Delay in vendor signing contract

Good morning PC gang, after some advice,

We viewed a property Saturday, made offer Saturday arvo and forwarded a signed contract to the agent. Our offer was little over the "Offers over" guide price. Within an hour we received a call to say that verbally our offer had been accepted and that we should receive an email with the signed contract on Sunday. The only condition we placed was a building inspection.

Not that we actually expected to receive the contract on a Sunday, but assumed Monday morning. 3 emails from the agent Monday stating the contract would be through within hours, vendor was signing with his solicitor. However we still have not received it.

Is this strange? Why the delay? Every property I have ever purchased the contract was signed almost immediately. The agent said she has no concerns about this, and that it is the norm for people to sign with their solicitor in Hobart.

 

They're a little less hyper than in the big smoke.

 

Hi

It can often take a while to get vendor's to sign. One of ours was in Azerbaijan and often incommunicado for days at a time. Also it is not just signing, it is often finding somewhere to print out the contract and scan once signed that is the delay

 

What I imagine when someone tell me that they need to get their printer working:

 

Yeah I think that's probably all it is. If the agent had said up front that it might take a few days I would not have been worried about the delay.

 

Depending on what you have via email it may already be enforceable. The court's interpretation of the Electronic Transactions Act as applied to real estate contracts is pretty broad in QLD. Not sure about other states.

 

They are probably conducting a Dutch auction by getting other potential buyers to up their offers

 

that's what i was worried about @Terry_w but they didn't ask us for more money, just accepted what we offered.

all good now anyway, just received a text from the agent to say she had received the saved contract and would send it through shortly. phew!

 

Have a look on realestate.com.au, is there another open house scheduled in the next few days?

Similar thing happened to us, everything was verbally agreed on the Saturday arvo, then the vendor delayed and delayed and delayed. It got to the following Thursday and they still hadn't signed even though they kept promising they were going to and one excuse after another etc...

I noticed there was another viewing scheduled for the Saturday morning, so I figured they were dragging us along until then in case they got another offer.

So, I wrote to the agent with a sunset clause and said if it wasn't signed by noon on Friday our offer was formally withdrawn. I explained that we were happy to re-negotiate in the future if they were still interested but it would not necessarily be at the current offer.

The way I saw it we had nothing to lose, there was ZERO benefit for us in having an offer on contract for the vendor to take into another open house, but if someone was keen at that that open then they could have used our offer as a way of increasing interest then playing us against each other.

The way I saw it, they would either sign before the open as agreed, or if our offer lapses, they take a gamble on another open, get no interest and we put in a second, lower offer afterwards. Or, they go to another open, get another and come back to us - either way no worse a situation that had we left the offer on the table.

Needless to say, it worked, they signed on the Friday morning and cancelled the Saturday open.

 

...just saw your next reply @Pat - glad it's working out!

 

I always provide a sunset clause similar along the lines:

This offer expires at 5:00pm on 1 August 2015.
I look forward to your earliest reply and would be willing to an immediate exchange of contracts should this offer be accepted.
Name: XXXX
Signature: Y
Date: 30 July 2015

 

we were planning to do a similar thing if we did not hear by the end of wednesday. i didn't want them to be pressured by putting a time limit on the original offer, but think i will just have to do so for the next purchase. i knew they had someone who wanted a second inspection monday, so i am very suspicious they were waiting until after that.

the property never had any open homes so i couldn't rely on that. it was tenanted and i was aware that the tenant was not overly flexible to extra inspections.

so relieved now!