Help with the difficult situation we are in (seller has pulled out)

TranceNRG

ChasingtheWelshdream said:

TranceNRG said:

Sorry I know it was a long post but basically wanted to see anyone's been in a similar situation where the seller has pulled out and what they'd recommend.

I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, but wanted to say yes, we were in a very similar situation and I do empathise. But things do often work out in funny ways. It might seem the end of the world now, but there will always be other houses. Always, and sometimes better.

An elderly vendor selling the only house she'd ever lived in, which her grandfather had built. She was surprised to sell her house quite so quickly and wasn't quite sure where she wanted to live, so had suggested all the way along that she would either rent or move in with her friend. We accepted this, drove up a few times to measure up, had lots of lovely chats. She only mentioned once that she wasn't looking forward to finding places to store her furniture, but shrugged and told us how pleased a family would be living in the (large) house again.

 We were relocating a couple of hundred miles away and finally had jobs/schools lined up. On the day we were supposed to exchange, her EA rang to say she was looking at bungalows in the next village but hadn't found anything, but was sure it wouldn't be long. (First we'd heard of any hint of a chain). Then her son rang to say his mother wasn't going to move and certainly wouldn't be forced into sofa-surfing, the intimation being we were somehow forcing her to move out! 

It transpires she hadn't actually told her family she had put the house on the market (family living a long way away), and really had no clue how any of the process worked. They thought we were forcing her to move out whereas we had simply taken everything at face value. If we'd known she wanted to form an onward chain, there wouldn't have been a problem - we would all have just waited like most chains. But the son was now adamant this was a no-go and she didn't want to move at all. (She still hasn't).  We were completely devastated at losing our dream home - I think I cried pretty much non-stop the whole of the next day.
 
Panicking about losing our buyers/jobs/schools, we discovered an empty house we had previously viewed and discounted (price), had now been massively reduced. We were buying without a mortgage, so jumped straight in, took a risk on some of the searches, got a lighting-speed survey and exchanged within 2 weeks. 

Although it wasn't our first choice, and at the time seemed a poor relation emotionally, with hindsight this house is actually much better for us - better location, better potential and better re-sale. We now walk past the 'one that got away' and think - meh.

What I'm trying to say, is something will come up, and no matter how emotionally invested you are at the moment, once you do move, this will all be a distant memory.

Good luck!

Thanks very much for taking the time to write about your experience. I guess quite similar to ours. Yes we are still feeling a bit down and let down (and also feeling bad about our buyer and the seller of the flat that got messed around) and have started looking again but there's nothing that we like in the price range at the moment. We viewed 5 houses yesterday and none of them ticked all of our boxes. I guess we just have to keep looking. As you say something will come up. I am more and more convinced selling our flat now and going in to rental is the right thing to do.

TranceNRG

NameUnavailable said:

TranceNRG said:

Sorry I know it was a long post but basically wanted to see anyone's been in a similar situation where the seller has pulled out and what they'd recommend.

Yes, happened to me. I was a bit annoyed but ultimately if someone decides not to move then that's their choice, stuff happens. I just started looking for another place.

Even if she was 'a friend' would you expect her to move just to suit you? If you're a friend to her you'd surely understand she's changed her mind and not start turning up on her doorstep trying to convince her to move.

Obviously she felt bad about it and didn't want to face you. Just leave it at that.

We didn't expect her to move to suit us! She's the one that wanted to sell her house and move to a smaller place. She's the one that asked us for help. She's the one that kept telling us things like 'I want yhou to have this house', 'I hope you invite me to your wedding', etc. And she changed her mind. It's just it was quite abrupt and she didn't explain things. She had known all along that she wanted to get government funding for her mum (she didn't want to use her savings) and she had spoken to a solicitor about it. So I find it hard to believe she only just found out that she'd lose money if she sold the house. Also she told us a different story at first (that she no longer wanted to buy the flat she had offered on) and this is also the story she's told her EA. So we really don't know what happened. We feel she abused our trust and friendship.

We don't go back on our word and if we had to change our decision due to a difficult situation, we'd let the parties involve know, explain briefly and apologise to them. 

TranceNRG

getmore4less said:

What price level was she looking at my first thought was why not swap?


There seems to be few 4 bed plus  houses up to  £800k near you.

She wanted to buy our flat! (I mentioned this in another post). She asked us to drop our buyers (a nice family with one kid) and sell our flat to her. We told her we don't go back on our word. We are glad we didn't do that. It was immoral and 100% sure would have disappointed us anyway. 

We are mainly looking in W5. We had a look at few houses in TW8 and W13 but none of them ticked most of the boxes. However one of the houses in your map in TW8 is worth seeing.
Couple of the houses on there have already been sold but the EAs for them don't update listings, just to confuse everyone. 

Spoke to our EA yesteray and had a lengthy discussion about what happened. He knew we were helping the lady. He told us that we did the right thing by helping her as she would have never found a place on her own and we wouldn't have got this far but he told us he warned us about the lady. 
He's going to give it another week or so and let our buyers know. I'm going to have another chat with the EA tomorrow and discuss the possibility of selling our flat for now.