Vendors wont take their house off the market

jonnyw_2

When you accept an offer on a house you could be saying one of 3 things

a) I wish to sell to this particular buyer at this particular price

b) If someone else comes along and offers more then i wont be selling to you

c) I am happy with the price and will stick to that but i dont care who pays it so if someone comes along who can proceed quicker then i will sell to him.

I personally am a c) man. but i would tell a buyer that straight when i accept his offer so he knows where he stands. Why should i be inconvenienced by the buyers personal problems like getting a mortgage, selling his own house etc?

D_P_Dance

The seller is not being unreasonable, merely cautious. get a survey done, get your finances sorted, and then ask them to remove the property.

lush_walrus

The vendor is being totally sensible, it doesnt matter how much you want the house, or your buyers want to buy yours the offer is not proceedable (and neither is your buyers, unless they do not need the sale of their property to proceed). Only a complete chain is actually proceedable in any instance.

Look at it this way, the vendors could take their property off of the market, as you have yours, and sit and wait for your buyers property to sell. Now, your buyer's property may be a complete overpriced, run down, turkey that isnt going to sell in a million years. So, time ticks by, 3 months, 6 months, a year...How long should they wait till the turkey sells?

Really your EA should have advised you not to take off of the market, it is perfectly normal as the only one at the moment who is stuck is you.

One option for you, which my staff often do in circumstances where a chain is incomplete is negotiate to have the property you wish to buy taken off of the market for x weeks. Generally, we go for 6 weeks as this is a fair time for a property to be pushed harder to sell, and allow for any price reductions etc that may aid it to move. So, you could try requesting that. It is an act of kindness to actually do this, rather than anything else, so try to get the EAs you are potentially buying through to work on the vendor's good nature and you may get it.

So, that will buy you a certain amount of time. Get your EAs to hassle down the chain and get onto your buyers and try to get them to pull out the stops to get their property sold. The EA should also get onto your buyer's EA ASAP and find out exactly why it is not selling, and what can be done to push it more. If, it is in the same area and your EA has a good relationship with your buyer's EA you may even get your EA to advertise it for your buyers too, or you may be able to get your buyers and their EA (if they are still in their contract period) to go multi. If your buyers are not keen to pay the extra fees generally applicable to multi agency then see if your EA (or get your buyers to) will actually take it on for the same fee the other EA is getting, and get them to do the same. IF your EA is not in the same area, then still see if you can get your buyers to go multi (by offering the same deal of whatever commission) and or reduce the price of their property to get the thing sold.

The thing with EAs is that the good ones are creative in their thinking and do anything to get a sale pushed through and get the chain complete. The bad will sit back and do nothing till all hell breaks loose. Yours seem to be the latter, so get pro active yourself and with your buyer get their property sold and then you have absolutely no problem. The above are just some of the things that I get my staff & managers to do under these circumstances, there are plenty more options that can be adapted, but that is a start. As your EAs aren't thinking for you, if you really want this property, rather than viewing it as an injustice or wrong of society get out there and push the EAs, the vendors, your buyers and their EAs into action.

If you take that advice and your buyers really are keen then you will 99% get what you want and not have to worry. If the property is not really worth the effort then keep looking and find something else, by the time you do that your buyer's property may well be sold.

Remember all EAs only get paid when a sale goes through, so will adapt from normality in 99% of cases, as some commission is always better than none.

So, stop looking into the case as unfair and get positive and move everyone along.

lush_walrus

tigerminxy wrote:

I think the consensus here is that the property law in England is bloody stupid.

Yes I agree, the thing is no law would ever govern the buying of something when the funds are not available. Infact if there was a law in place, it would definately make sure that there were plenty of clauses in there to cover non paying buyers, which if this were proceeded upon under these circumstances could well end up being.