Contract signed from my end but no confirmations from vendor after 5 days

I am reading this forum for close to an year. I am working near Clayton. I was searching to buy a house around Cranbourne. And found a house, which is >600 SQM and <1km to Cranbourne station and ~1km Cranbourne Park Shopping center.

So offered 460K which is top of the asking price. Signed the contract from my side and transfered 1k as deposit. The agent confirmed me that he can get back to me after weekend. But no confirmation yet even after 5+ days.

I am willing to wait more. But just wondering, Is it normal for the agent to take the offer and delay the process?

 

Morning
Contract is not binding until communication of acceptance to you.

You could
1. email and withdraw offer;
2. email and put a time limit on receiving a response;
3. wait it out

Welcome to the forum. It's a great place as I am sure you have seen when reading for a year.

 

Thank you for replying. I guessed it. But If I withdraw after 3 days cooling period, Can I get my deposit back?

I really like the property. I feel like waiting. I smell the agent/vendor waiting for more better offers?

 

OK, Thank you. I got it.

 

I always put an expiry date and time on all contract I sign - typically 5pm on a Wednesday or Thursday.

This puts pressure on a vendor to make a decision (either Yes, No or a counter offer) AND stops them fishing for other buyers, especially over a weekend with OFIs.

Bit late for this case but should keep in mind for the next one.

 

Yes, Learning from my mistakes. I should have read more on contracts.
From the looks, He is targeting for this weekend to get more offers. Let me wait and see how that goes.

 

If you were keen on the property, won't you get in touch and put a time limit (eg before the weekend OFI ) to get a response as above?

 

I will give a try. It is better to put pressure.

However, I also don't want to break the contract soon. If there is a possibility, I would like to offer a bit more to secure than loosing it.

I am not sure is it advisable to offer more or look elsewhere. One thing I noticed was there are growing interests around that area.

 

The first rule of negotiation is always (try) to put the other party under pressure but NEVER, NEVER allow yourself to be put under pressure.

There are many negotiating gambits that allows one to do this.

 

I would do this but I put the expiry time as noon tomorrow (geez, the vendor has had the offer for one+ week).

I would also tell the REA verbally that the main reason for the Expiry Clause is that you have another property that you are interested in. You want to submit an offer on it by 5pm tomorrow (prior to the weekend) BUT don’t want to have two offers ‘on the table’ at the same time.

Make sure you have another property currently for sale so you can quote it just the REA questions you. I would pick a totally different suburb so that REA doesn’t start comparing the two properties .

 

Thank you so much for the suggestion. Will send him email soon and will ask for the expiry time

Yes. The house was open for inspection on last Friday.(Firstday on market) You probably right that he had an offer during the weekend.

Will highlight those suggestions to make it more effective.

Thank you so much. This forum is wonderful.

 

You have no advantage in leaving your contract open going into the weekend.

We had a similar thing happen on our last purchase, we offered and signed a contract on the Saturday afternoon after the Saturday morning open.

It was verbally accepted and the vendor was coming in to countersign on the Monday, which turned into Tuesday, which turned into Wednesday (you get the picture).

By Friday morning there was still no countersign (even though the agent kept telling us it was accepted and they were coming in to sign).

There was still an open scheduled for the Saturday, so I figured there's ZERO advantage to us leaving an open signed contract when the inspection goes on.

One of two things could happen...

1 - They get no one through open, or no more offers, so they countersign our.

2 - They get another offer so they come back to us and ask for more money.

If scenario 1 happened then nothing changes for us. If scenario 2 then we have to fork out more money to secure or walk away. We would have walked away in that case.

By leaving the contract open for them until after the next open we would be haning them a golden advantage.

So, I called the agent and e-mailed them and said our offer was officially rescinded if not countersigned by noon on the Friday. I explained that we understand there is still an open on Saturday and we would be happy to put in a new offer after the weekend but it would not necessarily be at the same price and conditions as this offer.

Needless to say, they had it countersigned at about 12:45 on the Friday!

Now, that may look like a gamble but it wasn't really as the scenarios don't change.... again, one of two things may have happened:-

1 - we cancel the contract, they have the open and get a new offer and come back to us (same result as point 2 above). We'd walk.

2 - we cancel the contract, they have the open and get no new offers, they come back to us and we put the same offer back in (or a little less if we were felling greedy).

As it was, they knew better to take the firm offer than the gamble and we got the countersignature.

It was worth the ultimatum for us as we had nothing to lose effectively. It was a hot market, they may have got a better offer and if so we would have lost the house anyway (we weren't going to go up).

Food for thought, put them on the disadvantage by phoneg and e-mailing them now stating the offer is rescinded by xxx day and time (give it at least a day before the next open) and tell them you "may" offer again after the next open house but not necessary as favorable an offer. Be prepared that you may lose the house, but if you let it go to another open with no countersignature then be prepared to pay a chunk more than you have already offered if they get a counter offer elsewhere.

NOT ADVICE - but it is what I would do, and have done.

 

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences.

I am going to send email soon. It makes more sense not to wait.
I will be updating the reactions after my mail.

 

They are using your offer to shop around for better offers. At the same time this is stopping you from putting in other offers since there still is a chance that they will accept it .

Don't get emotionally attached to a property and don't let them drag it out more than 2 days evey again. They are playing you and it gives all the power to them.

If you hear the excuses that the vendor is overseas or the vendor is sick and they can't get in contact or the vendor wants to speak to accountant or lawyer first then that's ********.

 

Something else you should be doing right now is looking for other properties. Will take the pressure right off you if you find other properties that meet your requirements. You can also use this to force a decision by the agent/vendor.

 

Good luck and hope you get the property !