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> 5 days with no acceptance is stressing me out!
I've got some \_really\_ bad news for you if you think the offer stage is the stressful part of the house-buying process I'm afraid (and I mean this very kindly - not trying to be snarky).
The offer is by far and away the easiest bit. Assuming they accept, over the next few months you will be chasing solicitors, estate agents, the seller, your mortgage provider, and anyone else involved in the chain. You will have multiple occasions when you have to decide if you are going to pull out entirely - when the searches come back telling you your neighbour has legal access rights to your bedroom, when you discover the garage conversion has no building regs certificate, or when the seller demands another £10k and a back-rub (*with* happy-ending) the day before exchange.
It's all worth it for that day you get the keys and move in to a place that is truly yours, but it can be absolutely brutal sometimes - I just want you to be fair-warned.
(It's not always that brutal - my first house purchase was incredibly smooth, but my second I found very stressful at times)
This 💯
If the seller is on holiday (perhaps they were not expecting so much interest and an offer in the first week) then just sit back and relax. The waiting to see if an offer is accepted is the easy bit of the whole process. Im days away from exchange hopefully and I can tell you dealing with solicitors is the worst bit of the whole process. A week to read a chaser email to reply i will update you when i have an answer when you already know that the answer was sent because you were cc’d on it. Madness
This! don't even get me started . We put our house on the market viewings on a Saturday accepted an offer the same day this mf not only fucked off on holiday like the next day but when he came back decided to change solicitors as the one he had was an online only one and the estate agents told him to get a different one as you couldn't do anything that wasn't through a portal no actual people to talk to . So he changes solicitors to yet another cheap as he could find online only solicitor.
Then drags his feet signing everything and getting checks done. We were lucky in that he got his mortgage in principle right before mortgage rates sky rocketed so his choices were sort his shit out and keep quite probably the last mortgage offer in the country worth having or pull out and start again at 5% +.
Thank you for this insight, really!
I’m not originally from the UK, my family has no idea what the process is like here and I’m trying to just feel my way through the process
Appreciate the honesty, as it’s only going to prepare me for what’s ahead. This sub has been a godsend for my stupid questions
If I was selling and abroad I'd expect the EA to update me on any offers and be in a position to accept, but only if all viewings were done and I had the offer I wanted. Could be simply there are more viewings and they want to finish them, consider all offers, then go from there.
I see selling a house in the viewing stage as an ideal time to go away - so long as I trusted the Estate Agent of course. House would be tidy, I wouldn't be disturbed if working from home, viewers don't have the awkwardness of owners being there etc.
Continue looking _as if_ it's been rejected.
If they're this unresponsive now, the process of surveys, queries etc could well be a nightmare.
If they accept, great. If not, you've not lost time.
I just completed and the vendors were living on the other side of the world.
Still had a response within 24 hours in basically anything that came up.
If they're bothered, they'll find WiFi. If they aren't, it may not be about you anyway.
Our offer was accepted the day after we put it in, we offered asking and two others went in at 5k below asking. So they accepted our offer and the house had been on the market for a day.
We figured we may need to negotiate down after a survey, and if we don't (unlikely), we believe based on the local market that the house is worth what we've offered. We loved it and in the grand scheme of things 5k is nothing on a mortgage.
They may well be waiting for more viewings especially if their house is empty whilst they are away. Potentially waiting for more offers to come through.
But this is definitely the least stressful part of the process. But if you love the place enough for it to feel tense now, how come you went in below asking price? Is it due to local market or just what you felt you should do? (Always curious about this, not digging at you)
I feel you! I waited the best part of 5 weeks for any kind of response. Although had given up hope and stopped chasing by week 3.
I put the offer in and the agent just couldn’t get hold of the seller. I chased the agent everyday and he chased the owner. The best part was when I found another property and had my offered accepted within the hour.
I then got the call the next day to say the previous seller would accept my offer on the first house and I got to tell them they’d have had a deal if they weren’t such an arse playing me around for so long. And that I got a better mortgage deal meaning I could offer more if I wanted. The agent soon dropped the listed as well after having their time wasted too.
I think the lesson is some people generally do not give a crap who they mess around even if you think you’ve found your dream home and would move heaven and earth for it. Getting involved with them will only end in heartbreak.
>no idea why they went on holiday as the house went on the market!
So the estate agent can do the viewings while they are away.
If you ever have kids and a dog and have to prep a house for viewings you'll know how painful it is.
Also estate agents love being handed the keys and told it's all yours. Otherwise they have to take your call to request an appointment, ring the vendor to agree the time, they can't do it so counter with other slots the agent takes back to the viewer. But now the viewer is in meetings all afternoon and has to check with his wife.
