Lost our buyer, losing my sanity!

AmmDram

Just posting out of frustration and in an attempt to get a different perspective/advice if possible... we accepted an offer on our house at the start of August, same day as we had an offer accepted on the house we wanted to buy. Plenty of time to make the stamp duty holiday window, and no need to worry about our mortgage offer expiring, right? Wrong. Our buyer dropped out a few weeks ago. 

We were totally honest with our seller about needing to make the stamp duty holiday window when our buyer dropped out. The survey on the property we have offered on threw up quite a few issues which would swallow up our contingency funds so we would not be in a position to pay the price we had agreed plus stamp duty (and repairs). We assumed they would want to re-market their property but they said they were happy to wait for us to find another buyer, as were the people above them in the chain. We’ve only had one person come to view our house since it went back up for sale and I’m spending every day in a horrible state of anxiety that even if we do find a buyer, we will miss the SD holiday and our mortgage offer will expire (1st April). 

The seller and their agent knows we will have to either drop out or renegotiate; we didn’t want to leave it to the last minute to let them down which is why we were very honest with them about our position. I am really struggling with everything being out of my hands and it looks like trying to carry on with the purchase is futile. They still want to sell to us though! 

Their agent is adamant that if we find a buyer ASAP it can still go through in time (as most of the conveyancing was already done). We don’t want to pull the plug on the sale, just in case there is a miracle but the anxiety and general state of not knowing what is going to happen is awful. 

Before I ring our lender, does anyone know if mortgage offers have any chance in general of being extended at the moment, or is asking  the lender now the wrong thing to do? It was valid from 1st Oct - 1st April... thank you if you made it this far! 

Falafels

I feel for you... how stressful!

Many people are struggling with the kind of issues you describe right now, and lenders are aware of this, though they do have differing policies on their response. Before phoning your lender, whoever they may be, check their website for their particular policy on mortgage offer extensions because you may well find the answer there. If not, contacting them seems a good idea.

As regards missing the SD holiday, are the repairs going to cause a retention on your mortgage? If not, how urgent are they? What I'm saying, really, is that if you miss the deadline but if the repairs can be done gradually, as you can afford them, the whole situation may be salvageable. I know that having to pay the SD when you were so organised well in advance is really going to stick in the throat as well as the wallet, but it might not happen, and there may be a way of continuing your purchase even if it's not the ideal one. 

Wishing you the veryveryvery best of luck with this!

anselld

Did the buyer explain why they pulled out?

SpiderLegs

I think you have to be realistic in that unless you get a new buyer very quickly you are not going to hit 31st March deadline. If you have been back on the market for a few weeks and only have one viewer, I don’t see where this new buyer is coming from. 
I’d also be expecting your seller to be heading back to market pretty quickly too.

Time to re-evaluate your budget based on including SDLT cost I think.

AmmDram

anselld said:

Did the buyer explain why they pulled out?

No, they didn’t even actually tell the estate agent. I found out the day after they pulled out, at the end of the day when I called my solicitor for an update. She said the estate agent should have told me, but when I spoke to her, she hadn’t been informed. She then spoke to the buyer and they had already started conveyancing on a different property and decided to buy that one instead. They had previously threatened to pull out due to wanting things to move quickly (we wanted them to move quickly too) but must have lost patience. Things were moving at ‘normal speed’, it had just taken our sellers quite a few weeks to find somewhere to complete the chain In the beginning. As far as we were aware, all parties were hopeful of completing before Christmas so it was a shock when they actually pulled out so close to the finish line. 

AmmDram

Falafels said:

I feel for you... how stressful!

Many people are struggling with the kind of issues you describe right now, and lenders are aware of this, though they do have differing policies on their response. Before phoning your lender, whoever they may be, check their website for their particular policy on mortgage offer extensions because you may well find the answer there. If not, contacting them seems a good idea.

