30 min before exchange the buyers solicitors decides she wants another report doing!!

savingfortomorrow

she may be from a different country but does not sound vulnerable to me. Sounds like a cunning individual who knows you need to proceed. she may come back with more demands over roof, interior or wanting a subscription to her magazine of choice before you complete.

she holds too much power, cash buyers are a little more freer to demand what they want.

could you ask your vendor to wait while you went for a new mortgage as a second property. (unlikely but who knows)

pull out and sell the house through auction- because at least you will know it has to complete in a timely manner and not have all the last minute brinkmanship occurring.

be very prepared for her next set of unreasonable demands and be willing to tell her to go to hell

Arklight

Cash buyer landlord.

She is playing you like a fiddle.

moneyistooshorttomention

alchemist.1 wrote: »

The seller seems to be in a position to be gazundered too. More or less a perfect candidate.

I was thinking that.

The combination of just before Christmas/children involved/next house all lined-up and very short timespan due between Exchange and Completion.

Keeping fingers crossed for OP and I tend to think they should look very firmly at that buyer and see who "blinks first" and hopefully it will be the buyer.

1. Who wanted that extremely short timespan between Exchange and Completion? Was it you or the buyer?


2. What are the circumstances in which this buyer is a "cash buyer"? Have they sold somewhere else already and moved out from it or is it spare cash knocking around? I'm wondering if they really ARE the cash buyer they say they are (ie money literally sitting there in the bank waiting to be paid over to OP).

3.Could it be the case that they were a little "economical with the truth" there and are awaiting some of the money they say they have and deliberately trying to spin things out whilst they wait for that money to head into their account? I wonder if they are making excuses deliberately whilst waiting for that money..

As she is a businesswoman - then maybe you need to find ways to make it clear to her you will waste as much of her time as you possibly can if she doesn't get on with it as per plan. She will be taking a "Time is Money" viewpoint and presumably fixed a rate per hour she expects to receive (be it in cash/profit/etc) and wont want hours of her time frittered away by OP???

**************

One card OP might hold is that I wouldn't be surprised if this woman has already got plans laid down for work on the house to commence pretty soon now and/or tenants lined-up already for it. With that - all this fuss being her trying for a last minute gazunder - but bluffing a bit (ie because she has signed a contract with tenants already and/or arranged builders already)

Worth checking to see if house is already being advertised as for rent surreptitiously?

EDIT; In fact the thought is crossing my mind of OP sending in a Mystery Buyer friend to this estate agent asking about property for rent at the moment. This friend to give pretty specific parameters of what they are looking for (ie that area, that number of bedrooms, etc). Then friend waits to be given a list of properties for rent and checks whether it includes OP's house.

knightstyle

Surely you should now be playing her at her game? tell her to refund you the £2200 as this was on condition she exchanged on Friday. Then get a small claims court paper to back this up.

kt78_2

We requested from the beginning that we wanted exchange 2 weeks before completion and everything on our side and solicitors has been in place since this time but the buyers solicitors decided to take off some unannounced time off, afternoons off etc over the past few weeks. She is absolute rubbish and keeps 'losing' documents and details that our solicitor has to keep sending. She is very unorganized and a disgrace at conveyancing!!

We're having to pay for the roof report as she is so rubbish at her job and will never get this organised in time!! I am hoping somewhere along the line that we can claim this back.

I have already sent an email to my solicitor on asking where we stand given we were told by the buyers solcitors that we could exchange on Friday as long as we agreed to pay the £2200 which we then did!

Leo2020

Don't pay for the report on the roof, that's the buyers responsibility.

alchemist.1

I have to agree with the posters who are suggesting that the buyer isn't as vulnerable/naive as she has been stated to be.

This "vulnerable" buyer has you over a barrel.

p00hsticks

kt78 wrote: »

We requested from the beginning that we wanted exchange 2 weeks before completion

So if you had exchanged on Friday (11th) as you wanted your completion date would be Christmas day ? I don't think so !

kt78_2

Sorry I should have mentioned - the 14th December was agreed between ourselves, buyer and the house we're buying literally from day one as we all wanted to move before christmas.
We also requested exchange 2 weeks before completion so they're already 2 weeks behind - hope that makes sense now.

macman

How can repairing a cracked downpipe and some 'electrical problems' come to £2,200?! That amount would pay for a large part of a complete rewire! You should have never agreed to foot this bill, as if she now withdraws you have no comebacks whatsoever.
You should have told her that the house is sold 'as seen' and that she can pay the price asked, withdraw or negotiate. Any improvements required are for her to finance herself upon purchase. Very few houses more than five years old would meet the current wiring regs, which are updated every few years, but there is still no requirement to bring them up to current standards, or for you to provide any kind of electrical safety certificate to a buyer.
The same applies to the roof: if the buyer wants a survey at the last minute, then they are welcome to do so-but why on earth are you paying for it? My reaction to that request, 30 mins before completion, would be that if she cannot arrange for the survey in 30 mins (at her expense), then you will consider her offer null and void.
Never start booking utilities etc before completion, let alone before exchange.