Vendors demands - considering pulling out

lisyloo

KatieDee wrote: »

Slight bump...

If we were to pull out of the purchase, we understand we will have solicitors fees for the work done up to this point. Our solicitor has been great so far and we would definitely want him to work for us on the next purchase. Is this okay?

And also, if we find another property, do we approach our lender and let them know so they're able to change the details and survey the new property or is a new application from scratch? Will the fact we have a mortgage offer go against us in regards to multiple searches?

Solicitor, no problem, house sales do fall through although of course you’ll have to pay for the service you’ve had.

For the mortgage I’d expect any credit searches, payslips they’ve checked to still be valid.
2 searches won’t be an issue, but I don’t see why they’d need to credit check you again unless it’s been a long time and now expired.
You might want to hold off applying for lots of credit cards, but a low number of multiple searches is not likely to be an issue.

Personally Whilst I understand your desire to have nice trustworthy sellers, I don’t think you should walk away from a dream property just because the sellers haven’t come across as nice totally trustworthy people. It’s possible they have other pressures on them and just haven’t dealt with it very well.
I wouldn’t expect them to put them to put maximum effort into the “fix”, so I’d expect a short term bodge job and not a not a long term solid fix and if it’s subjective it’s probably not worth going to court over.
Unfortunate but I’d urge you to take a few days and try to be objective.
If you end up walking away objectively then that’s fine, but don’t do it emotionally and lose a dream home over minor things that don’t matter that much long term.

AnotherJoe

KatieDee wrote: »

Are these just standard tactics to try and force a quicker sale?
No, they are an ultimatum of a fool. If you pulled out their sale would drop back months
Are we the ones in the wrong by sticking to our original proposed completion date?
No. It would have been reasonable to ask you if you could move quicker than you previously stated. What is their desperation here? Do they have a onward purchase that might fall through?
Are we being unreasonable by considering our other options?!
Not at all.
It's so hard to know what the right thing to do is.

Is this a probate sale? (/sarcasm) Otherwise wherever they move to will presumably also have "council tax and insurance" so that argument is ridiculous.
Given what else you've said I'd be seriously considering pulling out and looking at one of the other houses. You'll have to take a dispassionate look at the options.
The only thing you've done I wouldn't is agree to have them fix something. As said who knows what bodge job they would do. I would be tempted to tell them you want £500 less, but that might just turn the whole thing nasty.

So it comes back down to, do you actually want to buy this now? If not, pull out.
Good luck.

KatieDee

lisyloo wrote: »

Solicitor, no problem, house sales do fall through although of course you’ll have to pay for the service you’ve had.

For the mortgage I’d expect any credit searches, payslips they’ve checked to still be valid.
2 searches won’t be an issue, but I don’t see why they’d need to credit check you again unless it’s been a long time and now expired.
You might want to hold off applying for lots of credit cards, but a low number of multiple searches is not likely to be an issue.

Personally Whilst I understand your desire to have nice trustworthy sellers, I don’t think you should walk away from a dream property just because the sellers haven’t come across as nice totally trustworthy people. It’s possible they have other pressures on them and just haven’t dealt with it very well.
I wouldn’t expect them to put them to put maximum effort into the “fix”, so I’d expect a short term bodge job and not a not a long term solid fix and if it’s subjective it’s probably not worth going to court over.
Unfortunate but I’d urge you to take a few days and try to be objective.
If you end up walking away objectively then that’s fine, but don’t do it emotionally and lose a dream home over minor things that don’t matter that much long term.

We have explained to the EA that we now need some time to consider the purchase and have made it very clear that we've been a little spooked by the vendors sudden change in attitude. We're not making any quick decisions but I feel both of us are now in agreement that we don't feel completely happy with the purchase anymore.

We've been very sensible - no new applications for anything, so the mortgage should be fine. When we've definitely decided whether we're going to pull out, we'll tell our solicitor and check for fees, but we did make him aware of the demands yesterday.

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Is this a probate sale? (/sarcasm) Otherwise wherever they move to will presumably also have "council tax and insurance" so that argument is ridiculous.
Given what else you've said I'd be seriously considering pulling out and looking at one of the other houses. You'll have to take a dispassionate look at the options.
The only thing you've done I wouldn't is agree to have them fix something. As said who knows what bodge job they would do. I would be tempted to tell them you want £500 less, but that might just turn the whole thing nasty.

So it comes back down to, do you actually want to buy this now? If not, pull out.
Good luck.

