Buyers stalling advice please

amanda757

Hi,

We are in the process of moving house. We accepted our buyers offer at the end of August and had the offer accepted on our onward purchase at the end of September. From that point we have been proceeding with mortgage offers and solicitors etc.

Everything is now ready to exchange and has been for a couple of weeks except for one thing - we can't exchange because the buyers have not transferred their deposit to their solicitors. We are now at the stage where we are chasing daily. Apparently our buyers are getting the cash from their father who owns a building/construction company and is therefore a wealthy man. However all our buyer will say when chased is that the money is not there and that his 'hands are tied'. He says that he is waiting on a phone call and as soon as they get that it will be all systems go. He is saying he cannot say where the money is coming from because of confidentiality. They will give us no timescales. It all seems very fishy and I suspect the father is waiting for some money from a client or something before they can pay.

I have told EA that me and my partner are going to chat this weekend about our options. So my question is what do we do please? Just continue waiting? Set a deadline and ultimatum? Put our house back on the market?

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

We obviously don't want to lose the onward purchase as we have found a house we love, however we can't wait forever as it is causing stress to us both. Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks :-)

marksoton

amanda757 wrote: »

However all our buyer will say when chased is that the money is not there and that his 'hands are tied'. He says that he is waiting on a phone call and as soon as they get that it will be all systems go. He is saying he cannot say where the money is coming from because of confidentiality.

By this stage your buyer should have provided proof of deposit to their lender ( assuming there is one).

In which case i'd be suspicious as to why the funds are not available.

Personally i'd be making noises about re-marketing the property.But only do so if your prepared to carry the threat through. And it'll mean starting all over again and potentially losing your new purchase.

Ms_Sophia

can you just re-market the property and at the same time wait to see if the current buyers will finally transfer the deposit money?
or did you sign an exclusivity agreement with the current buyers?

cloo

It may be a genuine issue... when I bought my flat with my husband, we were waiting on the sale of a family property of which I was a beneficiary, and it did go rather down to the wire in the end!

deaston

We had a similar issue. In the end, we gave them a deadline of the end of that week and said that, if they hadn't returned their signed contract by then (it'd dragged on for about three weeks), we'd re-market the house and pull out if/when we got another offer. The contract was posted that afternoon via next day delivery.

amanda757

Thank you all.

I've asked our mortgage advisor if they would have had to provide proof of deposit to the lender, and he says it depends on the lender, and as it is Halifax they don't generally ask for proof of deposit.

Not signed an exclusivity agreement.

Ms_Sophia

In this case I would continue with the current buyer, chasing them up etc. But also will be patient with them as they may be genuinely waiting for the money to come from the father as the father may be expecting the money to come from someone, e.g. waiting for his client to pay up for his building services.

Meanwhile, I'd put the property back to the market and ask EA to re-start viewings etc. So, if the current buyers wouldn't be able to come up with the money and pull out (it's a possibility, right? ) - then you have a plan B.

moneyistooshorttomention

Where is the EA in all this?

It was your EA's responsibility to check whether your buyer actually had the deposit (ie already sitting there in their bank account).

Why didn't they do that?

Since they seem to have neglected that part of their duties - can you get the EA to "pull their socks up" a bit and sort this problem out?