Have your agent explain it in no uncertain terms, that you need a response before days end, or your last offer is terminated and you will be moving on. Only threaten this if you are willing to walk away.

It's the Holidays. They may just be away visiting relatives, partying, etc. But if it bothers you do as ncrguy says. Put in a deadline. Period. No signing, no sale.

And unless they have signed the contract, you're free to rescind it. A deadline will often get them to move however (especially when there's a commission-hungry broker in the mix).

Thanks for the help. They aren't away (actually, we were!) so I'm not sure what the hold up is, as it's just the acknowledgement that we've accepted their counter offer.

Our plan is to rescind the offer at the end of the day today and move on to house #2. We let our realtor know this plan last night so when the hour hits we can be done.

Yep, had to pull the plug on some offers in the past. It shouldn't take a motivated seller more than a day to accept, refuse, or counter (a counter by the way is a refusal).

Perhaps you misspoke or I'm just misunderstanding. You just said you "accepted the Seller's counter offer." Did you mean that? Acceptance means you accepted the counter offer in all particulars, making no changes nor requesting additional terms. So under Contract law, you ARE in contract (though your real estate agents might like additional documents for their own records). Sellers do not need to sign your actual "acceptance" of their counter offer to create a contract. You already have one if you signed Seller's counter offer. There is no additional legal requirement, though as I said, agents may tell you they need/want forms signed.

If you actually mean that you instead countered a Seller's offer with additional or new terms instead of "accepted" the Seller's counter, and Seller did not respond to your counter-offer, then the non-response is a rejection and you are not in contract. You never accepted the Seller's counter offer in this case.

The counter offer expired at the time indicated on the document. If you accepted a counter offer, you are in contract.

Why would you want to rescind your accepted offer? You can't rescind an accepted contract at this point (though there may be sufficient defect after inspection or some other issue that later permits you to rescind.). Don't you want the house?

midcentury, you are correct. I had misunderstood the process. We were waiting for their acceptance of our counter, although that counter contained only minor wording changes that were clarifications that we'd all already agreed to.

At any rate, they sent us another counter at the last minute today, about three days after our previous counter had elapsed. Again, it only contained some further wording clarifications (I have no idea why - their changes make no difference at all) and we did decide to go ahead and sign. We still have inspections and appraisal and all to get through so given how fussy they've been so far I am not at all confident we will make it through to closing. Oh well, we will do our part and if they back out, so be it.

thanks, midcentury, for the advice. We agree as to the role of the initial negotiations versus the inspections. We are not the type to fuss about minor things - with our current home sale the buyer asked us to replace some outlets and a smoke detector (we are doing it but it seems unnecessary!) - nothing we would ever worry about! We view the inspection as a way to identify major structural issues that would make us want to get out of the purchase, not a means to nickel and dime the sellers. We are hopeful the sale will go forward as is, but ready to back out if it turns out there are significant problems not visible to a cursory view.

Just say NO to the outlets and smoke alarm. Smoke alarms are about $25. The buyer can get a new one if he wants it. If yours is functional, that's all he gets. (You probably already did it, but this is the sort of nonsense that annoys me.).

You fix things like open splices and other things that can cause fires. Or leaking plumbing. You do not upgrade for a buyer.

I agreed it was all silly but you are right, we just went ahead and did it. Honestly we thought it was all a waste of time / money but it just wasn't worth making a stink over. We felt we were very lucky with these buyers - they basically signed to buy at what we considered quite a good price while we were still just shopping realtors. We'd budgeted about 10,000 bucks for repairs before listing that now we don't have to do. So we figured for a couple hundred bucks for silly repairs wasn't worth rocking the boat over. But i agree - i would be embarrassed to ask for someone to change a smoke detector!

eosinophil, you did well on your decision to repair the items you did. Sometimes one has to see the entire picture of the deal and leave emotional responses out. Sounds like you did that well. I have seen deals fall apart over less than a $25 repair.

ncrealestateguy: I bet you (and all realtors) have some stories to tell! I like hearing/reading them. Makes me feel like a very reasonable person. (Also reminds me to work on being more patient... I have a few years before I'm in selling mode and I may need more patience and a tougher hide!)

Dealing closely with all sorts of people can be both the best and worst part of this job. Sometimes it is really difficult to convince parties to move forward with the transaction instead of killing the deal just to "prove a point". Even when moving forward under the other party's terms would result in reaching their own goals.