Have I just been gazumped?!

[SleepyOwlz]

Hey everyone

We had an offer accepted on a property last week. We have no chain but were told the vendors would move into rented accommodation if their end was held up.
However, we’ve just received a call from the EA saying that the vendors are taking the property off the market and no longer selling. The reason she gave was that the vendors also had an offer accepted on another property, however our vendors’ vendors have been held up with their vendors (Yh I know), so because of this, our vendors are no longer selling? I don’t understand? Wouldn’t the normal course of action be to start looking for another property?

We drove a hard bargain so I feel like they may have received a better offer and decided to pretend they’re now no longer on the market? Could this be possible? Or legal? Not that I cam do much. More interested than anything…

What do you think?

Possible? Yes. Legal? Yes, presuming you are not in Scotland (I don’t know about Scotland but I know it’s different). Any way of knowing if that’s what happened? Nope.

Afraid there’s not really any option except to look for another property.

If they have very specific needs for the next house, maybe they've just given up rather than trying to find another property that meets them in this dead market. The market is pretty dead at the moment in many places, so I can see wanting to stay put rather than keep searching.

If they'd had a better offer, I don't see why they wouldn't just say that. Until contracts are exchanged, there's nothing binding them to sticking with your offer.

I think you would be told if they had a higher offer, incase you wanted to / were able to match it / beat it.

It could be that they really wanted that house and that houses that meet their requirements don't come up often so they have decided to wait for a while rather than start the whole process again

Well the whole chain wasn’t in a position to proceed without your vendors having an offer. So vendors vendors and their vendors is all a bit redundant because there’s nobody at the bottom.

They could well have received another offer and it’s legal. They could have also been a bit half hearted about selling and just think they can’t be bothered now. Or something has cropped in their personal life and they don’t need to move so have agreed not to continue with the sale to limit their stress. It doesn’t really matter. At least it happened now and before you’d committed costs like surveys and conveyancers.

Yh I’d have thought they would tell me a higher offer has come through. But maybe they haven’t because the condition of my offer was also
that the property must be taken off the market immediately which they agreed to. The listing online went to ‘under offer’ within 48 hours.

The house search saga continues… (sigh)

Thank you for all your replies everyone 😊

Personally I would take the explanation at face value. Not much you can do either way, but you'll easily be able to find out if the house is sold in the future, and for how much, so it would be pointless for the EA to lie, especially if they thought you might increase your offer. Also bear in mind that the housing market is a nightmare at the moment, so I can understand people withdrawing properties from sale when things go awry and deciding to regroup.

If you drove a hard bargain they may only have accepted it to move to their 'dream house'. If that's gone, they may be less flexible.
And that's not gazumping- gazumping is when you still end up in a bidding war after they have accepted your offer.

You’ll easily be able to find out if the house is sold in the future, and for how much, so it would be pointless for the EA to lie, especially if they thought you might increase your offer.

This true if you’re in England, I was gutted to see that a house we had offered on ended up selling for a few thousand less than we had offered (they received a better offer and didn’t come back to us to see if we would match or beat it, which we definitely would have).

Now living in NI and you can’t find out (at least not by a simple right move search) how much houses last sold for which is annoying!

OP it’s rubbish but if you can’t do anything about it hope you find a better property and will eventually look back and be glad that this happened.

It's possible that they may have over-reacted if they have lost their 'dream house', and will decide to market again. They must have had some reasons for wanting to move. Keep an eye out for it if you liked the house, and tell the agent you'd still be interested if things change. You never know- they may see another 'dream house' by pure accident. Lots of people get over-invested in one house and get upset if they lose it, but come to terms with it and sometimes even find a better one.