We've been Gazundered!

Gazundered

This is happening a lot more and more and should be made illegal!

Someone makes an offer on your house which you accept. When the chain is complete and you want to exchange contracts your buyer suddenly demands a reduction in the price or he pulls out! He will not negotiate with you!

If you are keen on having the house of your dreams and don't want the chain to break down, you have no option but to agree.

Anyone who does this has no morals and does not care one iota about you or anyone else. If you are brave enough to pull out and say no, he will move on to his next victim and will carry on until he gets his way! They don't seem to care that they've spent hundreds on a survey and wait until the last moment to get you!

Watch out - it's becoming quite popular with first time buyers!

mynameisdave

Not great to hear whats happened. Remember, you don't HAVE to sell to him.

Also, Gazumping is not illegal either as far as I know.

Gazundered

Thought gazumping had been made illegal - well it should be!

Easy to say you don't have to sell but when you have your heart on something and don't want to lose it, they have you and its a disgrace!

What goes around as they say!!

Frogletina

Due to falling prices over 2 years (originally my house was on for 235k - and I reduced it to 210k) I accepted an offer of 190k last year. Then the day before I went on holiday the offer was dropped by another 15,000 and I ended up having to negotiate from abroad using a public payphone. Eventually I agreed to 180k because of the property I wanted to purchase - but the gap between the two properties was now £50,000, a lot more than I envisaged when I started looking for a new place.

However, I have had no regrets moving - it's the best thing I ever did, despite the cost!

shaven-monkey

Gazundered wrote: »

When the chain is complete and you want to exchange contracts your buyer suddenly demands a reduction in the price or he pulls out! He will not negotiate with you!

This is a negotiation tactic. Until the contract is exchanged nothing is settled.

How exactly would you make it illegal?

Quite common for first time buyers... the people who have been almost totally priced out of the market by people believing that a pile of bricks is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and can ONLY increase in value... and you think they're immoral for wanting to get a better deal.

Why should someone care that they spent hundreds on a survey if they can save thousands or tens of thousands by negotiating hard?

All is fair in capital negotiation.

pararct

The issue is the sequence of events.

Because a significant time elapses between the offer and the deal being finalised at exchange of contracts a lot can happen.

The only way to solve this is to shorten that time period.

The last Government tried to start to address the issue but failed..

As for being an underhand tactic it takes 2 parties to make a deal, neither has to agree with it.

zaksmum

If a seller refuses to accept the lower price though, he'd have to start all over again with remarketing the house...almost certainly at a lower price as house prices are falling, especially here in the north west.

I've seen so many houses lately which have been flagged as "under offer" then gone back as available a couple of months later when the sale has fallen through, and at a lower price. In today's market, if you have a buyer, you wouldn't want to lose them.

House prices are ridiculously inflated anyway. Whatever it takes to bring them back down again is more than welcome as far as I'm concerned. Interest rates won't stay this low forever.

des_cartes

Gazundered wrote: »

This is happening a lot more and more and should be made illegal!

Someone makes an offer on your house which you accept. When the chain is complete and you want to exchange contracts your buyer suddenly demands a reduction in the price or he pulls out! He will not negotiate with you!

If you are keen on having the house of your dreams and don't want the chain to break down, you have no option but to agree.

Anyone who does this has no morals and does not care one iota about you or anyone else. If you are brave enough to pull out and say no, he will move on to his next victim and will carry on until he gets his way! They don't seem to care that they've spent hundreds on a survey and wait until the last moment to get you!

Watch out - it's becoming quite popular with first time buyers!

Given the 2-3 month time lag between offer and contracts, house prices can easily fall by 5-10% and maybe more in the next couple of years. As someone looking to buy in a couple of years, i would only make an offer now on a property at where I expect the value to be in 2 years. So for a house 'valued' at 200k today, I would offer no more than 150k. I would be upfront about this though.

Pont

I don't know why we don't do as in France.

When an offer is made, and accepted by the vendor, both parties have to pay 10% of the purchase price to the notaire. Both parties then have a 8 day 'cooling off period', during which time either party can pull out without penalty. If after the 8 days elapse either party wishs to pull out they lose their 10% deposit which is paid to the other party. At least this way the wronged party, either the purchaser or the vendor, get some recompense for being messed around.

Eric1

Gazundered wrote: »

Anyone who does this has no morals and does not care one iota about you or anyone else.

that's a good description of some estate agents and one seller I had to deal with.

ILW

The choice is pretty simple, accept or not then see what happens.
A first time buyer with the money has a whole lot of choice at the moment. You have to bear in mind that no contract has been agreed yet.