Are we being unreasonable?

lyndasharp

Our current attempted purchase is only the second house I've ever bought, so I'd appreciate some other peoples thoughts and opinions on this.

I recently posted re. lack of building regs certificate for the recently installed boiler. After discussing with our solicitor he said he'd have one more try asking the sellers for the details of the certificate, and also ask again about the conservatory. The sellers have claimed it was there before 1980, which is completely incorrect as it was built about 7 years ago. We were also asking whether they had vendor consent as per the property's restrictive covenants. It's borderline whether it'd need planning permission, but it's been up for a while in plain sight....

The letter arrived with their solicitors yesterday morning. Thier response was to fax our solicitors demanding exchange by 5pm (yesterday) or they'd withdraw the house from sale. Note that although we'd signed everything we were waiting for their solicitors to confirm our suggested completion date, and had not even discussed any exchange dates with them so far. Now, that gave us 3 hours notice to exchange :eek: with still no agreed completion date, so we offered to exchange this Friday providing they replied with the proof that a) the boiler was safely installed and b) that no-one was going to tell us to knock down the conservatory after we moved in.

We've had no response from this.

Now I have to admit to a bit of worry that they're trying to hide something, and trying to bully us into exchanging before we find out. I'm not sure if that's just paranoia though! Their solicitors have been a bit rubbish, to be honest, so we also don't know if they've been giving the sellers the full picture, and they may have been told we're the ones delaying it all? Or are we just being awkward? It'd be good to get other people's thoughts on whether we're being difficult by asking for this proof - would you just go ahead without it?

We've already given up on getting satisfactory anwers on the garage, dropped kerb and driveway crossing the path outside, and just going to have to accept they've been there since 1980 - which there's a good chance they were - but the conservatory certainly wasn't. The reason for the 1980 date, by the way, is that's when they bought the house from the council, and that purchase granted them permission for everything that was already there to still be there, if that makes sense!

evoke

Don't be pressured into signing if you have doubts. Eliminate all the doubts first or you may regret it. There are plenty of houses on the market and it does sound like the sellers have probably got some dodgy builders in to do some work without notifying Building Control at the local authority, hence a lack of certificates.

gratefulforhelp_2

Ask your solicitors about the cost of an insurance policy to indemnify you against any retrospective action being taken on these points, that would protect you from being out of pocket. Ask your solicitor to request that the vendors pay for this policy, or you may consider your position in terms of the purchase.

Unless, that is, the removal of any of these things would mean you don't want the house?

They sound like they are trying to bluff you into a hasty move. Don't be bluffed.

evoke

Just be very careful with an indeminity policy. It only protects you from Building Control enforcement from your local council.

It DOES NOT protect you from cr*p workmanship or lack of safety. I have just been through this and am now spending around £10K to put rubbish work right. And that's before spending £30K on the refurbishment work that I knew about.

If there is ANY work that should have had a certificate and building control notification but hasn't, I would get builders in to evaluate the work and quote for putting it right if required and reduce your offer by that amount before you exchange.

gratefulforhelp_2

Its a good point, evoke.

poppysarah

Ignoring the problems you have with issues - the big thing is lack of completion date.

Trying to force you to sign is a bad sign.

lyndasharp

Still no call from the solicitors. I'll ring at lunchtime if we still haven't heard anything. Ironically, we're chain free, and so are they. I thought it'd be a really simple purchase...

I imagine a completion date will be straightforward to sort out - they'd asked us to complete a week earlier than we'd originally suggested, and we replied offering a date during the week they'd asked for. They hadn't replied to that option.

Evoke, very good point about quality of work. We've budgeted £20k for new garage / rewiring / redecoration / bathroom suite so we were planning to do some work to it. In a worst case scenario, we could afford to increase that if necessary, but we obviously don't want to pay too much for the house if there are problems we hadn't uncovered!

Survey came back OK (homebuyers) and valued at our agreed purchase price. However an almost identical house down the road, but with a really ugly extension, is now for sale at £20k less than our agreed price.... Not that we'd consider buying that one, but maybe that's making the sellers get a bit nervous about our agreed price. It did make us wonder a bit too, but it's so badly done I think paying £20k higher for an 'unmolested' one is better value!

evoke

Just a reminder: you cannot exchange contracts without a completion date. That is one of the major points of exchanging contracts! You can sign the contracts and leave the completion date blank and have your solicitor hang on to the contracts, but your solicitor cannot exchange contracts without a completion date (that is usually agreed by all parties).

lyndasharp

evoke wrote: »

Just a reminder: you cannot exchange contracts without a completion date. That is one of the major points of exchanging contracts! You can sign the contracts and leave the completion date blank and have your solicitor hang on to the contracts, but your solicitor cannot exchange contracts without a completion date (that is usually agreed by all parties).

Thanks, that's what our solicitor said too. That's what makes the sudden demand even more odd - that they wanted to exchange contracts at such short notice, without telling us whether they were happy with the completion date we'd suggested! :think:

simpywimpy

How desperate are you for this particular house? I would attempt to renegotiate the price if you cant be provided with the guarantees you need - depends if you are willing to risk losing the house.

lyndasharp

We like the house, but it's not our dream home (though I'd need a lottery win for that one :-) ). We need to move as I start my new job at the beginning of May, and it's 150 miles away from where we currently live. The house we're living in now is in the process of being sold so no option to delay things by more than a week or two.

We were trying to avoid renting as we have a cat and 3 chickens, but there are a few properties available in the area to rent that don't say 'no pets', and if necessary we'd start looking for places to buy once we'd moved up there. So we're thinking that it's not the end of the world if it falls through, just a bit annoying about the survey and solicitors fees.

I called our solicitor and he hasn't had any response from their solicitors today at all. They said yesterday they were going to discuss with the sellers and get back to us. Very strange! At this rate we might just decide to tell them to forget it, we don't appreciate being messed around like this when there are lots of other houses we could consider...