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We had an offer accepted on a house 2 and a bit months ago and the house was marked SSTC.
We sold our house a week after this but last week our buyer pulled out. People we are buying from said they were fine to wait a month or so for us to find a new buyer but we’ve just had an email to say they are going back on the market on Monday. But our offer is still ‘accepted’! Sounds like they want the best of both worlds.
Is this the norm as we’ve not sold a house in 25yrs!
It’s pissed me right off as we’ve been open and honest throughout. I’m inclined to withdraw our offer tomorrow.
I had this. The sale ended up falling through even though I'm willing and ready to buy. I put it down to bad advice from the agent to the seller, possibly trying to force the seller into the auction route for which the agent will get more cash.
Sounds like there could be a couple of things going on here. They could be being cheeky and hoping the market has increased in the last 2.5 months and looking for a better offer... or they could be hedging their bets - I guess it depends why your sale fell through. If it was nothing to do with the house, and the buyers changed their minds / change of circumstances etc then tell your vendors this to reassure them. If the survey picked up something that may affect your sale then I would be doing the same as them and putting the house back on the market.
(And if this is the case, don't be a dick and withhold that information from future buyers as some friends of mine have just found out on a place they are buying)
Never even got to survey stage! Ours is a Victorian house and work needs doing which we’ve been open about.
It was weird, our buyer had been round three times and even had a decorator in! 😊
Same with mine. Didn’t get to survey. While solicitors, mortgage brokers and banks are stacked out with work and some people still think things can be complete way quicker than us currently possible.
Who really thinks they’re going to get a better, faster offer in October?
Edit to mention I was buying only and not selling.
Frustrating! I guess the only thing you can do is get your place back on the market ASAP, and then hope that the place you want is still available when you find another buyer.
We have just been through the pain of buying (same as @Andy_B nothing to sell) and it took 18 months and a couple of false starts. We finally made it a few weeks ago, and I am glad to say it was worth the wait!
I don't think you can get cross with your seller, it's you that's potentially breaking the chain by losing your buyer.
They are probably worried about losing the place they are buying so want to cover their bases.
We were on the other side of this. Our original prospective buyer had their sale fall through in April. We gave them 5 weeks but viewings had dried up on their house so our agent suggested we had been more than fair and couldn't leave it off the market forever (we weren't in a hurry as waiting for a slow new build).
We quickly got a new buyer (at a better price) and buyer 1 has only just gone back sold stc some 4 months later so it would have been a long nervous wait.
And still nobody has moved :-). Buyer 2 is waiting patiently for our new build to finish, but at least they know our end can't collapse (contracts get exchanged early on new builds so we are legally obliged to buy it).
Also in a similar position to you - only had one house in 25 years and this is the first time we've ever sold. Not planning to repeat the experience...
We had this happen with our chain last year, our buyer didn't pull out but they weren't willing to complete until a tedious rentcharge issue (of £5 a bloody year 🙄) got resolved and it didn't look like there was an end in sight for a while as we couldn't get in contact with the rentcharge owner. Our sellers put their house back on the market, turned out they were getting pressure from their seller to do so but still wanted to go with us. Turned out ok in the end but it was a bit twitchy for a bit.
Ultimately it comes down to how much you want the house, if there are other options then threatening to pull out of the sale might call their bluff and they'll take it off the market. Equally they might just say 'bye bye', welcome to the stupidity of the English system!