Dithering selller put house back on market and wants more money..

Dandini

Hi all,

My offer on a property was accepted in Oct 2013 and my conveyancer was ready to exchange 2 months ago but the seller was clearly stalling/dithering and now declared they want to look for a different house to move to. They're now viewing new properties – but it's time-consuming as it's the other side of country.

Repeatedly the estate agent told me 'They don't want to lose you... can you wait another 3-6 months as the seller doesn't want to move until they've found a house to move to – they don't want to rent in the interim."

The seller has now put the house back on the market and upped the price by £10k: "the market has picked up".

Can I offer my full building survey – excellent old-school surveyor specialising in older buildings (cost me £500) – to any new purchaser – but realistically priced at £250 quid just to recoup something?

I'm assuming that as we hadn't exchanged contracts I've no recourse and have to accept the financial losses for the conveyancer? My mortgage offer expires on April 30th but I can re-apply 2 weeks before that date.

Many thanks for any advice – if only to confirm what I've assumed. I don't want to up my bid as I'm paying a fair price for a house that needs some work.

Cheers, Dan :-(

G_M

You can try but....

a) how will you find the new buyer? I doubt the EA will assist
b) will they trust your survyey
c) if the buyer later had a problem they would be unable to complain the surveyor missed something as they were not his clients

I'm afraid you must write off the money you've spent and move on.

Sorry

Pixie5740

With any luck the property won't sell as it's priced too high for the market and then you can go back further down the line with an offer £10k less than your original one

cattie

Surveys are for the person who commissioned it & it will have wording to that effect somewhere on the documentation.

A lender wouldn't accept somebody else's survey, so any buyer would still have to pay the lender for a valuation & wouldn't be able to bargain with a vendor with property information gleaned from somebody else's survey, they would need their own for this to be an effective renegotiating tool.

You've got nothing to lose by suggesting to the ea that your survey is open to offers should anybody be interested in it.

DaftyDuck

You might sell your survey to the current owner, however much that might hurt. They are the most likely to cough up some cash. Alternatively, bite the bullet, up your offer by 5k for instant exchange.

Or, play sneaky. Have a friend view and put in an offer, he stumbles around finding a solicitor, goes on holiday, still stumble around asking the agent for further info, ask questions about where the drains go, and if the electrics all have current certification.... then pulls out a couple of weeks later. Phone agent up, and ask if they are still considering your offer... You'll need him to be a mortgage-free buyer, at least able to claim money in the bank, but that might not be so hard for a week or two of putting them under pressure. Just realise that if the offer he puts in is much higher than yours, they'll be convinced their property is worth it...

Alternative scenario, and a more realistic one, is to get two friends to put offers in after viewings that are slightly lower than the one you placed... making agent and owner more likely to believe they may struggle to achieve a better price...

If they accept the same offer as you placed, they just hate you!

JPG82

I'm sorry to hear this. I don't understand some people. I had an offer accepted last week on Monday and three days later I got a call saying vendor wasn't happy and wanted more money (2.5k at least) even though the house had been up for sale for a year. We didn't loss any money as hadn't instructed solicitor yet but I promptly withdrew my bid as I wasn't going to do business with some one like this.

Hope things work out for you.