Going Crazy with our Buyer!!!

Poppit

Something really fishy is going on with our buyer!

We have a buyer for our house but as we were about to exchange contracts (a couple of weeks ago) he suddenly went AWOL for a week and was uncontactable. A week later he reappeared and asked that the price be reduced and wanted our white goods thrown in for good measure! It had nothing to do with the survey or anything like that. He didn't want to negotiate either. It was the new price or not at all. As you can imagine, it was like being hit by a ton of bricks and we wanted to pull out.

However, we didn't want to lose the house we were buying but we were only prepared to drop it by so much including the white goods, but our buyer wouldn't agree. He wanted the full reduction plus the extras. After speaking to our estate agent and telling him to tell our buyer to get lost, our agent said he would try and see if the chain would reduce their prices a little to make up the difference. He spent all week on the phone with the various agents and between them, they got everyone in the chain to do exactly that and the agents also reduced their fees and managed to keep the chain together.

This however meant that we all had to have our mortgages changed which took about a week for everyone to sort out and our buyer agreed to the new date for exchange of contracts.

However when it came to exchange again, our estate agent was told that our buyer had not left his deposit with his solicitor, nor had his solicitor received any mortgage papers from our buyer. When our solicitor rang him, our buyer's solicitor said that he was waiting for his deposit to clear only to find out later that it hadn't even been paid in. Why all these lies?


We should have exchanged this Tueday and have now decided to give our buyer just 48 hours to get his act together or that's it. We will pull out and stay where we are. We won't even try to resell.


The most annoying part of this is the amount of stress this man has caused not only to us but all those in the chain. We all went out of our way so he could have the house at the reduced price and he agreed to be ready for when we came to exchange. When it came to the crunch, he’s gone AWOL again. No-one can contact him and he isn’t returning any calls either – Just like he did the last time when it came to exchange.

Is there such a thing as a serial gazunderer?

This really shouldn't be allowed to happen. Once a price is agreed, it should stay at that price unless of course something comes up in a survey. This man has wasted months of our lives. It's not clever it's deceitful. It creates all sorts of problems for everyone involved and then to mess everyone around again on exchange is unforgiveable.

If he wanted the house at a cheaper rate he should have come clean at the beginning so we could have had the option to sell to someone else, even if it was at lower rate.

We have no recourse which is a shame as we would love to take him to the cleaners over this, the only one good thing is that he'll be black listed by the estate agents so he can't do this again to someone else!

telfordwhite

Poppit wrote: »

Something really fishy is going on with our buyer!

We have a buyer for our house but as we were about to exchange contracts (a couple of weeks ago) he suddenly went AWOL for a week and was uncontactable. A week later he reappeared and asked that the price be reduced and wanted our white goods thrown in for good measure! It had nothing to do with the survey or anything like that. He didn't want to negotiate either. It was the new price or not at all. As you can imagine, it was like being hit by a ton of bricks and we wanted to pull out.

However, we didn't want to lose the house we were buying but we were only prepared to drop it by so much including the white goods, but our buyer wouldn't agree. He wanted the full reduction plus the extras. After speaking to our estate agent and telling him to tell our buyer to get lost, our agent said he would try and see if the chain would reduce their prices a little to make up the difference. He spent all week on the phone with the various agents and between them, they got everyone in the chain to do exactly that and the agents also reduced their fees and managed to keep the chain together.

This however meant that we all had to have our mortgages changed which took about a week for everyone to sort out and our buyer agreed to the new date for exchange of contracts.

However when it came to exchange again, our estate agent was told that our buyer had not left his deposit with his solicitor, nor had his solicitor received any mortgage papers from our buyer. When our solicitor rang him, our buyer's solicitor said that he was waiting for his deposit to clear only to find out later that it hadn't even been paid in. Why all these lies?


We should have exchanged this Tueday and have now decided to give our buyer just 48 hours to get his act together or that's it. We will pull out and stay where we are. We won't even try to resell.


The most annoying part of this is the amount of stress this man has caused not only to us but all those in the chain. We all went out of our way so he could have the house at the reduced price and he agreed to be ready for when we came to exchange. When it came to the crunch, he’s gone AWOL again. No-one can contact him and he isn’t returning any calls either – Just like he did the last time when it came to exchange.

Is there such a thing as a serial gazunderer?

This really shouldn't be allowed to happen. Once a price is agreed, it should stay at that price unless of course something comes up in a survey. This man has wasted months of our lives. It's not clever it's deceitful. It creates all sorts of problems for everyone involved and then to mess everyone around again on exchange is unforgiveable.

If he wanted the house at a cheaper rate he should have come clean at the beginning so we could have had the option to sell to someone else, even if it was at lower rate.

We have no recourse which is a shame as we would love to take him to the cleaners over this, the only one good thing is that he'll be black listed by the estate agents so he can't do this again to someone else!

There will be some who will come on here and tell you that he is perfectly within his rights to do this and some will even hint that you are somehow to blame for the house price boom for daring to ask "too much" for your property.

But it's a dirty trick for sure, you have my sympathy at least.

He sounds more a time waster than a gazunderer to me, probably never had the funds to buy your house in the first place....why people do this sort of thing is unfathomable to me.

