Good morning! This is my first time posting on this forum so please excuse my ramblings or lack of etiquette.
we are trying to buy a house in Herefordshire and are finding one of the Estate Agents extremely unhelpful in the area. We have found a property we are very keen to view that has been on the market since September 2019. We are 1st time buyers so very limited experience with buying houses and dealing with estate agents but in a very good no chain position.
Long story short... the property in question is owned by someone who is apparently shielding due to on-going hospital treatment (which supposedly ended on 01 Aug). We are absolutely sympathetic to this however this has now been going on for 6 months and the property is still advertised on multiple platforms. We call the agent every 10 days for an update to be told we are on their pink list and at the top of list for viewing. They will not allow us to make an offer without a viewing and will not even tell us if they have had contact with the vendor to let them know that we are keenly interested and in a position to make an offer. Just very sketchy details leaving us quite paranoid as to if they are actually telling the truth and are taking us seriously with our intentions!
Is this normal? Obviously Estate Agents get quite bad press for being greedy. Should we be concerned for the vendor that they are taking advantage of them by keeping the property on the market if they are extremely poorly? You are paying a charge for your property to be advertised right? Or is this just all part of the stress of the game?
Any advice or feedback greatly received as we are a forces family on borrowed time looking for our forever home - which we feel like we have finally found - so this is adding to our stress of TOS and resettlement.
Many thanks :-)
**I should add we have lived in the area before but are currently too far away to visit in person!