Long story short, we’ve been looking on and off for a forever home for 2 years, didn’t sell ours until March which was then delayed by lockdown, sold in July and moved into a rental thinking being chain free would help us. Lost out 5 times on best and final offers over summer, then finally in October found our dream house on a street we’ve always wanted to live on, we had viewed it a year before and lived it but she had changed her mind about selling. Seller accepted our offer and took it off the market within a week. Finally thought we’d lucked out after a terrible year. Paid for the searches yesterday at £500. Got a message from the seller this morning on Facebook saying she’d changed her mind again, we were gutted and so annoyed as it’s likely we’ll have to pay stamp duty now. We are trying to reclaim the £500 as seller admitted to us she never really wanted to sell (apparently the ea pushed her into it), so we feel utterly messed around ! The estate agent and solicitor have said we can’t do anything to get the money back, has anyone managed to do this successfully? As you can probably imagine to lose £500 the week before Xmas at no fault of our own is gutting ! Any ideas? So annoyed ! Also if anyone has any reasonably priced 1930s houses for sale in Yorkshire please send them our way :)