As regards missing the SD holiday, are the repairs going to cause a retention on your mortgage? If not, how urgent are they? What I'm saying, really, is that if you miss the deadline but if the repairs can be done gradually, as you can afford them, the whole situation may be salvageable. I know that having to pay the SD when you were so organised well in advance is really going to stick in the throat as well as the wallet, but it might not happen, and there may be a way of continuing your purchase even if it's not the ideal one. 

Wishing you the veryveryvery best of luck with this!

It was lots of things that all added up that look like they need doing relatively soon; but we didn’t think at the time (when we thought we were fine for the SD break) that they were worthy of renegotiation. The owner could argue they don’t all NEED doing ASAP, but we wouldn’t want to end up moving in and finding further things that needed doing... We did have enough funds for stamp duty, it just seems like the house needs more spending on it in the relatively near future than we have spare (plus stamp duty). 

Thank you for your kind words. 

HanPop

Just wanted to say that I feel for you! We had a buyer pull out at exchange and we were buying a new build that had a big ‘welcome home’ banner on the front for us we were that close! I did have a good cry. Then it was v stressful because the Developer said they’d wait a bit for us to find a buyer and we had 24 viewings and no offer and the developer put it back on the market. There were other parties that wanted to buy our house and we were told whoever sold first got it, it was so stressful. In the end we managed to get a buyer one day before the other people who wanted to buy it did. Safe to say all of this has put me off ever moving again I can’t cope with the stress!
good luck and I hope it all works out for you.

NameUnavailable

If you don't get any interest/offers in the first couple of weeks of January then you need to be making contingency plans.

If the people you're buying from are keen to keep you as a buyer (assuming you get a buyer yourselves soon) you should ask about a small price reduction to help towards the works required. I wouldn't say you need a contribution towards the stamp duty but rather explain to them the work required and likely costs (to be honest they are probably wondering why you haven't done this already and that might explain their keeness to sell to you!).

AmmDram

SpiderLegs said:

I think you have to be realistic in that unless you get a new buyer very quickly you are not going to hit 31st March deadline. If you have been back on the market for a few weeks and only have one viewer, I don’t see where this new buyer is coming from. 
I’d also be expecting your seller to be heading back to market pretty quickly too.

Time to re-evaluate your budget based on including SDLT cost I think.

Yes, that’s the problem, I feel sure we won’t make it. I thought by being up front about it, the seller would pull the plug for us if they weren’t prepared to accept a lower offer further down the line. We couldn’t believe they didn’t re-market straightaway.  It has left us thinking they must surely be prepared to renegotiate when we have been so open, or they have wasted a bit more of their own time by not re-marketing straight away...? I know at the moment we are in no position to negotiate. 

We had one other viewer lined up to view the week before Christmas but they pulled out due to it being Christmas (surely they knew that when they asked for the viewing?). 

It’s just a shame the survey threw up so many things; we had budgeted for stamp duty and a cushion, just sadly not quite enough. 

AmmDram

HanPop said:

Just wanted to say that I feel for you! We had a buyer pull out at exchange and we were buying a new build that had a big ‘welcome home’ banner on the front for us we were that close! I did have a good cry. Then it was v stressful because the Developer said they’d wait a bit for us to find a buyer and we had 24 viewings and no offer and the developer put it back on the market. There were other parties that wanted to buy our house and we were told whoever sold first got it, it was so stressful. In the end we managed to get a buyer one day before the other people who wanted to buy it did. Safe to say all of this has put me off ever moving again I can’t cope with the stress!
good luck and I hope it all works out for you.

That sounds awful! Sorry to hear you had such a stressful time. Hope all is ok now. Thanks. 

greatcrested

Many solicitors are currently contacting their clients to warn of the possibility of not making the SDLT deadline, so that they are fully prepared for the possibility of the extra cost.

And that's clients who already have conveyancing in progress.

So unless you find a buyer really fast, and get the conveyancing underway, and hit no delays, you may well not make it.