From the sounds of it, the mother (vendor) is quite old and these family members are the ones responsible for the sale. There are two of them, which is probably why we've had such conflicting information, and I think there is a lot of tension within the family which is why it has blown up so much. Mum is now in a new property so has double costs, but they've been dragging their feet with the paperwork anyway so I assumed they expected this.

I understand their position, I just think it would have been better for them to approach us politely to ask what we could do, as opposed to making random threats when they are in no position to do so. Now we've been spooked a bit, the shine is off the house and unfortunately for them, a potentially perfect house has come up just around the corner (just last night, after the drama!).

You're right about the ultamatum part - that is exactly what it feels like. When we viewed they had received just one other viewing and no offers. It needs a lot of work and the area itself if quite a slow moving area. It was also quite overpriced. I cannot see it selling very quickly, especially in the current climate. We loved it though, which is why it's such a shame for the vendor that her daughter has forced this position a bit.

Will have another think today, but really appreciate the guidance so far

HampshireH

Sounds like you have talked yourself out of buying this one.

Flip it. If they came back today and said "sorry all back to normal april is fine" would the shine on this home return now you have seen something better?

If not make the call 1st thing to withdraw and make your 2nd call to book a vieiwng

KatieDee

HampshireH wrote: »

Sounds like you have talked yourself out of buying this one.

Flip it. If they came back today and said "sorry all back to normal april is fine" would the shine on this home return now you have seen something better?

If not make the call 1st thing to withdraw and make your 2nd call to book a vieiwng

Thank you for your reply.

We were discussing this last night - it's really tough to say. We like the property but we understand there will be a lot of work involved. We were happy about this because we had our plans, we had the money and we also thought it would be a stress-free process, so paid the top end of what we wanted (happily so!).

Now, it has all been soured. It's hard to work out if we're unhappy with the circumstances, or if we're now unhappy with the house. I think had this not happened, we would have continued to be excited about completing, but this has been a complete bombshell and has changed things. This new house is very different, so it isn't necessarily clouding our judgment. We would move in and it would be completely finished, but we've already psyched ourselves up for a project so that isn't necessarily a draw :rotfl:

Personally, I don't think we have talked ourselves out of it, as much as they have forced our hand slightly. I've bought a house before that I was pressured into buying and honestly, it was the biggest mistake of my life. I think this would have worked on the vast majority of buyers, who would have somehow found a way to make it work, but they just happened to try it on the wrong person.

We're going to take the weekend to consider how we actually feel, maybe go for a drive to the area and have a look around, see if it sparks the same love it did the first and second time we viewed. We have to be fair and remove all emotion out of it, as we know it's a stressful experience for everybody involved.

paddy's_mum

Perhaps the only question in your minds could be 'is this family member going to keep up the bullying for many more weeks and if so, can I stand the stress'?

KatieDee

paddy's_mum wrote: »

Perhaps the only question in your minds could be 'is this family member going to keep up the bullying for many more weeks and if so, can I stand the stress'?

Thanks paddy's mum. This was my concern - I wouldn't want more requests popping up if we did do our best to meet their demands.

I think the most annoying thing is that the vendor hasn't provided any information to her solicitor, and her solicitor has gone on holiday anyway, so we couldn't exchange even if we wanted to!

Keep_pedalling

If the house needs work doing, I would rather be in control of that rather than leaving it to the sellers to do it as cheaply as possible. I would simple say fine don’t do the work, and lower my offer as appropriate. The ball would then be back in their court.

KatieDee

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

If the house needs work doing, I would rather be in control of that rather than leaving it to the sellers to do it as cheaply as possible. I would simple say fine don’t do the work, and lower my offer as appropriate. The ball would then be back in their court.

Thank you. The work isn't a considerable amount of work, just in relation to some failed double glazed units. Everything else is just cosmetic and what we considered when putting our offer in.

It was more the principle - they'd promised this work and we agreed not to reduce our offer to reflect this (as our surveyor suggested) just to ensure we completed as soon as we could. Even more reason for our frustration.

Slinky

paddy's_mum wrote: »

Perhaps the only question in your minds could be 'is this family member going to keep up the bullying for many more weeks and if so, can I stand the stress'?

My guess here is that the family member has taken money out of a 2019 ISA to lend to the vendor and has now discovered that they cannot put it back into the ISA using this years allowance, if it isn't back in before 5th April, hence the rush to complete before the end of March.



Once 5th April has gone, the 2019 ISA boat has sailed away and it won't be an issue anybody can do something about.