Buyer's buyer pulled out

Galatea3000

Hi MSE members,

This is my inaugural post so as the old saying goes 'I'll try to keep it brief'.

Our house sale fell through yesterday 1st July, the day after the stamp duty holiday expired. The breakdown was due to our buyer's buyer and no reason has been given and most irritatingly the buyer's buyer solicitor signed off his email confirming the news with 'Sorry!'

While I'm sure this happens everyday I have a couple of gripes about our specific situation. I'll start by saying we had direct contact with our buyer - purely be chance, but mainly because our estate agents weren't great at retaining basic property detail. We know from multiple exchanges that she and family were super motivated and as for us we moved to Ireland 2 years ago with the intention to sell asap but Covid etc delayed but following our buyers offer we gave our tenants 2/3 months notice and they are now gone.

Alarm bells rang a couple of weeks ago when we discovered buyer's buyer wanted exchange/completion same day but given the chain we reluctantly agreed. Our buyer was told by her estate agent that buyer was a 'cash buyer' yet as we moved closer to successive, missed exchange/completion dates the solicitors story was either i) can't get hold of client or ii) client 'waiting for funds'. This carried on 25th, 26th, 27th etc June as we're moving closer to end of stamp duty holiday and our buyer potentially being left with a bigger stamp duty bill.

It was around a week ago I started getting the gut feeling this wasn't going to end well - credit to our solicitor and our buyer's solicitor as they were completely on top of it and chasing/sharing our frustration. Having been told by the BB's solicitor as late as 30th June afternoon that 'exchange/completion won't happen today, client still waiting for funds' we received the inevitable news yesterday that 'my client has decided to withdraw' - no reason, just 'Sorry!'

It is my belief that the buyer's buyer and his solicitor had known for some time that this wasn't going to proceed and my take is that he was hoping closer we got to stamp duty expiry closer our buyer would be to pulling the plug, but she wouldn't. She'd budgeted for this eventuality and (with family) had been boxed and ready to go for days. When buyer's buyer realised he had no choice, he did what he should have done at least a week earlier.

In summary gripes are; i) I don't think buyer's buyer was a 'cash buyer' so estate agent wasn't transparent and ii) given my strong, gut feel a week ago did the buyer's buyer's solicitor (or to be fair any of the solicitors) not have a duty to extract some transparency from his client, particularly given at the end there were no reasons given? There's been a huge amount of time wasted, our buyer lost their dream home (she was heavily invested emotionally and is inconsolable and is busy unpacking her family's life as I write) and we now have an empty house with no tenants and a mortgage (on top of our Dublin rent).

If anyone has any take on this I would be interested to hear or do we just take this on the chin and accept there are some investment buyers without a shred of decency.
Many thanks
Galatea3000

C_N_

It might be worth also posting this on the home buying forum as you may get more responses there

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/house-buying-renting-selling

lonibra

Move on OP, it's dog-eat-dog until exchange at least. No commitment on either side.

MWT

Galatea3000 said:

If anyone has any take on this I would be interested to hear or do we just take this on the chin and accept there are some investment buyers without a shred of decency.

You will not be alone, I'm sure there are going to be more than a few at the bottom of chains who needed to complete by the 30th or they could not proceed.

Nothing you can do, no exchange = no liability.

Just move on and either re-market or talk to your buyer and see if they are hopeful of finding a new buyer quickly and still want to proceed.

There are other more risky, creative solutions, like taking their property in part-exchange and then sell that as soon as you can, but that sort of solution is far from a 'safe' option...

I would try not to dwell on the reasons for the bottom of the chain dropping out, nor would I assume they are 'without a shed of decency' without further information, they could easily have been waiting for a promised gifted deposit, or an inheritance that got tied up in unexpected problems, anything is possible, including of course 'being without a shred of decency' ...

Galatea3000

Thanks MWT - fair point I should assume positive intent although if it was any the suggestions you made you'd like to think the solicitor might have given our buyer (and us) just a teeny weeny bit more granularity. Anyhoo, take it on the chin and we do actually already have a viewing lined up for tomorrow. My brother's a surveyor and is doing the viewing for us - turns out this potential buyer already had my brother's number in his phone so perhaps it's written in the stars. I'll hold on to that!

Thrugelmir

Galatea3000 said:

 you made you'd like to think the solicitor might have given our buyer (and us) just a teeny weeny bit more granularity. 

The solicitor acts for their client and no one else. Not in their remit to make any comment to third parties about their clients business.