Help! Vendor withdrawal just before exchange...

girlywhirly

Hi everyone

I'm hoping some of you will have some advice for me and my husband. In May we put an offer in on a really great flat - we're first time buyers and had been looking as our current landlord had given us 3 months notice as he wants to sell the flat we're living in.

Everything was going pretty smoothly with the purchase, the vendors were very stubborn & cagey and refused to negotiate on any issue (eg. she lied about the service charge on the property, quite a lot of work needed in the flat but they wouldn't budge on the purchase cost or leaving furniture or anything like that). We went along with it all as we didn't want to rock the boat and we really wanted this flat!

We were due to exchange and complete this week, and move in this weekend. The vendors knew this, as did both solicitors and the estate agents. Anyway, last Friday the vendors emailed the EA saying they were withdrawing and requested their keys back!! Their reason was that they 'don't want to fall off the property ladder', even though throughout the whole process we were told the property was chain free, and that the vendors had another property (belonging to their family) that they could go to.

The EA is trying to get them to reconsider, but we've lost around £1500 on the valuation and solicitor's fees, and we're homeless as of this weekend - luckily our landlord is away on holiday at the moment so we have a few days grace. Once he's back we'll be asking if we can stay longer (he's now decided not to sell, just to do it up and rent it out at a higher rent).

Does anyone have any advice for us?? Our solicitor recommended just to start looking for another flat, and the EA is not being very helpful either. It just seems as if there's no repercussions for the vendors doing this, and although we've done nothing wrong in the whole process, we're the ones losing money and being punished??

Any thoughts greatly appreciated!

G_M

Advice?

Either find a new property or stay where you are. If they won't Exchange they won't Exchange.

I suppose you could try offering them an extra £5K.....

girlywhirly

yeah we thought of that, but it would push us over £250k and we don't have enough money to pay the 'bribe' AND the 3% stamp duty...

we're screwed, basically, aren't we. i just wish there was some way to get back our £1500 from them - surely they have a moral obligation to pay it?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Why on earth do you English folks put up with such an atrocious system of buying and selling houses?

Lobby your MP's for goodness sake and adopt something like the Scottish system asap.

ValHaller

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Why on earth do you English folks put up with such an atrocious system of buying and selling houses?

Lobby your MP's for goodness sake and adopt something like the Scottish system asap.

That was tried and we ended up with the HIP instead.

And as far as I can see the Scots system still provides for a due diligence phase prior to commitment which is about equivalent to our pre exchange phase.

tommytynan123

girlywhirly wrote: »

yeah we thought of that, but it would push us over £250k and we don't have enough money to pay the 'bribe' AND the 3% stamp duty...

we're screwed, basically, aren't we. i just wish there was some way to get back our £1500 from them - surely they have a moral obligation to pay it?

Human beings seem to bin all morals in house buying/selling. There is absolutely nothing you can do except try the extra cash but whatever you do the sellers can pull out again if they wish. Its happens and the sooner we adopt the Scottish system the better.

Some years back I won a sort of sealed envelope bid and the vendors wanted to see some form of committment so I had the survey done the next morning to then get a phone call from EA at 4pm saying ''its off the market'':mad: £400 gone in 24 hours.:mad:

moneyistooshorttomention

Sorry this has happened, but there is indeed no redress under the law.

Just a case of "grit teeth and try again for another place". The only things that struck me there are you commented that the vendors wouldn't negotiate about the furniture and that puzzled me. Not sure what happened there, as vendors either offer to sell some of their furniture to buyers (if they wish to) or not. Usually vendors don't sell any of their furniture on to the buyer and, if they do, I would expect them to name a "take it or leave it" price, rather than the price being a matter of "negotiation".

The other thing I wonder is whose suggestion it was to have such a short gap between Exchange and Completion. Maybe it was the vendors suggestion, in which case they have no cause to complain about it. If it wasn't their idea, but had been your suggestion then maybe they weren't happy with that.

Selling a place is more hassle than I thought it would be personally and your vendor might well have thought so too and dropped the whole idea accordingly. As a vendor I've certainly found its more "work" than anticipated, even down to things like my buyer seems to have asked both my estate agent and my solicitor the same set of piffling little queries (cue my having to do unnecessary extra emails I wasn't happy about, as they both asked me).

Even odd little things nothing to do with you might have cropped up as "extra work" which you would be totally unaware of. For instance I was NOT "charmed" to find that someone who shares the same name as me has been bankrupt (twice!) and I've had to sign a thing to say that this isn't me. Cue outrage at getting confused with a bankrupt, as I don't agree with people going bankrupt (and twice:eek:).

So, if I got that extra unanticipated work and a buyer expecting me to "negotiate" about furniture price and/or expecting me to take a shorter period between Exchange and Completion than I have decided on I might just think "blow the whole thing" and pull out.

I do wish you well in finding another place and think it might help keep another vendor "rolling along and selling the place as per plan" in future if you do what you can to be an "easy buyer" with no "negotiations" on furniture price, agree to whatever timescale between Exchange and Completion the vendor has decided on and not do what my own buyer has done (ie asking the same teensy little queries in two different directions and thus creating extra 'office work' for me).

Some vendors will have a "line in their mind" beyond which (if they feel pushed) the place will just come off the market and not all estate agents are perceptive enough to spot which vendors have such a "line in their mind" and warn the buyer that this will be the case and to take care not to be a "hard work buyer" or they will lose the place.

Good luck on finding another one.

WellKnownSid

ValHaller wrote: »

That was tried and we ended up with the HIP instead.

And as far as I can see the Scots system still provides for a due diligence phase prior to commitment which is about equivalent to our pre exchange phase.

And when you take into account how long it can take to get mortgage approval these days that due diligence phase ends up being 2-3 months followed by two weeks between missive conclusion and date of entry where 'all the other stuff happens'.

mrsmchapman

Really sorry to read your post, I have been at both ends. Two years ago a cash buyer just before exchange apparently hasn't got the money and pulled out, losing us the solicitor and survey fees on the house we were buying. Then back in may this year after 4 months wait, the buyer of our house wanted to exchange and the house we were purchasing were not ready for two weeks so we took a gamble and exchanged and then the house we were buying decided they didn't want to sell, we lost fees, survey fee and also £4.5k on mortgage redemption.

Sadly in the Uk there is nothing you can do to try and reclaim the costs you have incurred. You just have to move on and either find another rental to tide you over or find another place to buy. I'm a little confused as to why you have notice to your landlord before exchange? For this reason that has happened.

I hope you find a new place very soon, best of luck

Old_Git

lets pretend you had backed out at the last minute ,would you want to compensate the vendor.

ging84

These kind of problems are what adds so much stress to the house buying process, you can commit hundreds or even thousands in fees before anything becomes legally binding.
When i sold my flat, i had the estate agents and the solicitors both on no sale no fee agreements, and planned it all to be zero risk to me, but still ended up paying out several hundred in admin fees for various documents from 3rd parties before exchange.

I wonder if you can get insurance or no sale no fee agreements for surveys from anywhere