Buyer strung us along for 3 months then pulled out!

scarletwoman

My husband and I put our 1 bed flat on the market back at the end of May with the view of purchasing a 3 bed house in the same area. We had quite a few viewers and within a week a young man put a good offer on our flat. We found a lovely house that we put an offer on too and our mortgage got approved fairly quickly. By the beginning of July we were ready to move but we found out that our buyer's mortgage had not been approved yet. At the end of July the agent started to put pressure on us as the owners of the property we were gonna move into were getting anxious. However our buyer started making a lot of requests to do with the share of freehold. Namely he asked us to extend the lease with the other freeholder and as we were unwilling to do that as it is a lengthy process, he then just asked us to start the ball rolling with the promise that he would be liable for the costs once we'd completed. The other freeholder then started fretting and asked us to pay for some roof repairs before we left as he said he didn't know the soon-to-be owner and we went along and paid for the repairs for peace of mind.
About a week later, the agent we were buying FROM started to relax and told us they'd rather wait for us to be ready rather than put the house back on the market. But then all of a sudden our buyer could not be reached anymore and has decided to pull out, leaving us with the bills for the lease extension and a flat to be remarketed! It is now the end of August and we only got a few viewers because of the economic climate and because it's the end of the summer. To top it all off, we found out that the property we were going to buy has been put back on the market on the sly, thru another agent, although we'd been assured they would wait for us to find a new buyer! To be fair, I don't blame them as I think it's gonna be very hard for us to find a new buyer now. The problem is that my husband's teenage son has now moved in with us and he's forced to sleep in the lounge, on a camp bed. None of us are gonna be very pleased if we have to wait another year before we can finally move! Rant aside, does ayone knnow if a prospective buyer is liable for any costs if he pulls out at the last minute? We are about £ 1000 out of pocket because of him!

PasturesNew

Not liable for any costs. To be fair, any buyer would probably have asked you to do the lease extension and the roof repair bill might have put off others.... so it's not all wasted effort, just annoying.

DVardysShadow

scarletwoman wrote: »

... Rant aside, does ayone knnow if a prospective buyer is liable for any costs if he pulls out at the last minute? We are about £ 1000 out of pocket because of him!

Not what you want to hear, but you should get that notion out of your head. You are £1000 out of pocket because you are selling [STRIKE]a rubbish property[/STRIKE] a property which on investigation by the buyer did not fully meet the reasonable expectations he had when he made his offer. In particular, as the lease needed extending, this is something you would have to do yourself, as your buyer would not have the rights to do it himself for 2 years.

Annisele

As others have said, he's not liable.

However, from the point of view of getting your flat sold - how long is left on your lease?

puddy

Namely he asked us to extend the lease with the other freeholder and as we were unwilling to do that as it is a lengthy process, he then just asked us to start the ball rolling with the promise that he would be liable for the costs once we'd completed.

this is the key. he would not hae been able to complete this as he hadnt owned the property for 2 years. you were unwilling to do it so what choice did he have

scarletwoman

Ok, I have never been told about the 2 year clause for the lease for starters, whether by the agent or the solicitor! In fact when I purchased the property 10 years ago, the lease was NEVER mentioned. I bought it as 'share of freehold', which, for me, meant that i was jointly responsible with the owner of the other flat. And we have jointly paid for repairs over these 10 years. Then we put the flat on the marker the estate agent started going on about how easy it would be to make a quick buck with a lease and I told him I wasn't interested in making a quick buck by stiffing someone else. Apparently the person who owned the flat in 1984 had a lease... but as I said, it never seemed to be an issue when I bought the property. I thought a share of freehold was literally sharing the freehold, hence no lease! And, DVardysShadow, dunno how you can brand it a 'rubbish property' since you've never been anywhere near the place! For Pete's sake! I was merely remarking that although we were ready to go at the end of June and our prospective buyer had put an offer on the flat at the end of May, we were quite surprised to find out that he hadn't started doing any searches before mid-July! If he has found a problem in the Homebuyer report I would like to know what it is as I would like to fix it. To my knowledge there isn't any problem with the property. Annisele, I think there was about 70 odd years remaining on the old lease, now about to be changed to 999 years.

