House buying Hell-P

[Bippityboppitybo]

Our house is on the market and we have one non proceedable offer as they need to sell their house (lots of viewings apparently but no offers as yet).

We saw a house last weekend that is dream house territory. Put an offer in which the vendor said (they showed us the house) they would accept and they'd "keep the house for us" as they're not in a rush to sell and want it to go to a family rather than a developer/investor. But then their estate agents said basically no to this and that they'd continue to book in viewings and market the property. We even offered to pay a holding deposit to give us a month to sell ours etc but the EA refused (vendor was all for it).

Is there anything we can do to prevent being gazumped whilst we wait for ours to sell?! Their EAs seem to be very rigid and not willing to discuss it but the vendor is being flexible and exchanged phone numbers with us etc sent us extra photos of the house without us asking etc so we have a great rapport with them.

Can we offer to the vendor to go around the EA and they sell it privately to us one the EA exclusivity clause ends?

Id message the vendor personally to ask them. They can only say no. At the end of the day it is their house and they can tell the EA to hold off on viewings if they are happy to.

You have a non proceedable offer but dont seem to recognise that you are also non proceedable

Oh and they will still have to pay the EA as they all have an introduction clause

drop your price to sell

The vendors will be in contract with the EA, even if they chose to sell privately, they would still have to pay the EA commission.

Whilst I know this isn’t what you want to hear OP, the EA are advising their client correctly given that you are not a proceedable purchaser currently, of course they have their commission in mind too.

I would say to anyone don’t view until you are in a position to buy, it can be extremely disappointing otherwise, if you can’t buy the property you have fallen in love with.

I hope it all works out well for you OP.

Thanks everyone, had a feeling this was the case.

We are already marketing ours 20k below what others are selling for in the area so can't drop it anymore.

Obviously I know I'm not proceedable too hence my question! It's just a frustrating time as it's not like we (and our potential buyers) aren't trying to sell our houses. They will sell, it's just a question of when! It seems like to win the house war you're better off renting! Have only ever bought new builds before so totally new to this side of buying and selling!

Never mind dream house, this is all a dream. House chains are bad enough but this is a fantasy chain where no one's really buying or selling anything so it's all in the abstract. I see where you're coming from but EA is quite right and if someone proceedable, and perhaps without a chain comes along, then the owners would be mad to have got themselves tied up with your situation. It's hard enough as it is when everyone's process is properly underway.

Also I'm pretty sure that as you've come to the owner via the EA, it could never be classed as a private sale. They did their job in attracting you to the property so it's pretty shitty to think you'd even want to cut them out of their fee. Sure EAs have their flaws, but this one seems to be doing a good job so their client should trust them and not someone whose never bought a non-new build and admits they don't have a clue.

We are already marketing ours 20k below what others are selling for in the area so can't drop it anymore

The question has to be asked, why would someone pay £20k more for a property in the same area - would they just not buy yours and save £20k?

Are you sure you are as competitively priced as you think?

Mine's been on the market a month and I'm not even starting to do any viewings yet. There's no point as mine could take months to sell if it even sells. I'll only start when I have a firm offer and probably after the survey is done.

I've never sold a house before (previously FTB and we bought a new build off plan) so I'm just not used to the process! We blindly trusted the EAs who said our house would sell within a week if we priced it 20k below the others in the area so just went with what they said and started viewing other houses because we thought we'd have sold by now

I think most people do start looking Bippity when they put theirs on, it's just things are very slow in my area and the house opposite which has been on 5 months is not budging even with price reductions. I'm also a pessimist. 😆