19 weeks later - is there a tiny shred to of hope?

[Chickoletta]

We fell in love with a property this time last year and put our own house on the market. We agreed a price with the vendors but they wouldn't accept it as an offer as we weren't proceedable. We had lots of viewings on our house but no offers and, sadly, on 1st June our dream house went Sale Agreed to someone else. I assume that they were proceedable as surely the vendors wouldn't have accepted their offer otherwise.

We took our house off the market a couple of weeks later as there was nothing else around that we're interested in, it really is just this one house for us.

Here's the thing - 19 weeks later it's still Sale Agreed. There was no onward chain as the old couple in the house (man has actually now died) are going to live with family.

I know the vendor's agent a little through work and he has confirmed that they haven't exchanged but didn't want to say any more.

Am I being silly to get my hopes up that this might not proceed and we can have another crack at it? It seems like such a long time for a straightforward sale. Under these circumstances, should we be putting our house back on the market?

Honest opinions welcome!

Is it possibly bring held up by probate issues?
The estate agent could tell you if they chose too.
Get a friend to call them?

Hadn’t thought of probate. Think he died before the offer was made. Would it still go to probate if the wife is still alive and living there?

Honestly, I think your hope is unrealistic. Some sales do get held up for a variety of reasons and a recent death/bereavement is just the sort of thing to slow matters down. If the house was likely to come back on the market, the estate agent would probably have given you a hint.

The house we are buying went under offer 16 weeks ago. We are still buying it, it's just taken time for the survey and structural engineer report etc. We are now hoping to be in by the end of November, which will be around 22 weeks in total. I don't think you should get your hopes up, but ask to be kept informed just in case.

I’ve bought 3 houses. 2 of them took 22 weeks (or more) to exchange.

Thanks for the very honest comments - probably deluding myself then!
I do understand that some sales take a long time, it's just the combination of proceedable buyer and no onward chain here which makes it tricky to see why exactly.

Ho hum. At least I don't have to endure the perpetual tidying up of having the house on the market for a bit!

I do understand that some sales take a long time, it's just the combination of proceedable buyer and no onward chain here which makes it tricky to see why exactly.

We were proceedable with no onward chain in both cases

First house... sellers had 5 debts secured against house. Turns out (eventually) that the offer they accepted from us wasn’t enough to cover the debts. Until we gave an ultimatum date they couldn’t get settlement figures from the 5th debt before the 1st one expired so this only came to light a few days before we exchanged.

Second house was remortgaging first to a BTL, then buying another. BTL mortgage took agggggesss to sort for one reason and another

All you can do is let estate agent know you’re interested and to let you know if it falls through.

We just completed on Friday. We’d put the offer in around mid February and it took till July to exchange with only three parties involved in a very small chain. It just took that long! Questions back and forth and a bit of missing paperwork etc plus some doubts over environmental things took time to resolve. I don’t think you should get your hopes up too much.....