Purposely delaying a sale

Gemmah123

I’m looking for some advice on our current situation. Unfortunately last year was awful for anyone selling and buying a house, we put our house on the market 2 weeks before the 1st lockdown impeccable timing I know! However when the housing market was allowed to re open we did sell ours in June 2020, we then had an offer accepted on the house we wished to buy in July. Now we completely understood that the pandemic would inevitably delay the usual process however we are now in January 2021 and still yet to exchange contracts and be given a date. We have been very on top of speaking to our solicitors and estate agent literally every other day, every bit of paperwork was signed and sent back as soon as we had it, we paid for an separate company to “speed” up the process on the recommendation of the EA, which is completely pointless I would strongly advise no one use an “middle man” company to speed up the process their job is to ensure we are updated and to chase the information on behalf of the solicitors to help move things along quicker, however ours never updates us unless we ask for an update and ours likes to use the “excuse” and I like to call it an excuse because it seems to be the only response we get from them of the buyers solicitors are not responding. Fair enough they may be busy and don’t respond straight away but this has the case with every bit of paperwork that has been sent, it apparently takes 3 weeks to get a response for anything we ask. 

We completed all papers sent by our solicitors and had received all of our searches back on the property we were purchasing In September 2020 then we found out that the buyer of our property is still yet to send papers off and have a response from the searches, also remember we agreed the sale of our property a month before us purchasing our new home. We have the benefit of the doubt that due to the current situation that things will take longer, we then found out that their was an issue and the buyer solicitors raised concerns about some enquiries to which we were not told until 2 weeks later once those were resolved (extremely pointless concerns and requests to be honest for example one turned out to be they wanted a copy of an out of date gas certificate) 
To which we arranged and sent off the relevant things that were asked, to then find out there were MORE enquiries that needed to be “checked” which were sent another 2 weeks after the first lot of enquiries. 

This took us up to November 2020 the house we have bought has now been stood empty for a period of time due to not having a chain. Our buyer is buying our house to rent our not to actually move in, our buyer is purposely delaying the sale of the house because “they don’t have time to sort out a tenant and advertising” I’m not sure it’s even legal for someone to advertise a property they don’t even own let alone try and find a tenant so for over 6 weeks now we have stood still with only the communication from our solicitor saying they can not get in touch  with the buyers solicitors and when they do the response is the buyer doesn’t have time at the moment to deal with this. Surely this is not a “valid” reason solicitors can accept to delay progress 

Also to add the the stress we are due to have a baby in January when we had our offer accepted I was 8 weeks pregnant now I am less than 3 weeks away from giving birth, no ideal considering we’re supposed to be upgrading to a family home, we have no room for this baby to arrive in our current home! With me going onto maternity leave at the end of January I’m very concerned my wage slips will obviously show maternity pay and I don’t want this to affect our mortgage offer which is due to expire at the end of March 2021

Someone please tell me there is something we can do because I don’t understand why nothing is moving along?

diego_94

Ultimatum to the buyers, or put your house back on the market.

moneysavinghero

Your solicitor cant force your buyer to do anything. If the buyer does not want to play ball then it is up to you to apply pressure (to the buyer) to get them to get a move on.

Do not be surprised if your buyer decides to drop the price at the last minute.

I think the best thing might be to forget this buyer and put the house back on the market.

AdrianC

Until contracts are exchanged there is no sale.
The buyer can decide to delay - or walk away from - exchanging contracts for whatever reason, or no reason, they wish.

How they market for a tenant, and when, is not your problem.

princeofpounds

Can't understand why you haven't already issued an ultimatum long ago (to be frank, I reckon you're 95% likely to have to ditch this buyer). Exchange within a week or house goes back on the market - normally I would give a longer timeframe but given it's dragged on so long, you're theoretically in an advanced stage and the buyer is clearly acting in bad faith, there isn't much point in continuing.

Sounds like your estate agent is trying to do you over as well, getting you to pay fees to a company to 'speed the process'. Guess they saw you coming... most agents will do sales progression as a standard part of their role and there isn't much more that can be done as it's up to the solicitors and third party information providers to execute. So you should give notice to your agent as well, most likely - read your contract to see what that involves.

On the plus side - you may find that prices have done ok in the meantime.

FaceHead

Ditch the buyer, they're clearly a waste of space. Put the house back on the market, and given that house prices have gone up by several percent since you accepted the offer, it should be easy to get the same offer or higher. 

Gemmah123

Thanks for commenting I have been loosing my mind and you have all pretty much said what I thought. Tuesday is the day we usual hear something of our solicitor so let’s see what tomorrow brings 🤨

Drawingaline

Our buyer mucked us about for a month in October, they offered end of July. Our EA was proactive and we remarketed within 24hrs with new buyer within 48hrs. We are now at the stage of our mortgage offer expiring and have everything crossed we can get it over the line. Our vendors have hung on for us which is incredibly kind, especially seeing as they are no longer in the country and are desperate for their funds. If we do move in the 27th it will have been six and a half months in total 😭🤦

Get your remarketed asap.