Buyer pulled out right before exchange!

DVardysShadow

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Yeah, I think we've got that now.

As it is 3 posts from a new user, repeating another user on this thread but with a subtle change, I am calling :spam:

Ivana_Tinkle

You've got no chance of reclaiming the fee from the buyers, but you could question what exactly it's for. Most of the work should be transferable to the new sale, so unless there was something complicated about the first one - eg he had a lot of queries from the buyers to deal with - it seems quite high.

AlexSnow

Ivana_Tinkle wrote: »

You've got no chance of reclaiming the fee from the buyers, but you could question what exactly it's for. Most of the work should be transferable to the new sale, so unless there was something complicated about the first one - eg he had a lot of queries from the buyers to deal with - it seems quite high.

It depends a lot on what he is charging you for the whole sale. Yes, some conveyancers do no sale no fee, to do this they have to charge more to all of their clients when they do go through (to cover the cost of the work they aren't charging for when it does go wrong).

My firm prefers to keep our conveyancing prices low and if a transaction falls through we charge for the additional work. We are upfront about this in our initial correspondence and discussions with clients. This additional work includes redrafting the contract, duplicating correspondence, telephone calls, dealing with a new set of enquiries etc. £175 + VAT seems very reasonable for a sale which has got to the point of exchange.

Alex

Errata

There is no fault, they changed their minds just as you could have done, and their financial loss would have been far greater than yours

primaryteacher

Errata wrote: »

There is no fault, they changed their minds just as you could have done, and their financial loss would have been far greater than yours

Hmm... thanks for the sympathy! I think anyone who strings you along for over three months (I have had buyers pull out before but never this late in the day), who costs you over £200 in fees, who visited 4 times and then phoned personally at inconvenient times on several occasions asking questions about how the central heating works etc (I was obliged to give her my number on one of the visits against my better judgement), who asks you to carry out work at your own expense, which you do because you want to be straight & fair with people (ie putting in a new fan in an en-suite we never use but which they would have) and requests you take certain fixtures with you which they don't want but which we would have left otherwise (we have vacated the property) such as bookcases bolted to the wall... is at fault!!

As they decided NOT to have a survey and didn't need a mortgage - I doubt they would have lost much at all had we been the ones to pull out!

I can understand that there would be fees for work done and apparently these would have been more than I am being charged but some have been deducted already to allow for the fact that some work can be reused with our new buyers.

However our new buyers seem to be serious and we can only keep our fingers crossed. My estate agent (who was also the first buyers estate agent) tells me that their own sale has since fallen through - so all I can say is what goes around, comes around!

vax2002

No sold sign until you sign !