Fed Up

like we've been saying, in england, if an offer is made and accepted it can be rejected if a higher bid comes in. that's the law.

Yes I do know about contracts thanks, if you're studying them you need help with your terms mate. A contract and a proposed contract are 2 completely different things. If a contract is proposed, that doesn't mean that there is a contract between two people.

In house buying, a contract is proposed, but until you exchange i.e sign, there is no contract between buyer and seller. While it's been a bummer for the person in this case, there are many reasons when this would come to peoples advantage when they are selling a house later in life. When you are talking about thousands and thousands of pounds there really is no room for sentiment. Harsh but fair. No doubt you won't reply to this Jim, so we will take it as read that Richie and I are right.

The law in England has got to change,once an offer has been accepted we should sign a form there and then so no one can back out .That way i wouldnt have lost so much money

I don't think it can happen here, of course you can lose your money if for any reason you don't want the house anymore, but it's your fault, it's completely different ! Or in any case i didn't know when i bought my house because i know someone made a better offer than ours, but we were the first, so .... 80 % sure we knew we'd have it.

That couldn't work. Imagine if you made an offer, it was accepted and you signed a contract. Then a week before you complete and move in you or your partner loses their job and you couldn't afford the mortgage. What then? You'd be stuck with bankruptcy.

That could happen anyway once you have exchanged contacts if you think about it

Yes but I think it's fair to say in general that there is alot shorter time between exchange and completion, than offer to completion.

Thats true but at least no one can pull out and lose lots of money

I do have some sympathy for you UKJovi, all i'm saying is that you might be grateful for having the law as it is one day in the future.

Actually it could work as this is for the most part what we do here. Once the offer is accepted it goes into attorney review. During that few days, it is possible for someone to outbid you. After that, and once it is under contract, there is no way out for both parties to get out without suffering a penalty unless the home inspection turns up something major.

If you did lose your job a week before you close, then you could back out of the house but you would still be obligated to pay the sellers attorney's fees.

I think the difference between here and the UK is that we do the home inspection once people can no longer outbid you. There it is different?