House STC, no contact from EA

[PurplePansy05]

Hi All

We recently found a house that we really liked. We've been in touch with the estate agent for several weeks, expressed our interest, were due to put our house on the market. We've had multiple very pleasant chats with them. The EA told us the owners were not accepting viewings in person yet, but they'd start this week (we're in Wales) and they'd call us as soon as they have an availability schedule from them (they're wfh). Fine. DH has been trying to get in touch every day this week, just a courtesy call, but busy lines.

Tonight I'm scrolling through Rightmove to find out what was supposed to be our next home "Sold STC".

I am livid and upset in the same time as this looked like a perfect place for us.

Where did we go wrong?

Can anything be done now?

Will appreciate advice from someone who's been in a similar position 😔

We are about to complete the sale of our house (in Wales too) so everything about viewing happened before lockdown.
One of the questions we were asked was "would we take viewings from people who were still to sell". We agreed that viewers could come as long as they either had nothing to sell or were already on the market. They didn't have to be SSTC but had to be on the market at least.
We tried to view a house just before we went to market and were told only SSTC/no chain could view. This was a 400K house....not exactly crawling with FTBs but the vendor had been stung by people pulling out so that was their choice to do that. It was gutting as it was a lovely house but that is the situation.

You sound very emotional and bitter about this and it will be a hard lesson learnt. Yes, the estate agency should have said to you but if I was a vendor and had a proceedable offer on the table, I wouldn't be holding out for someone else who expressed interest to go on the market with the promise that their house will sell quickly.

3 out of the 4 offers we received were from people in "no chain".
All the best.