Valli

It is precisely for this reason that Phil and Kirsty can make LOW offers on the properties they are bidding for on behalf of buyers on their TV programme.

Because the prospective buyers have the finance in place. And that's what you employ an EA for - to market the property to people IN A POSITION to buy...who have already arranged possible finance.

And, in an ideal world they also already have solicitors instructed to do the checks.

This is where the Scottish system wins hands-down over he English one. And I speak as an English person who has not even visited Scotland (although i do plan to)

scarletwoman

Yeah all my friends tell me about the Scottish system... Well it seems my estate agent is not doing a very good job then... and who on Earth are Phil and Kirsty?????? lol

Valli

a couple who seem to be fairly skilled in the negotiating dept;)

Here we are,in a country where there are strict contract laws (invitation to treat and all that) and yet we have a system where a person can give a verbal agreement to buy a house at a price and then mess the sellers about something awful. Seems ridiculous to me, costs vendors a packet, buyersd can make a bid, get inspections done - and paid for - and then have it rejected in favour of a higher bid.
I mean - these are LIFE CHANGING decisions - not just 'which baked beans shall we buy, dear?'

DVardysShadow

scarletwoman wrote: »

Ok, I have never been told about the 2 year clause for the lease for starters, whether by the agent or the solicitor! In fact when I purchased the property 10 years ago, the lease was NEVER mentioned. I bought it as 'share of freehold', which, for me, meant that i was jointly responsible with the owner of the other flat. And we have jointly paid for repairs over these 10 years. Then we put the flat on the marker the estate agent started going on about how easy it would be to make a quick buck with a lease and I told him I wasn't interested in making a quick buck by stiffing someone else. Apparently the person who owned the flat in 1984 had a lease... but as I said, it never seemed to be an issue when I bought the property. I thought a share of freehold was literally sharing the freehold, hence no lease! And, DVardysShadow, dunno how you can brand it a 'rubbish property' since you've never been anywhere near the place! For Pete's sake! I was merely remarking that although we were ready to go at the end of June and our prospective buyer had put an offer on the flat at the end of May, we were quite surprised to find out that he hadn't started doing any searches before mid-July! If he has found a problem in the Homebuyer report I would like to know what it is as I would like to fix it. To my knowledge there isn't any problem with the property. Annisele, I think there was about 70 odd years remaining on the old lease, now about to be changed to 999 years.

I didn't brand it a rubbish property - as you can see! But the thought did cross my mind. And it is based entirely on your description of the situation.

As for not doing searches, it does look like inertia. But it may well be that his solicitor looked at the lease and realised that with just 70 years left, your buyer could easily be in the position of not being able to sell on. And that even with share of freehold, there would still be the other freeholder to negotiate with and attendant problems arising from that, as you can see. So it entirely makes sense to me that the solicitor would advise your buyer to have the lease sorted out, before having searches done, on the basis that this would be the biggest show stopper.

The time from the end of May to the end of July could be covered by

• Naivety of FTB
• His solicitor finding the problem with the lease
• Lender taking its time to communicate that the lease was unacceptable
• Discussions back and forth between buyer, lender, surveyor and solicitor [when was the survey done?]
• Messages to your agent not being passed on

Add to that mix a bit of buyer's remorse, some bad vibes over your dealings with the other freeholder and jitters over roof repairs reinforced by a mediocre survey report and the deal was off.

In short, the buyer developed the perception that it was a rubbish property. Now there would be no arguing with that. Next time around, you need to prevent the perception developing, and you would do better to accept that the last buyer might well have developed that perception.

puddy

Valli wrote: »

It is precisely for this reason that Phil and Kirsty can make LOW offers on the properties they are bidding for on behalf of buyers on their TV programme.

Because the prospective buyers have the finance in place. And that's what you employ an EA for - to market the property to people IN A POSITION to buy...who have already arranged possible finance.

And, in an ideal world they also already have solicitors instructed to do the checks.

This is where the Scottish system wins hands-down over he English one. And I speak as an English person who has not even visited Scotland (although i do plan to)

but what happens if you go through all the checks and then find the property's got terrible damp or problems with access or a myriad of other things that would make me pull out?

i wouldnt want to be forced into buying a property that i find has problems with it