Low valuation and exclusivity agreement

jo1984

keiratea said:

Not sure if this helps - but if the mortgage valuation is accurate, could you think of this not as losing £2,000 but as saving £93,000 ? 

Yes I think that’s how we’re going to have to see it.

Tiglet2

Who did you pay the £2000 to?

AdrianC

jo1984 said:

Yep, we feel we’ve been misled and are going down the route of the property being mis-advertised

Didn't you view it?

What proportion of the agreed offer is £95k?

numbercruncher8

The low valuation is not the problem of the seller either, so why should they lose out? As far as they are concerned they have delivered their side of the bargain, assuming they did not negotiate with anyone else.

If the £95k is not material to the transaction, ie house is £2m, you could simply stand your ground and the seller may accept the offer anyway... or you could go to a different mortgage company who may see it differently.

If it is material the EA probably saw you coming and did a great job. In that case, it's an expensive lesson. 

That being said there may be something in the small print, unfortunately if you need legal assistance to help chase it that may eat up a fair wedge of the money, not to mention time wasted.

eddddy

It's very unusual for a buyer to be asked to sign an exclusivity agreement. How did the request come about?

In the very rare cases where a buyer signs an exclusivity agreement, it usually has a list of situations in which you can get your deposit back.  Does your agreement have a list?  Did you show the agreement to your solicitor or another professional advisor before signing it?

The short answer is you can get your money back, if the agreement you signed says you can get your money back.

(Could you have fallen for a scammer, who repeatedly gets £2k from people by persuading them to offer too much for a property and then sign an exclusivity agreement?)

Peppermint90

What was the offer price? 

Seller does rather sound like a scammer, or someone who knew the real worth of their home and knew that they wouldn't get an offer as high as you, and therefore legally bound you before you could realize.

So cunning. Hope you get your money back. 

nyermen

Possible scammer was my thought too.  You don't get that big a gap in a property price unless something is fishy.
Appreciate we don't know how much the property is, but I'm assuming that if it's 2m+ that a couple of grand is a pointless number in the scheme.  A house at 500k on the other hand, downvalued by nearly 20%?

jo1984

Thanks all,

yes we did look at the house and it seemed to match (value wise) the others in the area. We did get legal advice and our solicitor viewed the agreement. We didn’t expect the low valuation as we had seen properties that were in worse condition for more money, so we signed.
We’ll put it down to a lessen learnt.

GDB2222

I’m sorry that you have lost your £2000, but I find it odd that you should think that you could possibly have a means of backing out of the agreement. What would be the point of having the agreement and the deposit if you could just rescind it unilaterally? 

davidmcn

jo1984 said:

We did get legal advice and our solicitor viewed the agreement.

And what was your solicitor's advice? Haven't you asked them for further advice?