Never Ending House Sale

sorby

Hi,

I was hoping to get some advice with our ongoing / never ending house sale. We sold our house on the 23rd October 2018. We had an offer accepted on our new home the same day.

All was progressing well for a pre-Christmas sale and purchase until we were told there was a problem and our buyer’s buyer was delaying the process. Our buyer is 100% complete (survey / searches / approved mortgage offer all done). The delay was only either their buyer, a private landlord. In order to not lose our new home, we were forced to “break the chain”.

Long story short, our old home has now been empty since January. Our buyer’s buyer has been extremely slow. After changing solicitors, losing searches, they paid for the searches to be re-done which finally all came back all clear on the 28th March. This was the final missing piece of the chain, so we were expecting calls to arrange exchange / complete dates last week.

However, I got a phone call from our estate agent on the 3rd of April to inform me that whilst everything was complete solicitor paperwork wise, we could not yet go ahead because the buyer’s buyer did not have the deposit. He owns four rental properties, and has only just decided to start the process of re-mortgaging one of them to pay for the deposit.

My question is, who is at fault for not doing the due diligence / proof of funds? Our buyer and ourselves are using the same solicitor, but different estate agents. Our buyer’s buyer is using an unknown out-of-town solicitor.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

AnotherJoe

Fault is irrelevant.
I would have put it back on the market when you broke the chain.
I would now.
How long is this person going to keep pulling your chains and what if he gazunders last minute ?

Putting it back on market will concentrate some minds.
And if it doesn't, then that shows you should have put it back on anyway.

pattypan4

It is ridiculously difficult and stressful to co-ordinate buying and selling, even having cash to smooth the process does not help. No point in playing the blame game. I have been waiting to buy for 8 months and have a buyer for my property from 2 months ago, now the buyer is trying to push me and all it is doing is adding to stress. I will sell and buy when all the balls line up. Sorby it is your buyer who should be stressing not you. Nothing you can do but wait

lisyloo

Wouldn’t the obvious person to ask be your solicitor?
What have they said?

sorby

Thanks for the replies.The house is already back on the market, although the estate agents re-launch hasn't been great. They only changed right-move back from 'STC' to 'For Sale', which makes it look like its been hanging around since October, and bottom of the search lists for the area. We're looking at using a second estate agent to get it back to the top of search lists.

Our solicitor has been no help at all. The estate agents told me, and I informed the solicitor. They simply said they'd put it on their file and keep asking the solicitor at the bottom for updates.

AndyTails

sorby wrote: »

Hi,

I was hoping to get some advice with our ongoing / never ending house sale. We [STRIKE]sold[/STRIKE] accepted an offer on our house on the 23rd October 2018. We had an offer accepted on our new home the same day.

All was progressing well for a pre-Christmas sale and purchase until we were told there was a problem and our buyer’s buyer was delaying the process. Our buyer is 100% [STRIKE]complete [/STRIKE]ready to exchange on his purchase (survey / searches / approved mortgage offer all done). The delay was only COLOR="Red"][STRIKE]either [/STRIKE][/COLOR] their buyer, a private landlord. In order to not lose our new home, we were forced to “break the chain” and purchase without selling.

Long story short, our old home has now been empty since January. Our buyer’s buyer has been extremely slow. After changing solicitors, losing searches, they paid for the searches to be re-done which finally all came back all clear on the 28th March. This was the final missing piece of the chain, so we were expecting calls to arrange exchange / complete dates last week.

However, I got a phone call from our estate agent on the 3rd of April to inform me that whilst everything was [STRIKE]complete [/STRIKE] ready solicitor paperwork wise, we could not yet go ahead because the buyer’s buyer did not have the deposit. He owns four rental properties, and has only just decided to start the process of re-mortgaging one of them to pay for the deposit.

My question is, who is at fault for not doing the due diligence / proof of funds? Our buyer and ourselves are using the same solicitor, but different estate agents. Our buyer’s buyer is using an unknown out-of-town solicitor.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

Fixed that for you. Please avoid using terms such as "sold" and "complete" in places where you're not using them for their recognised meaning.

---

Who's at fault for not doing due diligence? Er, no-one! Some estate agents do affordability checks for their vendors, which would have shown that buyer's buyer could raise the funds. They wouldn't have required him to have the funds there and then, why would he raise the funds if he didn't have his offer accepted?

I know of no requirement for any solicitor to check that a buyer has sufficient funds, I only know of the requirement to check the source of any funds, to prevent money laundering.

If the buyer's buyer didn't have access to funds at he moment he needed him, then he messed up, not anyone else.

sorby

Thank you for the corrections AndyTails.

I appreciate that they did not need to have funds in place at the point when they had their offer accepted. I'm just surprised that the estate agents and solicitors have let it get this far without raising the question. Or really just to say "we can exchange contracts soon, start raising your funds now" etc. It is what it is I guess.

The buyer's buyer had the valuation completed for their re-mortgage on Tuesday (9th). We'll either wait for the accepted offer to complete, or accept another offer, whichever comes first.

Blame game wasn't really my intent. More of who to be venting some anger / frustration at over the phone.

Thanks again.

Hutch100uk

Been there. I had a buyer within 2 weeks of my house going up. My buyers were selling to a neighbour who was buying theirs as a 2nd property (so chain stopped there).
My solicitor was quickly sending my documents to my buyer's solicitor, searches were all done etc. They were pushing for completion withing 12 weeks.
I assume everything is on track until my EA rings (almost 12 weeks after accepting offer) to say the buyer at end of chain hasn't even paid for searches yet!!
I was furious the EA hadn't been keeping an eye on this as I could have made the decision to re-market my house.
Needless to say, the end buyer pulled out, then my buyer changed their mind.