Threatening letter from unsuccesful buyer

Pink_butterfly_3

hermum wrote: »

I accepted an offer of I think £116k for a house valued at £135k as I wanted a quick sale. It was a retired woman buying it, who was the biggest pain in the butt I'd ever encountered.
Before accepting her offer I asked the EA to ask a young FTB who had viewed if they were likely to be making an offer & said that I would give them a week to decide, there was no response from them & so I accepted her offer. The following day the FTB's came back & offered me close to the asking price, I declined as I had already accepted the other offer. (It turned out that they had been on holiday when the EA had called their landline)

No offence but more fool you.

Seriously, i'm not sure if some of you will be able to hear me from up on their high horses but this is what house selling & buying is. If anyone on here is willing to turn down 10k for the sake of not hurting someones feelings then you must have more money than sense. When I bought my first house (it was a reposession) they advertised in the paper after they had accepted our offer asking for people to submit higher offers. That is bog standard for the selling of reposession properties and was absolutely horrible BUT we knew it was a risk we had to take. It is also 100% fact that you are never safe until at least contracts have been exchanged. I'll be the first to say that it sucks and it isn't fair etc. but as it is the way it is, anybody has to accept losses are possible - in this kind of market especially.

I would be annoyed, positively raging to be honest but I would also know that there was fook all I could do about it. I'd also be honest enough with myself to admit that if someone offered me 10k more and could exchange immediately i'd probably do the same thing.

new_home_owner_3

Milliewilly wrote: »

These are the cold hard facts of house buying.

Survey done at FTB's own risk as house continues to be marketed.

FTB gets gazumped.

FTB tries it on for £5K.

FTB would be crowing how they got £10K off market value if the other buyer hadn't beaten them to it.

Some you win some you lose.

I think you are missing the point the second buyer was not even told about the first buyer coming back, they should have had the decency to at least tell them they had come back with a 10,000 pound higher offer, at least then if they still wanted it they could have raised their offer, if they couldnt raise the extra 10,000 pound then fair enough, i would see no problem then.

Bottom line if the ftb knew there was a higher offer and they couldnt afford to match it, they would have had to let it go.

I agree that the seller had to accept the higher offer, but they should have let the ftb's know before they went with the higher offer.

You never know the ftb might have paid the extra 10,000 pounds, but we will never know has the seller never gave them the oportunity to raise their offer, this is what was wrong.

Milliewilly

Wickedkitten wrote: »

If that were actually the case, the OP would have had no reason whatsoever to instruct the EA to hold fire until contracts were exchanged with buyer 1.

Well yes they would. If the OP told the EA to tell the FTB'er that there was a higher offer there was every chance the FTB'er would pull out and the backup position would be lost this is why they were not told until after exchange had taken place.

I can see why the OP did what they did -they were protecting their own position. If I had someone offering to complete first at £10K more then I would have taken the money in this case a bird in the hand and all that. If I was unemployed and 'old' and had been unsuccessful in applying for 50 jobs then no I wouldn't have paid out £££'s if I didn't have to to the FTB'ers.

The FTB'er if they saw a house they liked better would have had no qualms about pulling out.

The mistake the OP has made is publicising it on an open forum.

not_loaded

Pink_butterfly wrote: »

No offence but more fool you.

Aaah! The old ‘no offence’ defence!

Pink_butterfly wrote: »

…If anyone on here is willing to turn down 10k for the sake of not hurting someones feelings then you must have more money than sense...

It’s not about hurting someone’s feelings, it’s about lies and deception on the OP’s part, and hurting someone’s bank balance.

coper wrote: »

…Its a dog-eat-dog world out there with winners and losers on all sides and morals can be eclipsed by money, just ask our MPs…

And that, dear readers, completely justifies endlessly crapping on people of course!

Soubrette wrote: »

…Why not suggest it as a moral dilemma to the mse team…

Glad to see someone cares about morals, unlike the OP.

Milliewilly wrote: »

…The mistake the OP has made is publicising it on an open forum.

A little bit of deduction has to be forgiven here, as the OP has gently massaged the story along the way, but it seems to me that the OP has come on here to salve her conscience, and looking at the scores on the doors, it hasn’t gone too well for her.

The FTBers are trying it on with the OP in, to be fair, a fairly low-key manner, hoping (in vain) that she has got some human feeling. Not a totally unreasonable MSE stance to take, surely?

hugheskevi wrote: »

…Everyone has problems in life, it doesn't justify treating others like scum…

Beautifully put!

new_home_owner_3

Milliewilly wrote: »

Well yes they would. If the OP told the EA to tell the FTB'er that there was a higher offer there was every chance the FTB'er would pull out and the backup position would be lost this is why they were not told until after exchange had taken place.

I can see why the OP did what they did -they were protecting their own position. If I had someone offering to complete first at £10K more then I would have taken the money in this case a bird in the hand and all that. If I was unemployed and 'old' and had been unsuccessful in applying for 50 jobs then no I wouldn't have paid out £££'s if I didn't have to to the FTB'ers.

The FTB'er if they saw a house they liked better would have had no qualms about pulling out.

The mistake the OP has made is publicising it on an open forum.

I just hope the people who are buying your house gazuder, i would laugh my t!ts off, but thats all about the buying house game hey???;):cool:

We was gazumped but at least we was told about it, and the other persons offer was 15000 pound more than ours, we wouldnt have gone knowhere near that much more we offered 180,000 house was on for 200,000 pound and the other people offered 195,000.

