so miserable about this all!

I'm afraid it is stressful - but this guy sounds like a professional pisser about. Forget this place and move on.

Be careful. This happened to us, when I was pregnant. Found a house we loved, put in an offer, didn't here anything for ages and when we did it was that he had taken it off the market.

As it turned out we found a much better house, but not until after I had given birth.

I did think about maybe just completely pulling out, but we've been looking for ages and it's the only one we like, so am worrying that other ones wont come up in time.

ExitPursuedByABear - oh no, that's horrible! i can't believe how hard that make all this. Glad you found somewhere better!!

It is a very fraught time, so I sympathise. However, if there aren't another other houses you're interested in then there really isn't much to be accomplished by withdrawing is there.

Wait it out and see but if your offer's accepted then make it clear you have a tight deadline and need to be assured the vendor's solicitor will not delay at all.

It may be that they've had another interested party and are hedging their bets, which isn't good for you, but personally I'd hang on a bit longer.

Alternatively, seeing as you know he's now home, you could try putting a note through the door of the house asking that a response is given via the agent before say Monday lunchtime.

Enrique - I did say that to my partner, as we can't win either way, if we pull out, we don't get the house, but if we stay in then we could be waiting god knows how long. The estate agent doesn't seem to be of much help either, she did say she was annoyed that he had taken so long to reply to her emails, and had ignored 3 of them but I just don't feel like there's any sort of movement going on at all.

They did say they had another viewer but she saw the house on Monday night, and has still not put an offer in so I don't think she's an issue, and nobody else has seen it so far.

I am friends with him on FB funnily enough... and was tempted to message him on there as he's always online, but have been told I could come across a bit pesty so push him the other way into saying no.

I had this happen, and I felt very strongly that the sellers were keeping my offer "in reserve", so agents could say to other prospective buyers that they had an offer of X on the table and therefore higher offers were needed to secure. Since then I've always put offers in writing with " valid until one week from today's date" on. Not sure that's the case here, but just offering another perspective.

EssentialHummus - Yes that's what this feels like, but we have practically offered the asking price, and if they said no and rejected it, we probably would offer it so I don't see what they are waiting for. I wish we had put a validation on our offer, we just told the estate agent over the phone and that was it. Next time I will definitely be putting it in writing with an expirey date!

Thank you for your advice

My partner has just rang back and she is still not there, so we probably won't talk to her at all today. I feel like nothing but a pain to them.

have to say that if you are 25 weeks pregnant, you are very unlikely to be moving before the baby arrives whatever happens. Forget that idea, what with searches, legals, mortgages and so on. It should be done much quicker but it often isn't.

more houses tend to come up after easter.

I just want to know we've got somewhere if you know what I mean, rather than having to go through all this stress with baby already here too

You'll have to toughen up a bit OP, or cultivate the art of Zen.

Break it down into the fact that buying a home is purely and simply a business transaction, but it's complicated by a few things over and above that. There's no right or wrong set price, it's all down to negotiation to the satisfaction of both parties with the Agent angling for more of course. You can't ever go out and purchase the identical product, so your emotions come into play. If you like it enough to buy it then it's going to be your home and that has a very special significance. Thirdly, it's like a game of chess, very rarely is anyone totally transparent and you have to hold your nerve.

It should be as easy as approaching the man if you know him and saying, you're selling your house, I'll give you £X for it, yes or no? and him saying yes, or no, but it's yours for £Y.

If it helps you at all I can tell that once we were quite desperate to find somewhere. We found a house we thought we'd be happy enough with, although to be honest, in our hearts it wasn't The One. We set our ceiling, made an offer saying this is our one and only offer. Agent came back and said it was a No, so what were we going to offer next and we didn't raise it at all. So there we were totally back to the drawing board It turned out to be the very best thing as it was no time at all until the house that was The One came along and we know we'd have never been totally happy with the first one.

So as much as it should be a business transaction, it works in mysterious ways and usually turns out for the best, even if it is very unsettling when you're in the process. Try very hard to think what will be, will be and concentrate on your baby. It'll all turn out fine in the end, you'll cope

You could always say the offer is subject to completion by X date - depending what your situation is - are you selling?

We recently moved from rented and needed to move in by end of Nov. We said our offer was subject to completion by a date 2 weeks prior to that. We completed 1 week later. They tried to delay last minute but our solicitor pushed on the basis that our offer had clearly been made subject to that completion date.

Just an idea to consider if you want to forge ahead with this property but want to avoid long delays. In the meantime keep looking until an agreement is made.

Hello everyone -

good news : OUR OFFER WAS ACCEPTED!!!

We are really happy, and are getting the ball rolling now! Thank you all for your advice, we did what was suggested and gave them a deadline although we've ended up paying the asking price, but it's the house we want.

Fingers crossed smooth sailing from here on out!

Thank you all

Ooh, congrats!

Congratulations

Definitely fingers crossed for you and let's hope it will be smooth sailing.
We had to pay the asking price for our house, but we've never regretted it and absolutely love where we live. Sometimes a discount isn't the be all and end all.

Thank you all! We are very excited, and our mortgage was accepted today so things are moving forward...eeek!

Yes well it was up for 5,000 more 2 weeks before we viewed it so we would've offered that anyway so we don't mind!

He seems like he is moving things along to now and is trying to sort out his solicitor by today so all good times ahead hopefully.

Hope everyone is well!