Bovis homes part exchange tactics

Swizz

Yes, full purchase as far as I know. The thing is, all the agreements were in place , so we'd agreed the deals with legal fees, stamp duty etc etc.contracts had been drawn up and signed ready for completion. Presumably they'd been happy with this, or at least gave that impression, lulling us into false sense of security??
By varying the terms so late in the day, we had no real chance to sit back and take stock. And they deceived us. She told us they needed to do the work. They didn't do anything. Hence we feel shafted.

BargainMad_3

Just been reading the terms and conditions of a part exchange scheme (not Bovis) and there is a term that allows the builder to pull out of a transaction at any time without providing a reason!

Is there any kind of regulation of these schemes and a regulator that can be appealed to?

Or is it another one of those areas where the schemes are left to the "self regulation" by the agents concerned !

tim123456789

BargainMad wrote: »

Just been reading the terms and conditions of a part exchange scheme (not Bovis) and there is a term that allows the builder to pull out of a transaction at any time without providing a reason!

That's not strictly true. They can't pull out after exchange

In that respect it no different to any other house transaction so why should it need specific regulation?

BargainMad_3

But it seems that a builder can drop out of a transaction if it finds it actually doesn't want the property or it can negotiate the price down even after giving indications that everything was proceeding as planned. As long as it happens before the final exchange of contracts, of course.

Certainly that sort of thing happens all of the time with ordinary transactions. The 11th hour is notorious for aborted sales or with buyers looking to drop the price (or in a boom time sellers looking to push the price up) at the last moment. And broken chains abound with those further up or down stuck as well. It's part and parcel of the process.

But the OP was paying full market price at the other end, and was not getting any discount from the builder or any alternative discount scheme like Homebuy as part of the transaction. If he had sold his existing home himself he would have had the ability to select one or the other. Because he was part exchanging, these were both precluded.

In effect he is prevented from negotiating the property price with the builder for their property. But the builder is not prevented from negotiating the property price for his property and can - and did - change these at the 11th hour.

To further illustrate, the OP might have found a surveyor who could say the asking price for the new property is £10,000 too high. But the OP was not allowed to do this as he was obliged to pay the list price (as set by the builder) as part of the Part Exchange deal. Alternatively, and even more beneficial, he might have paid the list price but made use of the Homebuy scheme - which reduces the initial cost by 20% - but again this was not offered by the builder because again he was doing a Part Exchange.

So Part Exchange for the buyer looks like a restriction of choices whereas for the builder there are no such restrictions in negotiations, even until the very last moment, as the OP has found.