Vendors demands - considering pulling out

iammumtoone

KatieDee wrote: »

It's leasehold as well

Is that standard for your area, you did say it was a house?


Are the others you are viewing freehold?

KatieDee

Yellow_mango wrote: »

FWIW - I saw you mention that your reason for not being able to complete until April is being unable to book leave and not able to complete at the weekend?

Just a thought, but from my understanding, there is no need to be physically present for completion - it's just a phonecall from the solicitors and verbal confirmation. You can then pick the keys up from the estate agents at your convenience (who are generally open at the weekend). We are due to be completing tomorrow and this is what we are doing.

Depends of course on your current living arrangements / downwards chain and if you will need to actually move out of your current accommodation on completion, but I haven't seen anything about that in your posts.

From what you say it seems extremely unlikely that they will be ready to exchange / complete in March anyway. But if you were able to offer this as an option it might ease tensions a little - and make it crystal clear that any delays were entirely on them.

Thank you for your suggestion

I wasn't actually aware that we didn't need to be present for completion, but we wanted to be available to collect the keys as soon as possible anyway, just to ensure we could check the property and do whatever we needed to do. We're in rented accommodation and have to give a months notice anyway, so no difficulty there.

Regardless, I think we're being made to bend over backwards to try and fix something that would have been an issue regardless of who bought the property. She has made assumptions about the length of time it would take to sell and complete, and rather than be polite and ask us to work with them to achieve this, she has gone straight to threats via the EA. The more I think of it, the more annoyed I get.

We will view these other houses and have a good think about whether we can still go through with the purchase. I think it will be much easier to make the decision when we're standing in front of the actual house, rather than looking at (incredibly bad) EA photos.

It is helpful to know that should we decide to go through with it, we can try and help the vendor complete when they want to.

AnotherJoe

If you do decide to go ahead, you can always call their bluff;
"We are ready to exchange and complete"

All we need is the following from your solicitor which we are currently waiting for
....

.... long list of items you are waiting on them for."

KatieDee

iammumtoone wrote: »

Is that standard for your area, you did say it was a house?


Are the others you are viewing freehold?

The area is pretty much leasehold properties, with a handful of freehold. We were against buying leasehold at first but have now looked into it and we're not as worried. One of the ones we're viewing is leasehold with £13 per year ground rent and over 950 years on the lease, the other is freehold

AnotherJoe wrote: »

If you do decide to go ahead, you can always call their bluff;
"We are ready to exchange and complete"

All we need is the following from your solicitor which we are currently waiting for
....

.... long list of items you are waiting on them for."

Tempting...although we've already explained (prior to the drama) that we were hoping to exchange ASAP, but our solicitor was waiting for further information. It was at this point that the vendor called her solicitor to find out she was on holiday, and after this that she started making the demands!

Yellow_mango

KatieDee wrote: »

Thank you for your suggestion

I wasn't actually aware that we didn't need to be present for completion, but we wanted to be available to collect the keys as soon as possible anyway, just to ensure we could check the property and do whatever we needed to do. We're in rented accommodation and have to give a months notice anyway, so no difficulty there.

Regardless, I think we're being made to bend over backwards to try and fix something that would have been an issue regardless of who bought the property. She has made assumptions about the length of time it would take to sell and complete, and rather than be polite and ask us to work with them to achieve this, she has gone straight to threats via the EA. The more I think of it, the more annoyed I get.

We will view these other houses and have a good think about whether we can still go through with the purchase. I think it will be much easier to make the decision when we're standing in front of the actual house, rather than looking at (incredibly bad) EA photos.

It is helpful to know that should we decide to go through with it, we can try and help the vendor complete when they want to.

Oh I agree they have gone about it in entirely the wrong way. But the way I see it, it's the house I'm buying, not a relationship with the vendors. It's not important to me that they are nice people.

If it were me, I'd be nice as pie and agree to complete as soon as they are ready. Then grin smugly to myself as they miss their own deadline

My purchase was about as easy as it gets, chain free both sides and both sets of lawyers were pretty responsive and efficient (same company for both sides which helps I think). But it was still almost 2 weeks from all enquiries being answered and all legal stuff completed to the point of exchange, and then another week until completion. They are being completely unrealistic if they think they can complete end of March and they haven't responded to the initial enquiries yet

Best of luck with whatever you decide.

[Deleted User]

I had a similar situation when we bought our house. All was going fine when out of the blue I had an email from the estate agent saying the vendors needed to complete on xx date. We had booked a holiday so were away on that date and couldn't complete by then. We then agreed that we would complete the week after, but having spoke to my solicitors they told me that it was actually the vendors solicitors who were being slow and holding things up!

All worked out well in the end and we completed the day we agreed on, but I couldn't understand why all a sudden they had a strict deadline to meet when they had not made any indication of this before.

The EA's attitude did not help either, making out it was us holding things up when it was actually their solicitor.

KatieDee

Yellow_mango wrote: »

Oh I agree they have gone about it in entirely the wrong way. But the way I see it, it's the house I'm buying, not a relationship with the vendors. It's not important to me that they are nice people.

