Made great offer - accepted - now seller making us wait until mid-2009!

Prudent

Agree to mid June - as long as the price you pay at completion fully reflects any drop in property values between now and then. So if prices drop by 20%, you pay them 20% less than the current price.

bordercars

check with your solicitor, some of the fees will not have been paid so your losses maybe lower. but do as suggested eleswhere dont tell the seller youre not buying . we had a cash buyer pull out on completion day last year, funny thing is tho, he owns a mobile home site to the rear of our house. come the day when he wants to develop the site and the land is worth a mint, how much will the shared drive and my £125000 now house be worth. i hope i can say he will never be able to buy it.

pawpurrs

Come and buy my house for 5k under FAP, and I will move out, and you can have it next week

jenny74

pawpurrs wrote: »

Come and buy my house for 5k under FAP, and I will move out, and you can have it next week

Lol! Mine, too!

System

macaque wrote: »

candyflossing vbmenu_register("postmenu_14883209", true);

At first I wondered whether your post was a wind up but I am assuming it is genuine. We are in the middle of the biggest financial shock for more than 100 years. It was caused by inflated asset prices. You are buying one of these inflated assets. What you are doing is akin to negotiating for a larger cabin on the Titanic after the little ice berg incident. At the very least, you should wait to find out whether the ice berg made a hole in the hull.

I am not suggesting you pull out but I do strongly urge you to give yourself enough time to assess the impact of recent events. Over the past few weeks, there have been momentus and negative influences on the housing market.

In playing for time, your seller is being completely irrational. Any delays in exchanging contracts is entirely to your advantage in a market like this. It has to be a racing certainty that house prices will be at least 25% cheaper by mid 2009 and possbly as much as 60% lower than they are today.

We only just found out about their plans when we received paperwork this week. Otherwise would have been a straight forward sale.

The solicitor told us that we have to arrange any renegotiations with the estate agent. Contacted the estate agent, who was too busy to talk and was told he'd contact us next week.

The sellers are, I believe, looking to buy another property. But nothing is to stop them from renting until then, and any losses in house prices will save them money too.

Will wait and see what estate agent has to say next week and take things from there.

Will definitely pull out completely if sale cannot be completed before next year. We have found several other nice properties in the area. So not the end of the world if this falls through. May put savings into high-interest account until housing market improves.

Thanks for all the advice.

guppy

Sounds like they read about all this "short selling" and want to try it on their house - at your expense.

Incisor

candyflossing wrote: »

... The solicitor told us that we have to arrange any renegotiations with the estate agent. Contacted the estate agent, who was too busy to talk and was told he'd contact us next week.

Don't mess or get pushed about. This is a serious breach of trust by the vendor and the agent should be getting this sorted. So you should be telling them exactly when to ring you and telling them that they must ring.

But the weekend is probably on your side, because I think you do need to be quite firm about what you want and how to go forward.

I would wish that the idea for leaving the vendors to carry on as though the deal was sealed while you go and buy another would work. If you keep the same solicitor, he would be bound to inform the vendor. And if you viewed houses through the same agent, your vendor would get to know.

You could contemplate getting your solicitor to write and get an exact date. This could form evidence for a small claims court claim for surveys and costs so far - it's a long shot, but I think that the vendors have not acted in good faith here by letting you incur expenses without informing you of their intentions.

However, if surveys have come back OK and your mortgage is lined up, you could tell the agent the current offer stands for exchange withing 3 calendar months of offer being accepted and dropping the offer by 3 months Nationwide index falls for exchange after that date. On the whole though, I think this sale is going nowhere.

Paley71

"Contacted the estate agent, who was too busy to talk and was told he'd contact us next week."
How unbelievably rude..what makes your situation less important than the calls he is prepared to take?
It does sound like they're hoping they can secure a high price on their property then wait until prices have dropped further before they buy...what a cheek!

guppy

Paley71 wrote: »

"Contacted the estate agent, who was too busy to talk and was told he'd contact us next week."
How unbelievably rude..what makes your situation less important than the calls he is prepared to take?
It does sound like they're hoping they can secure a high price on their property then wait until prices have dropped further before they buy...what a cheek!

Clearly the agent now knows this is a dead duck, and can't be bothered with it any more. With timewasting sellers like that, I don't blame him.

space_rider

I think its a cheek too. It`s a house you`re buying not a MFI flat pack!