House purchase - What made you pull out?

Kad_Williams

eddddy wrote: »

You need to look at the reasons for the delay.

You mention a lease extension - that is outside the control of the seller and the seller's solicitor.

• Has the freeholder agreed price and terms for the lease extension?

• Has the freeholder realised that they have the leaseholder over a barrel with the lease extension - and is attempting to 'bleed them dry'?

• Are you / your solicitor happy with the terms of the lease extension?

(99%+ of purchases don't involve lease extensions, and it's meaningless to compare timescales for purchases without lease extensions, to purchases with lease extensions.)


You need to find out the problems causing the delay - and then look at each of those problems, to determine how likely they are to get fixed, and how quickly.

It's the combination of both the freeholder's and vendor's (brother and brother) teams' slowness that is leading me to this position, but particularly the vendor's. I didn't get to this point without asking for clarity about why things are taking so long but ultimately it is the lack of clarity which is inclining me to force their hand. I don't especially see them meeting this deadline, considering the lack of progression over the last half year, and waiting for another couple of months wouldn't work for my plans so I would like to be able draw a line somewhere. If they want to make it work then they need to let me know what's going on. That is a much more comfortable status quo for me - one where I'm ok to move on.



Lease extension was approved back in April. Then an amendment was asked for (to accommodate a new lease plan) to appease Lender. Then that amendment was no longer needed - Lender accepted to lend without. We are waiting vendors solicitors to confirm we can use the original lease plan/send us a lease extension that reflects their current position.

pimento

We've just pulled out of a purchase because at the second viewing three months later, I decided it was too small.
The reason the second viewing was so much later was that we live five hours away.
We've decided to carry on with the sale of our house and rent locally while we carry on looking.

need_an_answer

I've pulled out of 2 purchases.
The first was a property that was probate and we had a tight timescale to get to however it became apparent that probate was nowhere in sight...we pulled out after 5 months...the house was eventually not sold for another year.

The second one was very recent...TBH we should never have got involved it was probably a doomed purchase and we came to our senses 3 weeks ago.

Both would have been BTL's and neither were in chain

walwyn1978

When we discovered that the conversion we’d fallen in love with had a major structural issue which would have cost £50-60k to sort. The survey missed it, my father in law was going past one day and noticed brickwork he wasn’t happy about (he’s a builder)

Long story short we looked properly and got a quote, their angle was that it wasn’t unsafe and clearly the mortgage company seemed happy with the property as it stood and they wouldn’t move on price.

We walked away, they’d sold to someone else within a few weeks

AndyTails

We looked round a house that we were told was being sold chain free, by a divorcing couple. We made an offer, and had it accepted. A few weeks later we were chasing something, and the estate agent told us that both the husband and the wife and now decided that they wanted to buy rather than go into rented, so instead of being chain free it was suddenly part of a split chain!

A day or two later my wife (who wanted to leave her job but was worried about having to pay back training costs to her employer) was offered voluntary redundancy (leave now and we'll waive the training costs). Put that together with the double chain and it was an easy decision: quit the job, can't get a mortgage, but that house purchase isn't going ahead anyway; easier to stay in our current property until we're both in full time employment again.

eddddy

Kad_Williams wrote: »

It's the combination of both the freeholder's and vendor's (brother and brother) teams' slowness that is leading me to this position, but particularly the vendor's. I didn't get to this point without asking for clarity about why things are taking so long but ultimately it is the lack of clarity which is inclining me to force their hand.

So you're saying that you have asked the seller what the problem is (perhaps via the EA), and they are not giving clear answers.

Without knowing the background, I would guess this means one of two things:

a) The seller doesn't really understand the process, and so isn't getting on with things and isn't giving their solicitor clear instructions

b) The seller is hiding something from you


If it were me, and I suspected 'a', I would 'gang-up' with the EA and start pushing the seller along. Tell them what they need to do, and tell them what to instruct their solicitor to do.

If I suspected 'b', I might start issuing ultimatums and deadlines.

But maybe you've already tried that.

SallyAnneBooth

Service Management Charge on a freehold property.

Builder refused for us to be a part of the Management Company.

phoebe1989seb

Iirc in eight house purchases we've pulled out of three. All the houses we've bought have been projects with loads of work required but we've never withdrawn from a purchase as a result of a survey [STRIKE] although I confess we've not had surveys on the last four[/STRIKE].

Back in 2011 we actually pulled out of two - one because on the second viewing we discovered that the land behind the garden was due to have about four 'executive homes' built on it, obscuring the view of open countryside from the house. The view and feeling of open space (it was a semi-rural, village property) had been one of the main reasons for buying. The house we'd previously been in the process of buying was on a fairly busy road - although set well back with a massive front garden/drive - but we'd not realised how busy/noisy it was at rush hour till we went back for another look at the area (like a previous poster, we were moving long distance). In hindsight, though, that was the house we should've bought as it was closer to my ageing parents

More recently, in 2017, we made an offer on a house we hadn't viewed (200 miles from where we lived) as we couldn't get to see it straight away and we were concerned it would sell quickly. The offer was accepted and a week later we finally managed to get to see it. In real life the road was again much busier, plus we felt the location wasn't really right - despite previous extensive googling/going up and down on streetview - so we withdrew our offer. We felt bad as this one was a marriage break-up, but it went SSTC again within the next couple of days......

Timing-wise, I think we must have been extremely fortunate as we've never had to wait very long for a sale/purchase to go through, so have never considered pulling out for that reason

Slinky

Vendor showed signs of being a control freak, wanting to retain ownership of a path from the front to the back of the propertly, and create a right of way up our drive. He had built a house next door and would be our neighbour. He hadn't mentioned this retained ownership when we viewed, and we decided that even if we could get this changed, we didn't want to live next door to him.

System

Slinky wrote: »

Vendor showed signs of being a control freak, wanting to retain ownership of a path from the front to the back of the propertly, and create a right of way up our drive. He had built a house next door and would be our neighbour. He hadn't mentioned this retained ownership when we viewed, and we decided that even if we could get this changed, we didn't want to live next door to him.

Yes, good that you heeded that red flag. It sounds like even after someone had bought, the vendor would still have felt he was their rightful overlord. I think one mistake buyers make is failing to consider, before they buy, what the neighbours could be like. It is not uncommon for people to move because of intrusive and control freak neighbours, but the last thing they will do is tell the buyer, who only discovers it too late.