I even know the people who gazumped us, i dont blame them or the buyer, has they told us and we could have offered more if we wanted to, but i wasnt prepared to play them games.

One day ill have great pleasure in telling the buyers who gazumped us they could have got it 15000 pound cheaper, i did think they would have offered more and then knocked the price down after the survey, but ive seen the land registry and they actually have paid the extra 15000 pound we offered.

moggylover

coper wrote: »

Quite stunned by some of the nasty responses so I thought I'd register my support for you OP.

Its a dog-eat-dog world out there with winners and losers on all sides and morals can be eclipsed by money, just ask our MPs.

IMHO you have done nothing wrong so you have nothing to worry about - ignore any future contact but keep a diary of it and keep all letters, envelopes, record any calls etc.

What a very sad object you are! Those who actually do have "morals" find it much harder to put them down for a few pennies whenever it suits them: THAT is what having morals is all about;)

moggylover

Londonsu wrote: »

Sorry I have been out all day, well you have all called me a lot of names so let me tell of of my situation and see if any of you would have done any different.

In Feb last year my husband was made redundant at the age of 60 he got no redundancy as he was a contract worker and claimed contribution based JSA, in July last year I was made redundant at the age of 54 I got approx 4 months money and we had some savings, which is why we decided to move to the Isle of Wight as properties are cheaper and we would be able to live of the equity from our flat sale We put the flat on the market in October and hoped to move Nov/Dec, I didnt claim JSA as I was not going to be looking for a job in London and couldnt apply for jobs on the Island until I had moved. At Christmas we had given up on the first buyer and found our selves in financial trouble- we only had enough money to last us until Feb, and by this time my husbands JSA had been stopped.

First week of Jan we put it back on the market, we had approx £200 in the bank and nothing coming in.

The second buyer was made aware that we were not going to take the property of the market, but wanted to move by end of Feb, which meant that we could just survive on the money we had, we also faced the possibility of losing the house we wanted as our sellers were getting anxious.

Now our first buyer came back and wanted to move in early Feb, but that gave us problems, if we lost the second buyer and the first pulled out, we would have lost the house we wanted and would have ran out of money which would mean that we couldnt have afforded to even go back to the island , let alone pay for a survey on a new house in other words we would not have been able to move, we would have been in London with no jobs and not much chance of getting one at our ages, the only thing between us and poverty was the sale of our flat and we had to protect that at all costs, and believe me we would have lost a great deal more than the second buyer.

if we had had a couple of months worth of money to live on
if we had had the money to do the legal work on a new house if we had lost the first one, we would have told our first buyer to take a hike, we would have absorbed the 10k loss and we would have done it with pleasure, but we did not have that option as it was on the day of completion we had £25 in the bank and I had to borrow money from my parents to pay for the cat to be put into kennels whilst we moved

BTW we also had a marriage value payment of 41k and 2k legal costs that came out of our equity due to us having to extend the lease which had to be paid when we sold it, that 'offer' from the lease holder was only for 6 months if we had not sold the flat, we might possibly have had to go to a lease valuation tribunal which meant that we would not have been able to sell for years.

What would you have done.

My Solicitor by the way is adament that we owe them nothing

You have my greatest sympathy regarding the problems you were experiencing, however the double standards involved in your decision to treat your second buyer so very badly are in no way excusable just because you had some financial problems. Neither of you were in a position where you could not work at all and I am certain that there were other (possibly less palatable to yourself) options available to you to get through the situation: because there always are;)

The acid test is always whether YOU would have been totally happy to have been treated as you treated your second buyer, and I suspect you would have been on here like a shot talking up a good one about how poor the ethics of people have become today. I am of a similar age to yourself, and have known very difficult times myself: I always chose not to let my personal FINANCIAL needs rob me of my decency: without decency we are not worthwhile people.

May the karma you passed on one day turn and bite you in the @rse:D

Batchy

I think morally its wrong, and personally offer no sympathy for the OP, on the other hand I would have done the same thing but I would have been open about it.
As for their losses, I would seriously considering paying out of pocket expenses, but not opportunity cost. So any outlay as a result... i would pay... receipted of course... you should be expecting sympathy, but you might feel snug about the extra money.

zzzLazyDaisy

I am having difficulty following the arguments here.

1 There is no contract race unless both parties have been issued with contracts, in which case they must both be informed of this - but that was not the case here, so the solicitor has done nothing wrong.

2 Either party is free to pull out of a house sale/purchase right up until contracts are exchanged. This results in all sorts of gazumping and gazundering, and leads sellers to do what they think is best for them in order to achieve a sale, especially in the current market where a sale can drop through at any time. In this case the seller did nothing wrong in law, and in my view it is unreasonable to impose a moral argument on a financial transaction.

3 Despite the above comments, I really cannot understand why OP decided to publish what happened on a public forum - it seems to me that is just inviting people to have a pop!!

RX-78

I think this thread highlights the great problem we have as a ntion. On one hand we have money clenching materiaristic americanized "rights" people, and on the other we still have old British live for the country "duty to the society" people.

I'm not saying which is better but it is clear which kind of people are causign social problems in this country.

p.s. I find it interesting those in support of OP seems to be deliverately ignoring the posts pointing out the fact OP did not tell the FTB abut accepting another offer