Buyer strung us along for 3 months then pulled out!

olly300

scarletwoman wrote: »

Ok, yes Blacksheep I am in London. So the main point of contention seems to be the lease and I have to say that anywhere I turn, people seem confused when I mention a lease in this case. I understand that when you purchase a flat in a block of flats, there is a lease, as there would be many different people sharing the costs etc. In the case of 2 flats, upstairs and downstairs, it seems less clear. When I bought the flat 10 years ago, as a share of freehold, I was told by agent, solicitor etc, that I was basically jointly responsible with the upstairs neighbour. Each of us are responsible for our own flat but we are jointly responsible for the roof, the front garden (the rear garden is ours only) and the hallway. Period. There is no ground rent, or any other thing usually associated with a lease. When I mentioned to my solicitor that the prospective buyer wanted us to extend the lease etc, she actually told me that it was ridiculous on his part to mention a lease for a flat sold as 'share of freehold' and she advised us against doing it as it would take a long time and we would probably lose the property we wanted to buy.

As already pointed out by a few posters it's the lenders criteria your ex-prospective buyer needed to adhere to.

It doesn't matter what your solicitor or even his solicitor advised, if the lender wasn't happy he wasn't getting the mortgage and your flat couldn't be sold to him.

Anyway if you extended the lease and got the roof fixed then you should have no problem selling it at some point. Just keep the garden neat.

DVardysShadow

scarletwoman wrote: »

... When I mentioned to my solicitor that the prospective buyer wanted us to extend the lease etc, she actually told me that it was ridiculous on his part to mention a lease for a flat sold as 'share of freehold' and she advised us against doing it as it would take a long time and we would probably lose the property we wanted to buy. It is now a moot point since we have now lost the property anyway. Now I am not an expert, which is why I asked the solicitor, the agent etc for advice. I know now that the lease is an all-important part of it, for some obscure reason. If I had known that, I would have extended it before! Lol, well next time better. The roof repairs were minor and our share was paid on completion together with the other guy's. Hopefully we'll find another buyer before next year, as well as another property to move into. Still thinking of going thru another agent though as I really feel like they misled both us and the buyer. Thanks all for your replies.

Ahh! Now we are getting to it. Your solicitor seriously misadvised you. She should know full well from the buying side, that a short lease makes the property unmortgageable. Some of the delay your buyer experienced would be down to you and your solicitor's misadvice. It was covered here in another thread yesterday, it is possible to put the lease extension process in motion and then to transfer the rights of that process to your buyer by a Deed of Assignment [can't find it ATM]. The solicitor should have given you a range of options and left you to decide with your buyer how to proceed.

I think this takes your buyer completely off the hook and puts your solicitor on it. It is the solicitor you need to change before you change your agent. Unless your solicitor accepts that she misadvised you and is willing to do the new conveyancing at a near nominal fee.

puddy

it doesnt matter how many flats there are sharing, the situation is the same whether its a block or 2 flats

i dont understand the full ins and outs of share of freehold but i know that even where you share the freehold (as freeholders) you still have a lease, so you are both freeholder and leasee

Nukumai

OP - I would think that your prospective purchaser developed a dose of buyer's remorse. Firstly, how on earth does anybody make an offer on a leasehold property without, at the very least, understanding the outstanding tenure...? This is a key determinant of the value of the property to a purchaser. Yet, he made an offer in May and didn't make any noises about the lease until some weeks later?

And if, as you say, there are some 70 years remaining on the lease...this is by no means 'unmortgageable' (though a longer lease would be far more likely to be accepted by a lender...and would be more attractive to a purchaser).

Chalk this one up to experience.

DVardysShadow

Nukumai wrote: »

OP - I would think that your prospective purchaser developed a dose of buyer's remorse. Firstly, how on earth does anybody make an offer on a leasehold property without, at the very least, understanding the outstanding tenure...? This is a key determinant of the value of the property to a purchaser. Yet, he made an offer in May and didn't make any noises about the lease until some weeks later?

And if, as you say, there are some 70 years remaining on the lease...this is by no means 'unmortgageable' (though a longer lease would be far more likely to be accepted by a lender...and would be more attractive to a purchaser).

Chalk this one up to experience.

On reading the thread, you will discover that the buyer was given to understand it was 'share of freehold'. The lay FTB would probably not understand that this implied a lease.

