Urgent - buyers pulling out!!

andie_303

Trying to keep this as simple as possible....

We are buying a repossessed new build house from RBS - they have the worlds most obstructive and slow solicitors that when the do answer questions seem very unhelpful to our solicitors.

We were assured by all solicitors involved it would be completed before Xmas however it took RBS's solicitors over a month to get contracts to our solicitor - these were then full of errors and omissions. Our solicitor writes to theirs regularly and gets no response so she has resorted to post and emailing the same thing in order to try and get a response.

6 days before Xmas our buyers rang saying they wanted to exchange and complete on the same day - but they wanted that day to be in 48 hours.

Our solicitor said this was impossible and she felt the week beginning the 7th Jan was much more reasonable - this was communicated to the buyers solicitors.

Today we received a note through the door from our buyers asking us to call them. We have just done this and been informed that if we do not confirm with them by 12pm tomorrow that we will exchange and complete on Monday the deal is off.

I believe them to be absolutely serious and not just bluffing.

We have a sticking point on the house we are buying of the road not being adopted and this has been referred back to our mortgage lender. Our solicitor can go no further until they say its ok - as they had been informed that completion could be done for week beginning the 7th (not on the 7th) our solicitor thought that natwest would have responded in time for us to be able to continue to this time frame.

So I guess my question really is do the 2 transactions have to be completed on the same day? If I allowed our buyers to complete on say Monday and we completed on our purchase (subject to the lender being on about lack of s.38) a few days later is this possible? Or would I face an early mortgage repayment fee and basically be starting again from scratch.

My house was on the market for 18 months before sale and we took £40k off the asking price so I daren't call their bluff and lose the sale

Oli.s

What are you going to do with all your possessions when you complete on your current house, and where are you going to live, as soon as you complete its no longer yours and you need to be out.

andie_303

Oli.s to be honest we were moving very little as we had plans to buy new for virtually every room. We have access to storage and somewhere to stay it's more down to if I would face a hefty early mortgage repayment if we don't do both transactions on the same day.

Yorkie1

If you have somewhere to stay, and can put your things into storage, then if you are sure that it's a deal breaker for your buyers you might want to consider going along with their demands.

However, what do you do if the house you're buying takes a little longer - or even quite a bit longer - to resolve? Or doesn't resolve at all? How long can you sofa surf?

The other thing which confuses me re. your post is the reference to an early repayment fee. Are you porting your mortgage? And if so, would your mortgage provider allow a few days' delay?

If you are porting your mortgage and MUST complete both elements of the sale / purchase on the same day, then it seems you must say no to your buyer - explain why, and take whatever flows as a consequence.

andie_303

Yes we are porting the mortgage it only has 4 months left to run on the current fixed rate and up until April we are liable for an early repayment fee of I believe £3.5k.

I'm worried that if I allow my buyers to have the house on Monday then I'll get smacked with that fee for the sake of a few days (hopefully)

LallyHay

We are in a similar position, but our buyers buyer actually did pull out just before xmas because it didnt exchange & gave them no warning..so now our chain is broke and we are all devestated. Hope you dont suffer the same! As for mortgages, with the Woolwich we have 30 days to port it, so check as your company may do similar?

andie_303

Thanks LallyHay - it makes you wonder why they'd spend all that money and pull out for the sake of a few days - the galling part is we turned down a higher offer (£6k higher) 4 weeks ago as we wanted to honour the agreement we'd made with them - shows you where being nice gets you!!

G_M

* if you are porting your mortgage, usually you can do so with a (limited) gap between selling/buying. But only your mortgage lender can confirm this!

* No reason you can't sell first and buy buy later. Provided you vacate on the day you sell which means having somewhere to go.

* it also means having a contingency plan in case your purchase falls through completely. Could you still stay wherever it is you are going temporarily?

spacey2012

Do your agents have details of the other offer ?
Might be worth chasing them up and let them gazzump the other lot.

andie_303

spacey2012 wrote: »

Do your agents have details of the other offer ?
Might be worth chasing them up and let them gazzump the other lot.

Wouldn't that be amazing! No I'm afraid they purchased elsewhere when we declined

andie_303

G_M wrote: »

* if you are porting your mortgage, usually you can do so with a (limited) gap between selling/buying. But only your mortgage lender can confirm this!

* No reason you can't sell first and buy buy later. Provided you vacate on the day you sell which means having somewhere to go.

* it also means having a contingency plan in case your purchase falls through completely. Could you still stay wherever it is you are going temporarily?

Thanks GM I have read online tonight that Natwest allow 90 days from sale to port, I assume the clock starts ticking from the day they make you the mortgage offer. If that's still true than we could have approx 6 weeks left.

We could stay as we'd be going to my parents so its not completely unfeasible just not the way we would have wanted it. I'm definitely taking the light bulbs with me for this x