Reasons for purchase offers failing

Fairyliquid

Reading the threads it seems that more than 30% or more of house offers fail.

This is a massive amount of wasted effort. So in people's experience what causes buyers to pull out?

Money issues?
Better property came along?
Simply time wasters?
Changed their mind because of personal reasons?

Not sure if a seller would ever find out the genuine reason but the way the England/Wales market works a lot of folk are losing out both money and time let alone the stress.

googler

Lobby your MP to change the way the market works, then.

The best idea the Govt seems to have is to force EAs to take some exams.

Fairyliquid

My impression in this is that the EAs are not really the major problem. Un less we have buyers committed to completing an offer this situation will continue. It is strange but seems true the the EA is the one who is not benefiting from buyers dropping out. They dont get their fees until a property is sold after all.

eddddy

I'd have thought it's more often because somebody in the chain...

...gets an unsatisfactory survey report / valuation
...gets unsatisfactory search results
...gets worrying replies to pre-contract enquiries
...fails to get a mortgage

And often if one person in the chain decides not to proceed, whole sections of the chain can fall apart.

Fairyliquid

eddddy wrote: »

I'd have thought it's more often because somebody in the chain...

...gets an unsatisfactory survey report / valuation
...gets unsatisfactory search results
...gets worrying replies to pre-contract enquiries
...fails to get a mortgage

And often if one person in the chain decides not to proceed, whole sections of the chain can fall apart.

Was there not an attempt to prepare some of the searches and surveys in advance so the buyer would not have to wait? I believe it was scuppered by the legal/surveyors community who saw their re-work money stream drying up.

I may be wrong but some common sense in this process would help a lot.

G_M

Has it not occurred to you that a property is a hugely expensive purchase, and an emotive life-changing decision?

And it's usually made after one, or two, 10-15 minute viewings, and based on very superficial information.

Most women I know spend longer choosing a dress! And like house-buyers, they take half the dresses they choose back later!

After making an offer, buyers gradually gain increasing levels of knowledge about the property, so it's hardly suprising that sometimes they (or their mortgage lender!) have a change of heart.

Fairyliquid

Oh yes I absolutely agree having moved to a new house and then discovered that the place was a hell hole. It is always a risk not knowing the area 24/7, the neighbours and seasonal traffic for example.

But I still think that the 30% chance of failing with the complete chain suffering from one dropout, could be improved with pre-searches and surveys?

I did consider getting a survey in order to preempt any objections that a buyer had, that is fix anything that showed up before they did a survey.

Shedman

From my recent experience with a recent leasehold flat offer, that we pulled out of after a good number of weeks, you cannot make an informed decision until you have received copies of the lease, the management pack, copies of the service accounts, etc and these can take many weeks to come through. There does need to be some mechanism to ensure that these items are available at the time of viewing or very near thereafter otherwise it's inevitable that costs will be in incurred throughout the chain and then it all collapses once unresolvable or unacceptable matters are uncovered in these documents.

I am presuming that it works differently (and maybe more satisfactorily in Scotland) as once you submit an offer I believe it is binding?

walwyn1978

We've had two agreed sales collapse at different times. One - the lady became pregnant and didn't want to move in a pregnant condition. Two - different sale - they changed their mind and said they could now offer less due to a change in their own financial circumstances. This was a c15% drop so we said no and the sale collapsed.

I'd imagine most people on here who have sold a property or two could offer similar stories. Essentially people are subject to whim and changes of mind on almost anything and house buying is no different just because it's a lot of money.

Crashy_Time

People are waking up to the fact that they will be in negative equity by buying now if interest rates rise and they are just looking for any excuse to pull out of purchases. It is the emotion of reckless exuberance that saw people out-bidding each other (with the bankers help) to inflate the bubble going into reverse.

Bass_9

Good old crashy.

On a serious note though, it does amaze me when you hear that a sale has fallen through because the potential buyers could not prove they had the finances to buy it... What a waste of time for everyone involved. Myself and my partner have meticulously worked out our finances for a range of prices and we would never offer a bid that we couldn't reasonably afford.

That said I'm pretty risk averse. :eek: