Properties where buyer pulled out

matthew91822

You may never know.

Back in March 2022 I accepted an offer on a sale property took a very long time due to various complications. Ultimately the buyer pulled out on the day of exchange 9 months later in December. He never shared why.

NameUnavailable

movilogo said:

Even if previous buyer pulled out due to mortgage, the seller can't provide that info due to GDPR.

Rely on your on survey report. Buyer pulling out does not necessarily indicate any problem with the housel. People can pull out of sale for various reasons. 

GDPR only applies to organisations, not to private individuals, so assuming the OP is buying from a private individual then GDPR isn't an issue. If it was an organisation, GDPR still wouldn't be an excuse as it only relates to personal data, so saying 'yes the last buyer pulled out because the survey found lots of damp' wouldn't be a breach.

Emily_Joy

As a buyer, I would really like to know if the searches done by the previous buyer showed that the house is umortgageable for reasons like flooding, land problems, concrete cancer, knot weed, etc. Is there any obligation for the EA to be honest in this respect?

EssexHebridean

Emily_Joy said:

As a buyer, I would really like to know if the searches done by the previous buyer showed that the house is umortgageable for reasons like flooding, land problems, concrete cancer, knot weed, etc. Is there any obligation for the EA to be honest in this respect?

No, the agents won’t have seen the searches in most cases. Your own searches will show the same things though. Searches also don’t really “show whether a property is unmortgagable” either. 

Emily_Joy

EssexHebridean said: No, the agents won’t have seen the searches in most cases. Your own searches will show the same things though. Searches also don’t really “show whether a property is unmortgagable” either. 

Perhaps my question was badly worded, but I do not really see the point of doing the surveys only to find out that the house is not mortgageable and therefore I cannot buy it whatsoever.

eddddy

Emily_Joy said:

As a buyer, I would really like to know if the searches done by the previous buyer showed that the house is umortgageable for reasons like flooding, land problems, concrete cancer, knot weed, etc. Is there any obligation for the EA to be honest in this respect?

Yes - in general, the Estate Agent is required by law to tell you that kind of information.

But I wouldn't be surprised if some estate agents flout the law, and/or try to make 'weak excuses' for not telling you.



As the Property Ombudsman Code of Pactice for Estate Agent says....

7i
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 require you to disclose any information of which you are aware or should be aware of in relation to the property in a clear, intelligible and timely fashion and to take all reasonable steps to ensure that all statements that you make about a property, whether oral, pictorial or written, are accurate and are not misleading. All material information must be disclosed and there must be no material omissions which may impact on the average consumer’s transactional decision.

Link: https://www.tpos.co.uk/images/codes-of-practice/TPOE27-8_Code_of_Practice_for_Residential_Estate_Agents_A4_FINAL.pdf

So the estate agent should tell you about 'problems' with the property, even if you don't ask.

If a previous buyer has pulled out, the estate agent will almost certainly ask the buyer why. So the estate agent will know the reasons. (And it would be very unlikely that a buyer would hide that information from the estate agent.)

If a seller moves to a new estate agent, the new estate agent should ask the seller about previous failed sales. But I guess it's possible that the seller might lie to the new estate agent. (But if the estate agent has any doubts about the truthfulness, they should really push the seller a bit.)



And the bottom line is... the estate agent doesn't want to waste their own time and money with a string of failed sales.

So, for example, if a property is unmortgageable, it's in the agent's interests to tell people that - so that only 'cash buyers' make offers, and no time is wasted with people applying for mortgages and being rejected.

TBagpuss

matthew91822 said:

You may never know.

Back in March 2022 I accepted an offer on a sale property took a very long time due to various complications. Ultimately the buyer pulled out on the day of exchange 9 months later in December. He never shared why.

Yes, when I was selling my house the buyer pulled out very late on. I did hear unofficially that it was due to them having gone on a spending spree on their credit cards and therefore failing a late credit check by the lender just before exchange was due to happen. Things had been moving very slowly prior to that, but fortunately I put it back on the market, got a viewing an full asking price offer the same day and we only lost a few weeks. 

Within the same transaction, I pulled out at an earlier point when major issues came up with the survey and other enquiries the sellers made clear they were not prepared to negotiate (We hadn't asked, they obviously knew the survey would throw up issues) but I would not have wanted to in any event, as I wasn't looking for a property that was going to need any significant amount of work. I did tell the agents why and about the fairly serious issue raised in the survey. I suspect that they may have told the sellers they would need to disclose these as they changed agents immediately after that! 

Alderbank

Emily_Joy said:

EssexHebridean said: No, the agents won’t have seen the searches in most cases. Your own searches will show the same things though. Searches also don’t really “show whether a property is unmortgagable” either. 

Perhaps my question was badly worded, but I do not really see the point of doing the surveys only to find out that the house is not mortgageable and therefore I cannot buy it whatsoever.

Perhaps it's still badly worded - do you mean surveys or searches?

The answer is that the searches are not done for you. You pay for them but they are demanded by your lender as part of their process for deciding whether to lend on that property. Lenders have different criteria and it is quite common that some lenders will lend on a property while others won't even though they see the same search results.

If you are a cash buyer then absolutely no need for searches, they are not required by law.

Surveys - the lender will do a basic 'survey' just to confirm that if it had to be sold the property would fetch what they are lending. Buyers commission surveys to find out what work might need doing which is not obvious to lay people.