Buyer pulled out 1 day before proposed exchange date: should I go with 'We Buy Any Home.com'?

Sunshine_of_your_Dyf

Hi all,

Myself and my partner are devastated, as the prospective buyer of our flat has pulled out last minute, thereby breaking a chain of nearly 10 separate clients further along the chain. This was in relation to service charge query, which he thought was too much, even though this was explained to him months earlier in the leasehold information pack. I offered to pay for any additional service charge costs for a whole entire year, just to stop him from breaking this chain, even offering to take £5k - £10k off the asking price, only for him to refuse what I thought was an offer he couldn't refuse. 

Naturally, our flat is back on the market but we want to make sure that we're still able to buy the house we want to buy in good time, before that is put back on the market and someone else goes for it. The house seller, who we have a good relationship with, has agreed to hold off for the time being on putting it back on the market while we see if we can get a quick seller to rebuild the chain. 

Re-mortgaging and letting the flat isn't an option, as this is too costly, as is a bridging loan, so the only options are 1) To wait until a potential buyer makes an offer on the flat, which could take days, could take months or 2) Sell the flat to 'We Buy Any Home', at 82% of market value, with a potential quick turnaround. Our mortgage lender will allow us to borrow more to cover this, but 'We Buy Any Home' have offered us £108,000 on our flat which is worth £130,000 at market value. 

My question is, can these companies be trusted? Can we rely on them to release the funds on an agreed completion date? Are we 'making a pact with the devil' if we go with them? My parents our wholeheartedly against the idea, but we are so desperate to keep the chain alive and sell quickly so we don't miss out on our dream house.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - we're young, and inexperienced in the housing market, so we want to make sure we don't get shafted in our desperation!

moneysavinghero

The £108,000 might be a 'lure you in' price. Don't bank on actually getting that price.

Listen to your parents.

Browntoa

£108,000 today , then will find issues down the line and " afraid we can now only offer £90,000" at the last moment. You may achieve more at auction 

It happens all the time , chains collapse

davidmcn

If the £22k was in tenners, would you happily set fire to it?

silvercar

there may there may be other reasons why the buyer has pulled out, just because they say there is a service charge issue, doesn’t mean that is the reason.
put it on the market at a realistic price and wait.

Sunshine_of_your_Dyf

moneysavinghero said:

The £108,000 might be a 'lure you in' price. Don't bank on actually getting that price.

Listen to your parents.

They have in their agreement contract that if they offer you less than £108,000 after they come round and view your property, then you are under no obligation to take this and will incur no penalty: is this to be believed? I asked as to whether this £108,000 would be a firm offer after they come over and value the property, and they said it would be and would not change down the line.

It's tough, because when you see the TrustPilot reviews, you see mainly 5 star experiences (although I do appreciate that a lot of these will be fake). I want to avoid falling into a trap, but then again I do want to salvage something from this chain.

Sunshine_of_your_Dyf

silvercar said:

there may there may be other reasons why the buyer has pulled out, just because they say there is a service charge issue, doesn’t mean that is the reason.
put it on the market at a realistic price and wait.

Thanks for your comment - I did think that perhaps the service charge reason might not be 100% the reason, but then why wait until days before the exchange to announce this if it wasn't something major such as a financial qualm? I think it's despicable so late in the day to do something like that.

We're thinking of lowering the asking price to attract a wider range of people, possibly cash buyers, in order to get things moving at a quicker rate. Again, not sure if this is something worth doing, but as you can understand, we're so desperate to keep this chain alive

firsttimesellerldn

As someone who also just lost their buyer I understand your pain, but I think it’s important to step back and look at this with a cool head. There is never just one ‘dream home’ out there and if your purchase falls through you will find something else. But they’re being patient so I’d just hold on for now and see if you can find another buyer via the normal route.

Sunshine_of_your_Dyf

davidmcn said:

If the £22k was in tenners, would you happily set fire to it?

I get your point, but our goal at the moment is 100% ''How can we still get into our dream home'', even if that means making a loss on the property. Once we move to our new house, I doubt we'd ever want to move again (especially after this debacle haha)

babyblade41

I would never undertake those type of companies.

Price to sell realistically, maybe a little under and you should have a buyer if everything else is ok

Thrugelmir

Have you actually spoken to your mortgage lender about obtaining an increased mortgage offer of £22k?