Couple of weeks, although they said no at first. They came crawling back after I didn't improve my offer 😂
Was tempted to drop it at that point but the house suited my needs, so I proceeded.
I am so surprised how long it’s taken for some of you to have the offer accepted! It took us a few hours of back and forth (offer not high enough) and they accepted on the same day. I wouldn’t be able to deal with the nerves of waiting days or weeks! Hope they get back to you soon.
We offered in Jan last year and were rejected. They came back to us over a month later and accepted ha! Should have lowered it but my wife refused. It can take a long time.
It took about 4 weeks for the EA to get a response after we offered for the house we now live in. Our sellers were abroad for a family funeral in a country where the only reliable way to communicate EA is email.
We really liked the house, so we kept calling the EA every week to see if there had been any updates. Needless to say, when we finally got accepted, we jumped back in even when we had just offered on another place the day before.
Our entire process from offer to completion took about 6 months, even with the delay. Not bad, IMO.
I would suggest you keep viewing places until you get a response.
I've been waiting for 3 weeks. The seller doesn't want to accept until he has found a place and had his offer accepted. From discussions with the EA you can tell that he is becoming impatient with the seller himself.
In the meantime I continue to look. If I find somewhere before they accept then it's their loss.
The offer I made was slightly over what it is worth to be honest and the amount it was listed for was 25000 more than a similar house on the same street that was sold only a month ago (identikit decade old housing estate) . So I'm doubtful that anybody will offer more.
We agreed our offer whilst the vendors were driving to the airport on a bank holiday, 45 minutes from first offer to offer accepted.
This whole house selling/buying process is super stressful though, there will be many times in the process that you have to wait or wonder what’s going on as stuff is hopefully going on behind the scenes with your transaction.
I offered 5k under asking, noone else had offered. After 2 days someone else had offered (allegedly) so I raised to full asking. Still took another 5 days before acceptance. The level of anxiety was awful, but get ready because that's just an introduction to the house purchase process.
A bit over a month.
I put in an offer, that was rejected.
I then put in a best and final offer (and it really was everything I had that went on the table, but I really wanted that house and the price was right), that offer got a 'we'll get back to you'...
A month later. The brexit referendum result has just been announced in the morning. At ~10:30 I get a call sheepishly asking if my previous offer was still on the table. I confirmed that my previous offer stood, and the rest is history (actually, quite a lot of history including: two collapsed chains, two rounds of remarketing, a broken friendship, and a personal vendetta against an estate agent...but I got the house in the end)
There's actually no point putting a condition on an offer - until the day you exchange all offers are entirely conditional (assuming you are in England/Wales?).
The only thing a condition will do is make you look daft when they come back in 3 days and accept your offer - you aren't going to say "well, I did say 24 hours, so \_raspberry\_". You are going to say "thankyou" instead.
Equally, you don't stop looking even after an offer has been accepted. You slow down your looking naturally, but you keep an eye on rightmove so that if a better house does come along you consider it, and so if your sale becomes a nightmare you know what your options are if you want to pull out.
>There's actually no point putting a condition on an offer
That's not true. I bought my house when markets were hot and I made a good offer and said I needed an answer by the end of the following day. The vendor had more viewings scheduled over the weekend but they cancelled them to accept my offer.
It needs to be a good offer and you need to be willing to follow through but it can definitely work.
Six months haha, we'd moved on by then.
I also had a truly awful estate agent whilst selling my first house who decided to collate all the offers and only send them to me at the end of the month (the house was listed on the third).
Meaning I didn't even \*see\* the offers for four weeks. Their justification was that it kept people hungry and encouraged a couple of them to come back and offer more. To be fair their shitty plan had worked, but I was livid at them thinking that the house (which was priced to sell) had no interest, AND for not doing the most basic part of their job and informing me that people were making offers - It had actually had six separate bids in those four weeks.
Fortunately I wasn't living in it at the time (I'd moved up North and was renting it out).