If it were me, I'd be nice as pie and agree to complete as soon as they are ready. Then grin smugly to myself as they miss their own deadline

My purchase was about as easy as it gets, chain free both sides and both sets of lawyers were pretty responsive and efficient (same company for both sides which helps I think). But it was still almost 2 weeks from all enquiries being answered and all legal stuff completed to the point of exchange, and then another week until completion. They are being completely unrealistic if they think they can complete end of March and they haven't responded to the initial enquiries yet

Best of luck with whatever you decide.

Lucky! We thought ours was going to be simple (vendor moved out, property empty, no issues, no chain for us) but last minute things just seem to have exploded!

Deleted_User wrote: »

I had a similar situation when we bought our house. All was going fine when out of the blue I had an email from the estate agent saying the vendors needed to complete on xx date. We had booked a holiday so were away on that date and couldn't complete by then. We then agreed that we would complete the week after, but having spoke to my solicitors they told me that it was actually the vendors solicitors who were being slow and holding things up!

All worked out well in the end and we completed the day we agreed on, but I couldn't understand why all a sudden they had a strict deadline to meet when they had not made any indication of this before.

The EA's attitude did not help either, making out it was us holding things up when it was actually their solicitor.

Our EA has done exactly the same thing. Phone call after phone call asking for updates on our side, asking if searches had been requested, what was outstanding. After we gave almost daily updates only to be asked about the searches again, I called him and said we were completely up to date and it was in fact the vendor causing the delay.

He apologised, spoke to them and then came to say nothing was going to happen this week as the vendors solicitor was on holiday!

I explained this was fine and he started asking about completion dates. I reminded him that we'd already agreed April with both the vendor and the EA - which is when everything started to go wrong. :mad:

Tim_Bisley

KatieDee wrote: »

We're in rented accommodation and have to give a months notice anyway, so no difficulty there.

It's your dream house, you wouldn't be moving into it on completion anyway as you still have to give notice on you current place and you are prepared to lose it over £500? It always amazes me how many sales fall through over something that is worth a tiny fraction of the overall price.


If you are having second thoughts over doing up a house rather than do revovation work then fine, but if not you lose a lot of time and money over the sake of a few quid. Take emotion out of it - it doesn't matter if you are buying it from nice people or not, it's all about the house itself.

fudgecat

Take a deep breath, get some paper and draw up a pros and cons. A doer upper is mess, work and heartbreak (to say nothing of THIS hassle!), but if it is cheaper, you will not be paying more in a mortgage over and over in interest for someone else`s doing up. Everything will be as YOU want it to YOUR standards. Re-view the property; decide if you still love it. Look at others for comparison. If you do decide this house is best, stay firm and pleasant. We`ll move ASAP (to suit us of course), and speed things up by doing the work ourselves - with the £500.00 deduction, of course. Oh, and could you jolly up YOUR solicitors who have caused delay? It is a buyer`s market at the moment - remember that and good luck! By the way, the house I hated most, that we did up, was our biggest profit maker...

KatieDee

Tim_Bisley wrote: »

It's your dream house, you wouldn't be moving into it on completion anyway as you still have to give notice on you current place and you are prepared to lose it over £500? It always amazes me how many sales fall through over something that is worth a tiny fraction of the overall price.


If you are having second thoughts over doing up a house rather than do revovation work then fine, but if not you lose a lot of time and money over the sake of a few quid. Take emotion out of it - it doesn't matter if you are buying it from nice people or not, it's all about the house itself.

It isn't our dream house though. We loved it when we viewed, we have planned out all of the work to make it a dream house and we paid for a relatively straight forward purchase. Now the demands are coming in thick and fast for completely unreasonable things, we've started to view the sale in a more negative light. It isn't that we need the money, it's that fact this person thinks she can try and hold us over a barrel when we have done nothing but help them to exchange quicker.

In an ideal world, when you're spending such a huge amount of money, both sides should be patient and understanding. I appreciate this doesn't always happen, but if this property was prime property, in great condition, really individual and ready to move into, I'd probably just grin and bear it. The fact is, it needs a lot of work, there are several other similar properties for sale in the area, it isn't high demand and we're not desperate to move. None of this would have mattered if it wasn't for the family members horrific attitude.

I know it seems trivial and "principle" shouldn't come into such a big purchase either, but I just don't feel 100% on it anymore.

fudgecat wrote: »

Take a deep breath, get some paper and draw up a pros and cons. A doer upper is mess, work and heartbreak (to say nothing of THIS hassle!), but if it is cheaper, you will not be paying more in a mortgage over and over in interest for someone else`s doing up. Everything will be as YOU want it to YOUR standards. Re-view the property; decide if you still love it. Look at others for comparison. If you do decide this house is best, stay firm and pleasant. We`ll move ASAP (to suit us of course), and speed things up by doing the work ourselves - with the £500.00 deduction, of course. Oh, and could you jolly up YOUR solicitors who have caused delay? It is a buyer`s market at the moment - remember that and good luck! By the way, the house I hated most, that we did up, was our biggest profit maker...

Thank you

The difference between the price we paid and the asking price of the alternative property (identical house more or less, with a much bigger garden and finished to a high standard) is about £25k, so not to be sniffed at. This is roughly what we budgeted for doing up the first house but would have been funded via loans/interest free credit cards most likely, which might be more interest than your average mortgage.

No point in worrying though, like you said I think it's just a matter of sitting down with a pen and paper, removing emotion from it, considering alternatives and making a decision.