As for 70 years, the problem is not so much being unmortgageable to the present buyer, but that if the buyer came to sell, it would be less mortgageable

scarletwoman

Well, the buyer knew from the start that it was a share of freehold but, maybe due to being first time buyer in England, somehow didn't realise straight away that it involves a lease? These things are different everywhere, the guy's an Aussie, it is probably not qute the same there. Also the suggestion you made above, i.e. to start the process to extend the lease and then transfer the rights with a Deed of Assignment is exactly what my solicitor wanted to do but then he pulled out. I personally think he might have got cold feet about the area or he might have found somewhere he liked better.

DVardysShadow

scarletwoman wrote: »

Well, the buyer knew from the start that it was a share of freehold but, maybe due to being first time buyer in England, somehow didn't realise straight away that it involves a lease? These things are different everywhere, the guy's an Aussie, it is probably not qute the same there.

Come off it. You have said yourself:

scarletwoman wrote: »

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.

Your other point:

scarletwoman wrote: »

Also the suggestion you made above, i.e. to start the process to extend the lease and then transfer the rights with a Deed of Assignment is exactly what my solicitor wanted to do but then he pulled out. I personally think he might have got cold feet about the area or he might have found somewhere he liked better.

Come off it again! You say:

scarletwoman wrote: »

When I mentioned to my solicitor that the prospective buyer wanted us to extend the lease etc, she actually told me that it was ridiculous on his part to mention a lease for a flat sold as 'share of freehold' and she advised us against doing it as it would take a long time and we would probably lose the property we wanted to buy.

It is only when buyer started getting sticky about the lease that your solicitor decided to do the Deed of Assignment.


Overall, there is enough which has emerged since your first post, which you have known all along, which shows that in fact you were either misadvised by your solicitor - or took wrong choices. The way you and your solicitor have handled your buyer is quite enough to explain why he pulled out and you have blamed him quite unfairly for the failings of yourself and your solicitor.

Basically, YOU did not fully understand the lease. When the buyer's solicitor explained to the buyer that his 'share of freehold' depended on a lease which was looking in need of extending, YOU and YOUR solicitor decided to railroad the buyer into taking it as it was. You and your solicitor then had to back down.

So, no surprise to me.

• Buyer understands that he is getting 'share of freehold', but discovers he is getting a lease which needs legal work
• Buyer asks for legal work to be initiated, because he can't
• You dig your heels in.
• He insists. You back down.
• Issue about the roof emerges.

Buyer wonders

• why you have tried to dress up the lease as 'share of freehold'
• why you are reluctant to initiate extending the lease
• what relationship issues are lurking with the other freeholder
• what other building issues you might be concealing.

As for:

scarletwoman wrote: »

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!

Not doing the searches is entirely understandable given the situation. I am sure his solicitor would have advised.

Now, this is tearing quite a strip off you and you can take it or leave it. But your big failure is in how you managed your buyer's expectations at every stage. The drip drip emergence of 'bad news' and 'awkwardness' on your part at every stage is something you need to avoid next time.

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!

Frankly, I would have more sympathy with him claiming his losses off you.

Nukumai

DVardysShadow wrote: »

On reading the thread, you will discover that the buyer was given to understand it was 'share of freehold'.

Of course I read the thread...and it is a 'share of freehold' - as are a good proportion of leasehold properties.

The lay FTB would probably not understand that this implied a lease.

Eminently possible...but this is hardly the OP's fault (though the OP's own understanding of this nuance does seem strangely vague).

As for 70 years, the problem is not so much being unmortgageable to the present buyer, but that if the buyer came to sell, it would be less mortgageable

I don't disagree. But I was addressing an earlier statement that the property was, due to its short lease, 'unmortgageable'...

scarletwoman

So funny I write one thing and somehow you manage to understand something completely different. Some people obviously only want to hear what they want to hear and manage to twist everything. Ok, DVardysShadow, I'll let you have the last word although I won't bother reading it. Last time I ever try to use a forum to share experience, it's a shame, some other people on here sounded quite decent.

DVardysShadow

scarletwoman wrote: »

So funny I write one thing and somehow you manage to understand something completely different. Some people obviously only want to hear what they want to hear and manage to twist everything. Ok, DVardysShadow, I'll let you have the last word although I won't bother reading it. Last time I ever try to use a forum to share experience, it's a shame, some other people on here sounded quite decent.

Oh dear, you have been quite hurt by this awful experience at the hands of your nasty buyer.

((((hugs)))) :kisses3::kisses3::kisses3: