Are ethics dead in house buying/selling

Hillmanimp

I have had a recent house selling experience and I am wondering if there is anything I can do about it other than filing it for use at a later date. Any views or suggestions gratefully received.

Briefly, I was approached by a "friend" who was interested in purchasing my house. We agreed a deal verbally and confirmed through an exchange of text messages. I moved forward and put an offer on a house but unfortunately that purchase fell through and I recommenced looking. At this point the buyers said they still wanted to buy my house but set a deadline for the completion of the transaction (about 4 months away). A month before the deadline I contacted the buyers to exchange contracts and complete the transaction and was told by the buyers that they were about to exchange contracts on another house. At this point my "buyers" must have decided some weeks before that they were not going through with the purchase but did not inform me of this fact. Reasoning given was that if the other purchase fell through they may wish to come back to purchase my house.

As a result of the buyers actions, I incurred costs which the buyer has not offered to cover, and I looked at a lot of houses after telling agents that I had a purchaser for my house when that turned out not to be the case.

Is it me, or is this unethical practice by my buyer. Do buyers solicitors have any obligation to inform sellers solicitors if they know a transaction is not proceeding.

Grateful for views.

anselld

It has always been the case than nothing is certain until exchange.
There is no obligation on Solicitors to communicate.

It sounds like you messed around for too long and they got fed up waiting.

cannugec5

I have been in the opposite situation. We were buying our first home and dreadfully excited about the whole thing. Purchase had been agreed, but no exchange of contracts etc.

We had a friend come to visit, so I suggested that we went for a drive and we could show her the outside of the house we were buying. When we got there the owner was just leaving so I said, I'm sorry, I hope you don't mind but we just wanted to show friend our new house.

Her reply -" Oh, we changed our minds a few weeks ago. We are not selling any more!"

We learned that the survey we had paid for, was done AFTER they withdrew from sale, so ultimately the solicitors - who knew but did not pass the information to us -paid for the survey on the next property, the one we eventually bought.

Buying and selling has always been fraught.

letitbe90

It’s business, not a play date. Everyone has to look after number one.

AdrianC

Hillmanimp wrote: »

Briefly, I was approached by a "friend" who was interested in purchasing my house.

You need to pick your friends better.

Albala

Nobody 'has to' look after number one, and a lot of people don't. Plenty of people stick to their word when they have accepted an offer, even if they get a higher offer, for example. Others accept lower offers than the highest one they get for purely altruistic reasons. I'm actually surprised by how often this sort of thing happens, given the current public climate where lying, cheating and chiselling generally all seem to be 'acceptable' to a lot of people.