Chinahand

Poppit - you have my sympathies too. Sounds as if the regulations on buying/selling property really need a good shake up to stop the last minute 'pulls' and the gazumping which still goes on.

Davesnave

I agree with telfordwhite; he seems more of a 'wobbly' than a true gazunderer.

In the 2007/8 downturn, a similar thing happened to us, but were dealing privately with a couple. The husband began losing confidence and told us, after three months, that they were no longer interested, though I had to push him to get any response except vagueness. At the end of 2007, three months was not a good amount of selling time to lose!

We then went to an agent, found another buyer and agreed a new lower price, only for the first couple to come back to us with a mortgage arranged. They were 'horrified' to be told that our house was, by then, off the market.

Subsequently, post builder's survey, our new buyer pulled out, without explanation, but we think she just didn't have the cash for the plans she had in mind. She was still prevaricating over other property when we last heard about her 6 months later.

So, we contacted the first couple, to be told with the usual vagueness that they were 'in another place,' but that they might reconsider if we dropped the new price by another 10%..... Having already come down that amount, mainly due to their mucking about, we told them, politely, to bog off.

It wasn't a decision we regretted. We didn't achieve a much better price in the end than the 20% off we might have had with the couple, but at least they didn't profit from our double misfortune. Some really nice folk eventually had the house, we went into rented and, eventually, we found what we were looking for too, at the right price.

The housing market now is just as much of a minefield as it was then, which makes the 'wobbly' people even more damaging than they usually are. They aren't necessarily evil, just thoughtless, so the best thing you can do is forgive their idiocy and move on. I know you will be full of anger at the moment, so that will sound daft, but they really aren't worth it.

Channel your energy into re-examining your plans, re-charge your batteries, and then go for whatever you decide to go for.....Good luck with it too.

Jowo_2

A friend's brother unwittingly went out with a Walter Mitty type who told everyone that she was an area manager for a bakery chain. So they viewed properties, chose one, had an offer accepted and his fiancee popped to the property a couple of times to measure up for curtains and choose fixtures and fittings and he left her to do the paperwork to complete the mortgage. And waited.

Turns out that she was only a part-time till assistant in a branch of the bakery, had no chance of ever getting a mortgage and had just pretended to apply for one. As this transaction took place in Scotland, he could have been penalised for withdrawing but the property owners felt very sorry for him being totally duped by his fantasist fiancee (who was also having a fake pregnancy, to boot)....

Fiddlestick

Jowo wrote: »

As this transaction took place in Scotland, he could have been penalised for withdrawing but the property owners felt very sorry for him being totally duped by his fantasist fiancee

Mugs.

I would have taken him to court.

Gwhiz

As has been said on here - I doubt he's a gazunderer, more a time wasting fantasist who never had any intention of buying. I've seen them before and they stink!!!

bandofbrothers

Similar situation to a past buyer of my property.

They signed the mortgage paperwork with their solicitor and the solicitor drew down the funds and it was at this stage that the buyer went awol. No replies to all kinds of communication from their side and my side.

I believe they either didnt have the deposit or just got cold feet !

Thankfully i wasnt selling to move on to another home.

It was a second property i was just selling so no stress in moving etc.

Freddie_Snowbits

I also had a buyer like this once, he offered the best price and then went missing. After a week I offered the same to anotehr prospective buyer, who really wanted the place, and still lives there. The first guy kept coming back with bigger and bigger offersd, it was absurd and laughgable at the time. Even my Solicitor told him to stump up or shove off.

I would tell said to shove off.

danielley

I was selling a property in 2004 and the first people to see offered full asking price. The weeks went by and surveys and searches were done etc and when we were a week away from exhange & completion the buyer asked to re-view the property to measure up etc.

After they had been, I got a call from the EA; the buyer had said that the property looked different and they now weren't as sure if they wanted the property, so if I would reduce the asking price buy £5,000 they would continue.

I was fuming, I couldn't believe the audacity of the people. I was going through a painful divorce and I think they thought that I wouldn't want to risk the sale falling through. I told them I would split the difference, but they were admant that it was £5,000 or nothing.

It was a different time back then, and there were more buyers about so I told them where to go.

I eventually sold the house 7 months later after the chain falling through another time before finally selling. Unfortunately it went for £7,000 lower than the original asking price, but I took some comfort from the fact that I wasn't being held over a barrell by the new vendor.

I know all of this will seem like the end of the world right now, but I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason.... because those first buyers pulled out, I lost out on a house as I couldn't proceed quickly enough, but then when I finally sold the house, I ended up finding a much better house which has been perfect.

olibrofiz

My sympathies, I've been in a similar situation. The buyer didn't go awol but at the last minute demanded I drop £2000 & leave furniture in the house as he wanted to rent it out - I told him where to go and advised EA's to put it back on the market - this was after 3 months.

It was on the market 24 hours, the EA's paniked as the house I was buying was with them also and had been on for a while - they used some of my fee's to pay about 70% of the difference & I dropped the rest of the way. But I'm sure that's a rare thing.

Good luck, tis an absolute nightmare