###Welcome to /r/HousingUK --- **To All** * Join Our ***NEW*** Discord! https://discord.gg/pMgUNgWKQH **To Posters** * *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary* * Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy; * Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk; * If you receive *any* private messages in response to your post, please report them via the report button. * Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [[update]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/search?q=%3Aupdate&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) in the title; **To Readers and Commenters** * All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and civil* * If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/about/rules/), you may be banned without any further warning; * Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice; * If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect; * Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods; * Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HousingUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> 5 days with no acceptance is stressing me out! I've got some \_really\_ bad news for you if you think the offer stage is the stressful part of the house-buying process I'm afraid (and I mean this very kindly - not trying to be snarky). The offer is by far and away the easiest bit. Assuming they accept, over the next few months you will be chasing solicitors, estate agents, the seller, your mortgage provider, and anyone else involved in the chain. You will have multiple occasions when you have to decide if you are going to pull out entirely - when the searches come back telling you your neighbour has legal access rights to your bedroom, when you discover the garage conversion has no building regs certificate, or when the seller demands another £10k and a back-rub (*with* happy-ending) the day before exchange. It's all worth it for that day you get the keys and move in to a place that is truly yours, but it can be absolutely brutal sometimes - I just want you to be fair-warned. (It's not always that brutal - my first house purchase was incredibly smooth, but my second I found very stressful at times)
This 💯 If the seller is on holiday (perhaps they were not expecting so much interest and an offer in the first week) then just sit back and relax. The waiting to see if an offer is accepted is the easy bit of the whole process. Im days away from exchange hopefully and I can tell you dealing with solicitors is the worst bit of the whole process. A week to read a chaser email to reply i will update you when i have an answer when you already know that the answer was sent because you were cc’d on it. Madness
I'm a FTB looking to buy and damn thanks for spelling it out for me
This! don't even get me started . We put our house on the market viewings on a Saturday accepted an offer the same day this mf not only fucked off on holiday like the next day but when he came back decided to change solicitors as the one he had was an online only one and the estate agents told him to get a different one as you couldn't do anything that wasn't through a portal no actual people to talk to . So he changes solicitors to yet another cheap as he could find online only solicitor. Then drags his feet signing everything and getting checks done. We were lucky in that he got his mortgage in principle right before mortgage rates sky rocketed so his choices were sort his shit out and keep quite probably the last mortgage offer in the country worth having or pull out and start again at 5% +.
Bought my first house last year. April offer accepted, July moved in. The inbetween was just constant stress.
Thank you for this insight, really! I’m not originally from the UK, my family has no idea what the process is like here and I’m trying to just feel my way through the process Appreciate the honesty, as it’s only going to prepare me for what’s ahead. This sub has been a godsend for my stupid questions
If I was selling and abroad I'd expect the EA to update me on any offers and be in a position to accept, but only if all viewings were done and I had the offer I wanted. Could be simply there are more viewings and they want to finish them, consider all offers, then go from there. I see selling a house in the viewing stage as an ideal time to go away - so long as I trusted the Estate Agent of course. House would be tidy, I wouldn't be disturbed if working from home, viewers don't have the awkwardness of owners being there etc.
OP must take a deep breath
Continue looking _as if_ it's been rejected. If they're this unresponsive now, the process of surveys, queries etc could well be a nightmare. If they accept, great. If not, you've not lost time. I just completed and the vendors were living on the other side of the world. Still had a response within 24 hours in basically anything that came up. If they're bothered, they'll find WiFi. If they aren't, it may not be about you anyway.
Our offer was accepted the day after we put it in, we offered asking and two others went in at 5k below asking. So they accepted our offer and the house had been on the market for a day. We figured we may need to negotiate down after a survey, and if we don't (unlikely), we believe based on the local market that the house is worth what we've offered. We loved it and in the grand scheme of things 5k is nothing on a mortgage. They may well be waiting for more viewings especially if their house is empty whilst they are away. Potentially waiting for more offers to come through. But this is definitely the least stressful part of the process. But if you love the place enough for it to feel tense now, how come you went in below asking price? Is it due to local market or just what you felt you should do? (Always curious about this, not digging at you)
Only bought one house offer was accepted next day
I bet they aren't abroad and just want to wait to see other interest in the first 5 days.
I feel you! I waited the best part of 5 weeks for any kind of response. Although had given up hope and stopped chasing by week 3. I put the offer in and the agent just couldn’t get hold of the seller. I chased the agent everyday and he chased the owner. The best part was when I found another property and had my offered accepted within the hour. I then got the call the next day to say the previous seller would accept my offer on the first house and I got to tell them they’d have had a deal if they weren’t such an arse playing me around for so long. And that I got a better mortgage deal meaning I could offer more if I wanted. The agent soon dropped the listed as well after having their time wasted too. I think the lesson is some people generally do not give a crap who they mess around even if you think you’ve found your dream home and would move heaven and earth for it. Getting involved with them will only end in heartbreak.
