How long to hear about offer?

[Ohhawtdang]

We offered on a property that is nice- not forever home, a do for now (5 years or so) home. Wednesday 9am. Phoned and chased email at Wednesday 4pm. Had official written offer received email before they closed.

nothing. Silence.

literally not a peep. It’s now Sunday. I’m baffled.

we have now stumbled across our forever home. Unsure of etiquette, but assuming that first house doesn’t care for our offer, we’ve decided to submit an offer tomorrow morning on forever home. Assuming it’s accepted, we are no longer interested in first home.
if forever home isn’t a goer- then I’m happy enough to live in first house if they accept offer.

what do I do? Don’t bother chasing house one at all? Chase once we have clarity on forever house? If forever house accept I will email first house to officially withdraw offer but frankly after 5 days of silence Im irritated they haven’t had the decency to let us know they’ve (presumably) refused our offer.

or am I being unreasonable? We are leaving our first house and being naive, we didn’t even try to negotiate purchase here so this is all new. We however responded to all offers on our property within 2 hours.

I'd ignore house one now and if EA contacts you withdraw your offer at that point.

I viewed on a Saturday, put formal offer in when I got home (EA was closed), and a rejection on the Monday, gave a counter offer Tuesday which was accepted that day.

5 days seems a long time to not give any response.

Wait until you know what's happening with house 2 before you do anything about house 1. If your offer's accepted on house 2, I wouldn't bother contacting the EA to withdraw your offer on house 1 - the vendor/EA hasn't had the courtesy to get back to you, so I'd just wait and see if they ever do and in that event, say their radio silence meant you have found something elsewhere. If you get turned down by house 2, then keep looking but ask the house 1 EA for the reason for the delay in responding and take it from there.

Thank you, I was so concerned that offering on another was a massive faux pas, but 5 days did feel utterly ridiculous. I’m glad I’m not in love with house one else I think I’d be driving myself mad.

Dh and I are tying ourselves in knots over how much we want house two 😅 this is not an enjoyable process, is it!

We had a vendor that took over a MONTH to come back to our offer, declined (but wouldn’t give any indication what they’d accept) then took another month to decline our further offer. Note no one else had offered in this whole period!

We ended up pulling our offer and I’m glad even though it was a good place, they would have been a nightmare.

I think you are good to go on dream house #2. If #1 EA inform you your offer has been accepted, wait until you hear back from house #2. If that uoj are uncomfortable with that, just inform #1EA that in the time it took to get back to you, you've decoded to go in a different direction. Absolutely understandable.

Good luck!

A month!!?? What planet are they on.

I’m scared 😂 I want tomorrow to hurry up. I so hope they negotiate with us and we can secure the property.

We've found that if they have other viewings booked in that they'll wait to see if anyone else offers higher or is in a better position (i.e. cash buyer).

It really does vary though, we've had replies the same day and others 2 weeks later.

Yes it was insane! And with hindsight a good warning sign. Anyway we found something better with straightforward vendors and fingers crossed exchanging next week….so keep the faith 👌

Fingers crossed for number two

I'd go for a quick email to the estate agent saying "I assume this offer is rejected due to no response, but just to avoid confusion it's now withdrawn." Polite but gives them a little kick.

The pp who said two weeks- did the EA explain reasons in order to manage expectations for this timeline? I.e vendor is completing other viewings and would like time to consider, we expect to hear by xyz ? Or just left you hanging?

now I’m not so sure 5 days is unreasonable as such as just the lack of comms?

We really do want the other house. I feel sick thinking about losing it!

Forget about house number 1 for now and focus on offering on house number 2. A 'forever home' would be a much more sensible purchase at present. If your second offer is accepted, email the first agent back to say you are withdrawing your offer or what @Tupster if you feel like having a little kick.

Can’t sleep.

thinking about what to do when they inevitably reject my first offer tomorrow.

we offered 35k under - it’s a full rip out Reno, nothing has been changed in 50 years albeit extremely well kept.

full asking is the very very top of our budget of what we can really afford (the bank would give us another 100k but in reality we’d be so overstretched) . We’d have to live with it for who knows how many years if we have to increase.

in years gone by I have seen people here say best to max and get what you really want but I do feel hesitant given the economic climate… but if it’s forever? Is it worth doing?

It depends on the EA, some are far better at communicating than others and some are just more honest too.

Our most recent offer, the EA contacted us after 2 days to let us know the owner needs more time to come to a decision and so they'll come back to us the following week.

Well it’s been like the telly programs here..

back forth back forth.

we are at 10k under current asking, I was unaware they’d already dropped 50k so can see why our first offer was probably verging on offensive.

I asked what their bottom line was and offered that. Now haven’t heard but my own EA has called to say she’s heard from them so…. I don’t know what that means. Surely he would only call my EA if they were accepting it?

Will be living like paupers for some time. Fucking interest rates. I have faith it’ll pay off in end. Next door just sold for 220k more on a smaller plot.

It's not 'fucking interest rates' that are the problem. They are very normal historically, a bit below. The problem is that house prices are far too high in relation to incomes. I really wouldn't over stretch yourself in the current economic climate but good luck with what ver you decide.

We’ve secured forever home, and as it stands the monthly payments are actually still in line with budget and not as bad as I expected so phew!

now to email house one EA or not?

Congrats @Ohhawtdang

I would email house 1 ea. Just to close it down in my own mind, if nothing else.

Congrats!

I would email house 1 EA just to withdraw the offer. I wouldn’t offer any explanation though.

I mean, yes this is also true… but when you look at what you’re actually paying back across the term it’s all just a bit gross isn’t it.

I would tell EA on the first house they were too slow coming back. Won't affect you but might help some other person who offers.

Renting isn't cheap either and you have nothing to show for it at the end.

But you haven't actually heard definitely you've got it yet, have you? Or have I missed something?

Yes sorry if it wasn’t clear- they accepted our offer and the rest of today is ID checks and paperwork etc!

Yes, but that's more to do with the total value of the mortgage and the term. Lots of people have had to extend their terms far beyond the traditional 25 years that people previously enjoyed.