Buyer pulled out, rent our next home?

barrelmonkey

We have been going through the process of moving home ready for a family and it's the first time we've been involved in both selling and buying (our current home was as first time buyers).

We found the perfect home to move into, and they are not actually dependent on the chain. They've already exchanged and are moving out in 3 weeks.

Our buyer has had the surveys, was happy and said she was sending the paperwork to the solicitor. She seemed happy and chatty until this week with sudden silence. We got a call from our solicitor saying she has pulled out, with no reason given.

We are gutted, not only because of the fact we have to market our house again (it's currently full of boxes with most things packed away), but mainly because we now risk losing the house we are in love with.

Because they are not reliant on the sale, and said they could overlap slightly, but not much, I was thinking about us seeing if they'd be willing to rent it to us for a few months until our home is sold, at which point we would buy it from them at the currently agreed price.

I'm not sure if this is even legal, or if there are some problems with it, and was wondering if anybody here had an experience similar, or was able to offer any advice on it?

Our week up to this point has been great, mortgage sorted, purchase agreed, sale agreed and surveys all coming back fine. Spoils this lovely weather a little

davidmcn

It's legal, but it's pretty risky from your sellers' point of view - they don't know how long before you actually complete, whether you'll find excuses to chip away at the price, if they get fed up with you it could take months to evict you and remarket etc. Also hassle for them in complying with all the requirements involved in becoming landlords (consent from lenders, insurers, gas check, tax, etc). So I would expect the answer to be no.

lisyloo

If I was the seller I would not agree.
How do I know you aren!!!8217;t going to just stay there (it!!!8217;s hard to convict people with several months wait for court orders).
How do I know you aren!!!8217;t going to trash (or not look after) the place.

Way too risky for the seller.

agrinnall

Their solicitor will advise them not to do it, and they would be very sensible to heed that advice.

barrelmonkey

Thanks for the responses, I guess that's a pretty unanimous opinion.

What about alternatives? Could we perhaps suggest we exchange contracts, and come to an arrangement where we either give them part of our deposit early, or we contribute towards the maintenance/mortgage of the property until ours is sold, like a sort of holding fee.

We are just trying to think of whatever we can to avoid losing this place through no fault of our own. We have been looking for a house for 6 months and this is the only one that ticked all of our boxes. If we missed out on it we are worried every house we see in the future will be compared to it negatively.

Doozergirl

barrelmonkey wrote: »

Thanks for the responses, I guess that's a pretty unanimous opinion.

What about alternatives? Could we perhaps suggest we exchange contracts, and come to an arrangement where we either give them part of our deposit early, or we contribute towards the maintenance/mortgage of the property until ours is sold, like a sort of holding fee.

We are just trying to think of whatever we can to avoid losing this place through no fault of our own. We have been looking for a house for 6 months and this is the only one that ticked all of our boxes. If we missed out on it we are worried every house we see in the future will be compared to it negatively.

I don't think selling your soul to the vendor is a good idea either. In fact, it's worse.

If it's going to happen, it will happen. You're going to have to leave it to fate if they won't give you a tenancy. Even then, do you really fancy the idea of effectively paying two mortgages? Financially very risky also.

Unless you're looking for an exclusive house in an exclusive area, there's always another one. (And there's always an exclusive house in an exclusive area, it just might take a while to appear).

Hoploz

Sounds like you need to get straight on the phone to the EA to get your place remarketed and a new buyer ASAP.

If you can manage to get a new buyer within a short period, eg a week, then you can simply go to your seller with the news that there will be a short delay as you lost your first buyer but have a new one now. This will be much easier to process than just sobbing on the phone with only the bad news! We managed to keep our new house when we lost our buyer once. We had our strategy in place (in our case we arranged to refinance to buy without selling) when we rang our seller with th news of the delay. Like you they weren't dependent on the sale so they were very sympathetic and it all went through a few weeks delayed.