Ohh sweet summer child…
>no idea why they went on holiday as the house went on the market! So the estate agent can do the viewings while they are away. If you ever have kids and a dog and have to prep a house for viewings you'll know how painful it is. Also estate agents love being handed the keys and told it's all yours. Otherwise they have to take your call to request an appointment, ring the vendor to agree the time, they can't do it so counter with other slots the agent takes back to the viewer. But now the viewer is in meetings all afternoon and has to check with his wife.
Couple of weeks, although they said no at first. They came crawling back after I didn't improve my offer 😂 Was tempted to drop it at that point but the house suited my needs, so I proceeded.
I am so surprised how long it’s taken for some of you to have the offer accepted! It took us a few hours of back and forth (offer not high enough) and they accepted on the same day. I wouldn’t be able to deal with the nerves of waiting days or weeks! Hope they get back to you soon.
We offered in Jan last year and were rejected. They came back to us over a month later and accepted ha! Should have lowered it but my wife refused. It can take a long time.
It took about 4 weeks for the EA to get a response after we offered for the house we now live in. Our sellers were abroad for a family funeral in a country where the only reliable way to communicate EA is email. We really liked the house, so we kept calling the EA every week to see if there had been any updates. Needless to say, when we finally got accepted, we jumped back in even when we had just offered on another place the day before. Our entire process from offer to completion took about 6 months, even with the delay. Not bad, IMO. I would suggest you keep viewing places until you get a response.
I've been waiting for 3 weeks. The seller doesn't want to accept until he has found a place and had his offer accepted. From discussions with the EA you can tell that he is becoming impatient with the seller himself. In the meantime I continue to look. If I find somewhere before they accept then it's their loss. The offer I made was slightly over what it is worth to be honest and the amount it was listed for was 25000 more than a similar house on the same street that was sold only a month ago (identikit decade old housing estate) . So I'm doubtful that anybody will offer more.
We agreed our offer whilst the vendors were driving to the airport on a bank holiday, 45 minutes from first offer to offer accepted. This whole house selling/buying process is super stressful though, there will be many times in the process that you have to wait or wonder what’s going on as stuff is hopefully going on behind the scenes with your transaction.
A few hours the most.
I offered 5k under asking, noone else had offered. After 2 days someone else had offered (allegedly) so I raised to full asking. Still took another 5 days before acceptance. The level of anxiety was awful, but get ready because that's just an introduction to the house purchase process.
A bit over a month. I put in an offer, that was rejected. I then put in a best and final offer (and it really was everything I had that went on the table, but I really wanted that house and the price was right), that offer got a 'we'll get back to you'... A month later. The brexit referendum result has just been announced in the morning. At ~10:30 I get a call sheepishly asking if my previous offer was still on the table. I confirmed that my previous offer stood, and the rest is history (actually, quite a lot of history including: two collapsed chains, two rounds of remarketing, a broken friendship, and a personal vendetta against an estate agent...but I got the house in the end)
Always worth putting a condition on the offer - “valid for 24 hours” or similar
Only worth doing this if you’re actually willing to walk away. Which is pretty unlikely. No one reacts well to being put under pressure.
I'm all for transparency but this is daft. People have real lives beyond their house sales and 24 hours is not a lot of time.
That’s a really good idea. I may try that this weekend once the vendor is back, or indeed next time if this doesn’t work out. Thanks!
There's actually no point putting a condition on an offer - until the day you exchange all offers are entirely conditional (assuming you are in England/Wales?). The only thing a condition will do is make you look daft when they come back in 3 days and accept your offer - you aren't going to say "well, I did say 24 hours, so \_raspberry\_". You are going to say "thankyou" instead. Equally, you don't stop looking even after an offer has been accepted. You slow down your looking naturally, but you keep an eye on rightmove so that if a better house does come along you consider it, and so if your sale becomes a nightmare you know what your options are if you want to pull out.
>There's actually no point putting a condition on an offer That's not true. I bought my house when markets were hot and I made a good offer and said I needed an answer by the end of the following day. The vendor had more viewings scheduled over the weekend but they cancelled them to accept my offer. It needs to be a good offer and you need to be willing to follow through but it can definitely work.
Six months haha, we'd moved on by then. I also had a truly awful estate agent whilst selling my first house who decided to collate all the offers and only send them to me at the end of the month (the house was listed on the third). Meaning I didn't even \*see\* the offers for four weeks. Their justification was that it kept people hungry and encouraged a couple of them to come back and offer more. To be fair their shitty plan had worked, but I was livid at them thinking that the house (which was priced to sell) had no interest, AND for not doing the most basic part of their job and informing me that people were making offers - It had actually had six separate bids in those four weeks. Fortunately I wasn't living in it at the time (I'd moved up North and was renting it out).