Agent dragging things out....

X

Xjas

Ok, just want to know if this sounds normal or not.

Looked through a property last Saturday (in NSW), made and offer and after a bit of back and forth by Monday afternoon the vendor and I had come to an agreement on price.
Its now friday and my solicitor still hasn't recieved a contract from the vendors solicitor, rang the agent again today and he now says the vendors solicitor is waiting on a 149 certificate for the property.
It seems like they trying to drag out exchange to try and get a better offer, or use my offer to push up someone else maybe.
I have pushed the agent as far as I feel I can, if this drags out into the middle of next week I'm not sure how I should proceed, seems like all I can do is wait and hope the agent isnt going to stitch me up.
Dont want to loose the house as it will eventually be our PPOR but at the same time I have offered the limit of what I can afford so if I have to walk away I will.
 
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Sounds like you can already see what is probably going on here. At the moment, they have everything in their favour. I would suggest that in future you always put a time limit on your offer.

Cheers

Jen
 
The giveaway is whether or not the agent is having an OFI on Saturday or if it has been cancelled.

How long has the property been on the market? If it has been on for a while then the s149 may be out of date. Otherwise, why isn't it attached to the contract?
 
Selling a property without a valid S149 is a big no-no. Contract is invalid without it. Vendor will be waitinig on it from the council before they can exchange.
 
No open house on the weekend but most agents in the area dont hold opens for some reason.
The house has been on and off the market for best part of 12 months. According to the agent the owner decided to sell but then kept changing there mind however the owner has now finally decided to sell. The agent say they turned down and offer higher than mine 4 months ago.
According to the local council the last 149 issued on the property was in 2001 although it was last sold in 2006 so I dont know if that is 100% accurate.
 
call and tell the agent you will be withdrawing your offer by saturday 12 noon if you or your lawyer doesn't get the signed contract.

If they don't have the S149 thingie ready no one else will buy from them anyways.

If they do already have the S149, you will miraculously get the contract by tomorrow noon :D since the owner has agreed to sell it to you and wont want to risk delaying the deal.

Always be ready to walk away from the deal and only give the agent 1 or 2 days to get things done. 1 week to close a deal is way to slow.

Chances are the REA is hawking your offer around :D Property on and off the market for an extended period usually just means seller expectations are too high and keeps changing REAs as most REA have 2 months contract to sell a prop.
 
Is your offer in writing? If not submit it in writing with an expiry date. That way there's no he said, she said. Everything is clear!!!

If your offer has no expiry why wouldn't they wait to see if they get a better offer?
They might just need a push along.
 
Time limit your offer or simply walk away and tell them there's another property you're interested in. If there's one thing I learned in my 12 month property search is that whenever I missed out on one, about 2 weeks later I would find the next PPOR that I wanted to buy.
 
If found with my purchases in Melbourne and Qld that agents just don't follow up. Numerous times I've had to follow up with second and third calls and emails for contracts and even with the new purchase a few weeks ago, 2-3 follows ups for every single thing. :(

Like the others have said, in your case, the agent may be fishing for better offers and a time limit is always best ...as long as you are prepared to walk away.

One thing my friend had done was advise the selling agent he was putting in offers on 6-7 properties today in X suburb and advised the agent on which ones and whichever is accepting first in his range, he will be buying. That got everything done in 48 hours. However this approach needs multiple suitable properties.
 
Xjas said:
....rang the agent again today and he now says the vendors solicitor is waiting on a 149 certificate for the property.
Click to expand...

This is fairly common atm. Agent gets a contract of sale from the vendor's soli missing the 149 certificate - which they are advised is 'on its way'. The agent starts marketing and finds that there is a delay on the 149. It has happened to us numerous times - so probably not a conspiracy to get you to pay more.

Just relax and wait. Do your other DD in this waiting period. 149's don't tell you much (apart from zoning, flood & bushfire notations - which you probably already know if this property is in a regualr resi street).
 
Thanks for the advice everyone, as this will be our PPOR eventually it would be difficult for me to walk way just because a time limit for my offer expired. It has taken us 2 year of looking in the suburb before we put an offer in on anything.
I think I'll just have to wait it out.
 
Xjas said:
Thanks for the advice everyone, as this will be our PPOR eventually it would be difficult for me to walk way just because a time limit for my offer expired. It has taken us 2 year of looking in the suburb before we put an offer in on anything.
I think I'll just have to wait it out.
Click to expand...

Good luck with it X.

We recently issued a formal written offer for our PPOR (to be IP3) to the agent with an expiry and received absolutely no acknowledgement or response before or after the expiry, on the offer itself or a simple, separate query.

So just this morning issued a signed contract with .25% deposit direct to the vendors solicitor.

The agent could be acting on the vendor's instructions and this may backfire, unfortunately it is a seller's market so just have to deal with it...
 
Actually its not the agent that has been the problem in this case, the vendors solicitor is being difficult to contact. My solicitor sent them an e-mail on Tuesday say we would not be paying their land tax, still haven't recieved a reply, but in fairness this could also be the vendors indecision causing problems.
I'm sure it will all work out, had my building inspector go through on Wednesday and there are some red flags to deal with so I'll have those issue sorted before we exchange now. Dont think I have much competition for the property, building inspector was very confident there has not been any other building inspections on the place as he said no one had been in the roof space for a very long time.
 
Call the agent, tell them to ring the solicitor immediately and get them to sort it out. Tell the agent that this isn't acceptable and you won't be stuffed around. If they want to sell the house then sell it.

Then go quiet.
 
Actually I had the same experience before, but it is really not the agents fault - same situation, house actually been on market for 2 years (it was a mortgagee sale), s149 expired ages ago, and it took them 3 weeks to get a new s149
 
OK, little update, we still haven't exchanged contracts on the property.
My solicitor has finally got an acceptable contract for me to sign but I had arranged an invasive inspection to look at two water entry issues my building inspector had found so wanted to wait until that was completed.
Funny enough the invasive inspection was this afternoon and I got a e-mail from my solicitor at 6 this morning saying the vendors solicitor had e-mailed him all of a sudden wanting me to urgently sign the contract and a 66W so we could exchange. For obvious reasons I told them we would wait for the outcome of the invasive inspection before exchanging.
The outcome of the inspection was about 4k work to rectify the damage caused by the water entry, the leaky bathroom shower had been leaking for quite a while and done some damage.
I contacted the agent and suggested that the vendor should repair the faults or renegotiate on price, I offered 2.5k lower than the previously agreed price, since it was going to cost me 4k to repair plus the $500 I am out of pocket for the invasive inspection. I think this is a pretty good deal for them but the agent didnt seem too confident but I offered to exchange uncoditionally with a 66W on monday if they accept that price so heres hoping.
 
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