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Advice needed.
Chanes
Posts: 882 Forumite
We are selling our house and have a buyer who has had the survey and searches completed and is satisfied with them to proceed. We originally set a time frame to move out no later than May this year. We have not exchanged contracts; we have not made any legally binding agreements.
The house we were moving to purchase turned into a nightmare of building regulations not met and failure to provide documents or evidence of works completed being to a safe standard or approved. And then the final straw came with tree preservation orders that an agent said most likely had been removed. They hadn't and the order covered every tree in the garden and they were BIG trees blocking the rear of the house. This cost us £1300 to walk away from - we are not rich and saved hard for the money.
Which had led us to wanting a brand new house. But there is no firm date for the ones we want to be available and one build has just broke ground. This means we cannot commit to a move out date with our buyer in any way.
Our buyer is a lovely person and loves our house and we feel really bad about letting her down like this, so much so I want to offer her £600 to settle some of her costs and as an apology. We cannot commit to moving out and if she takes the money she walks away and if we can move she has to renegotiate with us, we had given her a price drop for waiting.
The question is this - does our offer of money to prove our apology form any legal problems or commitments. I can see no way that it would under any sensible system. But if anyone know any different please let me know. Ta!
The house we were moving to purchase turned into a nightmare of building regulations not met and failure to provide documents or evidence of works completed being to a safe standard or approved. And then the final straw came with tree preservation orders that an agent said most likely had been removed. They hadn't and the order covered every tree in the garden and they were BIG trees blocking the rear of the house. This cost us £1300 to walk away from - we are not rich and saved hard for the money.
Which had led us to wanting a brand new house. But there is no firm date for the ones we want to be available and one build has just broke ground. This means we cannot commit to a move out date with our buyer in any way.
Our buyer is a lovely person and loves our house and we feel really bad about letting her down like this, so much so I want to offer her £600 to settle some of her costs and as an apology. We cannot commit to moving out and if she takes the money she walks away and if we can move she has to renegotiate with us, we had given her a price drop for waiting.
The question is this - does our offer of money to prove our apology form any legal problems or commitments. I can see no way that it would under any sensible system. But if anyone know any different please let me know. Ta!
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Comments
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I'm taking the lack of replies as a positive! The law might be sensible about this as expected! But I just thought I'd rule out any issues!
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If she goes on to buy your house, I guess there is a slight risk that it may be perceived to be a partial Vendor Gifted Deposit.
(e.g. she needs a deposit of £20k and you're providing £600 of it.)
In theory, that would then have to be notified to solicitors, lender etc. It would be 'cleaner' to cut the selling price by £600.
But if she walks away, there is no problem with giving her (or anyone else you like) a gift of £600.
If you want to get legal about it, you can call it "a goodwill payment, with no admission of liability".
(Personally, I wouldn't see the need to pay the £600. But everyone's different!)0 -
edddy, thanks for the reply. I know I am not obligated to make a payment, but I feel I am messing her about and she is a decent person (I do wish she was a !!!!!!) She isn't rich either and has had some dreadful luck at trying to buy a house prior to this too.
I think I can sum it up as this - words are cheap but stick some money behind it and it's fair to say they are meant.
That's what we can call it then, a goodwill payment!0 -
You could move into rented until the new build you want is ready0
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