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Withdrawal Allowance
Lella
Posts: 25 Forumite
Hi :
Can you help? We have been asked to pay a withdrawal allowance
to our buyer, as a sweetner cos they were going to pull out. Is this a regular thing?
Cheated.
Can you help? We have been asked to pay a withdrawal allowance
to our buyer, as a sweetner cos they were going to pull out. Is this a regular thing?
Cheated.
0
Comments
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This "withdrawal allowance" is properly called in real life "blackmail". It might be a regular thing but you should tell your buyer to naff off! If you pay them a fiver now they'll be back tomorrow demanding a pony off you tomorrow. If they want to play games tell them to withdraw their offer and be done with it and then you can find another, more decent buyer who's prepared to pay a fair price without descending to the moral depths0
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Never heard it called that before, but some buyers have a nasty habit of asking for a price reduction at the last minute.
How far have they committed (survey costs, etc)?
Personally I wouldn't entertain it - tell them you will go back on the market unless they are able to proceed.0 -
All fair in house buying. You'll likely never see them again and a few grand in your pocket is better than in theirs. Be prepared for it but sod it, if you can do it, why not ?0
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property.advert wrote: »All fair in house buying. You'll likely never see them again and a few grand in your pocket is better than in theirs. Be prepared for it but sod it, if you can do it, why not ?
Exactly why vendors should not give in to blackmail - it just encourages others to try it on!0 -
What they're after is getting the highest mortgage they can get away with and conning the vendor to pay their conveyancing costs. If they don't think they're paying a fair price they should make another, lower offer before exchange0
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I would feel cheated too. It is blackmail. How far into the process are you? If you haven't got an exchange of contracts they can come and come again for their 'withdrawal allowance' and still walk away without buying. Be very wary.0
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It's a dodgy area for mortgages and potentially stamp duty as well if you cross a threshold - this could count as a gifted deposit, which now has to be reported through the solicitors to the land registry.
Don't pay any money to them. If your agent is advising you to then your agent is not acting in your interests. If they are asking for a reduction and if you are still happy to sell at that price and believe that this is all that is required then reduce your asking price, but that's up to you.0 -
Thank you to those who replied.
The situation is a bit complicated. We sold to buyer in May, but then they lost their buyer, so we had to wait for them. Then we withdrew from the house we were buying cos of bad results from searches. We dont want to loose our buyer cos we got as very good deal, and actually our time is running our cos we owe the bank money. We gave ourselves a year, but now we are getting close. We found another property and our buyer found another buyer so all was sweet. This was around November. Everything was sweet and buyers stated they wanted to complete before
Christmas which we were ok with. However, the soliciors took simply ages with the new searches, buyers got agitated but said they'd wait til New Year, mid Jan. Just before Christmas we got results, and guess what they were bad again. We kept it to ourselves cos we didn't want to ruin CHristmas for everyone, instead we persevered and search for
another property, found one , made an offer and it was accepted. We decided that to keep our buyer happy, we'd continue with the new property without having searches (cash buyers) and we went for a chain free to speed things up. We asked the solicitors to complete mid Jan if possible. They said not possible, still had paperwork to do.
When we explained to our EA thats when he mentioned a £5,000 withdrawal allowance to keep our buyers waiting to complete February.
We negotiated figure down to £3,500. but considering we waited most of the summer for them,(I know we messed up too) We still feel cheated!0 -
sorry, i am lost, what is a withdrawal allowance. why are buyers asking for them - withdrawing what?0
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