Gazumped by Acorn Kennington Branch! My wife and I had an offer accepted on a property listed by Acorn. The sale went to sealed bids as were many offers. We submitted our offer, at nearly £30k over the asking price, and it was accepted by the seller. The agent made a big show of calling my wife and I to congratulate us and a letter came in the mail confirming our offer was accepted. We liked that it went to sealed bids as we had been gazumped on another property (with a different agent) one month before and I didn't want my 4-month pregnant wife to go through the stress of being gazumped again. Although I knew that sealed bids didn't make the offer and acceptance legally binding, I was reassured by the process and the fact that the agent removed the property from their website the minute our offer was accepted, so we instructed solicitors, paying £400 in advance to them and ordered a £350 survey for the property. In addition we paid a £130 mortgage application fee. Two days after we paid, we got a call from some junior at Acorn saying 'unfortunately the property is under offer'. I replied that I knew that as we were the ones having made the offer. The caller said a manager would call me back. Later we received a call from Acorn's Steven Morton saying that the seller had received another offer and that therefore another sealed bid was expected from us, giving a few hours to think about it. I asked why it was possible as the previous sealed bid had a deadline and the agent simply said that by law every offer had to be taken to the seller, meaning they had chosen to ignore their own sealed bid procedure (while at the same time asking us to submit another one...) We increased our offer by a little to the absolute limit we could afford, but it was rejected by the seller (Neil Arun Nijhawan) who decided to go with the higher offer, apparently a buy to let investor according to Acorn. My wife is now in tears at having being gazumped again and as she is Japanese, doesn't understand why people would go back on their word like that, something that would be highly dishonourable in her country. I had to explain to her that as far as property in concerned in the UK, it is unregulated and sales are not binding until contracts exchanges, meaning cowboy agents and greedy sellers can do whatever they want, especially in the current market.