Buyer just pulled out... fuming!!!!!

GBR78

We've just lost our buyer today too. Much less of a way through the process than you mind....we only accepted the offer on Saturday.

That said, the buyer was super-keen, wanted a 7 week completion to suit their buyers etc etc, but upon the EA trying to get details of the full chain today they tell us that they rushed into it and it isn't actually the right house for them.

Frustrating, but at least it's at a cheaper stage than it could have been. The only issue now is finding out if the developer will still hold our reservation long enough to find another buyer....

Crashy_Time

eddddy wrote: »

Sadly, this sounds a bit like an investor that I have crossed paths with.

She seems to make offers, get them accepted and then withdraw on a whim few weeks later.

FWIW, my assessment of why she does it is...

• She enjoys the buzz and attention she gets from EAs as a potential cash buyer. And the even greater attention she gets from the EA when she makes an offer.

• Plus I suspect she gets some level of sadistic enjoyment from withdrawing the offer, and seeing the pain it causes the seller.

I think people like that are in a small minority, but maybe it's good to maintain some level of wariness, just in case.

Or maybe she just twigged that the market has turned and she was going to lose money? Not nice for the seller, but the buyer can do what they like as they are spending/borrowing the money after all. A decent house at a decent price should attract plenty more interest anyway.

eddddy

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Or maybe she just twigged that the market has turned and she was going to lose money? Not nice for the seller, but the buyer can do what they like as they are spending/borrowing the money after all.

No - not in this case.

She's a 'serial offender'. It seems she's done it many times over the years.

Some EAs have become wise to her, and now refuse to do business with her.

There are some very strange people about.

Crashy_Time

How many other buyers are lined up?

thebigstillmeister

so sorry to hear that,.. i do think some people just go to viewings and make offers for something to do and to get a bit of attention,

Our last property we tried to sell in 2014, an older guy came around and said he absolutely loved the house, was almost too overly enthusiastic about it, kept going on about the fact that he was a cash buyer, money in the bank and was retired and just wanted somewhere nice to live and planned on getting a dog etc etc,

literally 15mins after leaving he put in an offer of full asking price which we happily accepted. There was a real lack of houses for us to buy at the time, finally managed to find one that we loved and had the offer excepted, we were really excited and our EA informed him we had now managed to find something on the Sat, following Monday 9am and we had a call saying that our buyer has "dropped out as he didn't get the job he was expecting to get,.." which made no sense and completely contradicted what he was telling us. He also dropped out via email and would not respond to any emails/calls after that from our EA.

It was my wife's birthday, she was very heavily pregnant and was very upset, i then had to call the EA who showed us the house on the Sat to say we had to pull out,. and I am sure he thought we were just messing him about and were never serious,..

But, hold on in there,.. we waited for a year, and with our new baby found a much nicer house in our preferred area,.. so now although horrible at the time actually worked out for the better,

I do think there should be some sort of small deposit, even £500 or something to stop the time wasters.

Crashy_Time

thebigstillmeister wrote: »

so sorry to hear that,.. i do think some people just go to viewings and make offers for something to do and to get a bit of attention,

Our last property we tried to sell in 2014, an older guy came around and said he absolutely loved the house, was almost too overly enthusiastic about it, kept going on about the fact that he was a cash buyer, money in the bank and was retired and just wanted somewhere nice to live and planned on getting a dog etc etc,

literally 15mins after leaving he put in an offer of full asking price which we happily accepted. There was a real lack of houses for us to buy at the time, finally managed to find one that we loved and had the offer excepted, we were really excited and our EA informed him we had now managed to find something on the Sat, following Monday 9am and we had a call saying that our buyer has "dropped out as he didn't get the job he was expecting to get,.." which made no sense and completely contradicted what he was telling us. He also dropped out via email and would not respond to any emails/calls after that from our EA.

It was my wife's birthday, she was very heavily pregnant and was very upset, i then had to call the EA who showed us the house on the Sat to say we had to pull out,. and I am sure he thought we were just messing him about and were never serious,..

But, hold on in there,.. we waited for a year, and with our new baby found a much nicer house in our preferred area,.. so now although horrible at the time actually worked out for the better,

I do think there should be some sort of small deposit, even £500 or something to stop the time wasters.

"Didn`t get the job" is just a catch all phrase to say his circumstances changed, maybe his inheritance/shares/house sale/new GF in the area fell through, whatever, he is not obliged to fund your next move however annoying it may be when they pull out at the last minute. As to the deposit idea, it is a great one if people want even less viewers than they are already getting, best bet IMO is to make the product as appealing as possible via presentation and price

eddddy

thebigstillmeister wrote: »

I do think there should be some sort of small deposit, even £500 or something to stop the time wasters.

Yes - you can do that. It's called a pre-contract deposit.

But it tends to cause delays and generally cause more problems than it solves.

Presumably, you'd agree that somebody should not lose their deposit if they withdraw for a good reason. But what's a good reason? Who decides?

Do you end up having to go to court to get a decision on whether a reason for withdrawing is acceptable or not?

Here's a newspaper story on this topic: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/04/estate-agents-ask-homebuyers-pay-up-pre-contract-deposit

thebigstillmeister

When I bought my first property it was a new build apartment. All the others were already occupied but the buyer pulled out of this one so we put in an offer. As part of that process I paid a £500 deposit to secure it. If for any reason I could not have gone through with it, lost my job, changed my mind, gold fish died,.. whatever, I would not expect to get that back.

I can't see any difference when buying any other property. My buyer may have had his circumstances change, and its unfortunate if it did,.. but its not my problem, my house was off the market and no other potential buyer would have seen it for those weeks,

On the other hand, he may have just been bored, or potentially had offers accepted on 10 houses and then decided he now had 2 or 3 week to decide which one of those 10 he actually wanted to buy if any before he pulled out of the other 9 which could have huge knock on affects to 9 other parties and everyone else in those chains,

I'm sure there are better ways of doing this, but so much stress money and effort goes in to trying to move and anything that cuts out time wasters would be fine by me,

eddddy

thebigstillmeister wrote: »

When I bought my first property it was a new build apartment. All the others were already occupied but the buyer pulled out of this one so we put in an offer. As part of that process I paid a £500 deposit to secure it. If for any reason I could not have gone through with it, lost my job, changed my mind, gold fish died,.. whatever, I would not expect to get that back.

Yes - it would be reasonable to lose their deposit in those circumstances.

But what if there's one of the following...

The survey finds signs of subsidence...
The survey says the roof has 10 years of life left...
The survey says the electrics don't meet current regulations...
The vendor hasn't got a FENSA certificate for a window they replaced...
The boiler hasn't been serviced for 3 years...
There are long running neighbour disputes about noise and harassment...
The neighbour has planning consent to extend close to the boundary...
The neighbour has a barking dog...

... and the buyer backs out as a result. Does the buyer get their deposit back?

Who decides which of those (and a thousand other possible issues) are valid reasons for withdrawing?

thebigstillmeister

... I see where you are coming from, but equally I could have got an independent survey on the new build apartment at the time after I had reserved it which could have come up with many of the above issues due to poor build quality or issues with neighbors who has moved in several months before and i'm sure there are many other issues which would be more relevant to new builds,.. but deposits are still paid, so again, I still don't see the difference,