URGENT advice needed on awkward seller

Strapped

As has been said, they may take it anyway.

In your shoes, I'd lower my offer, on principle. But that's easy for me to say, as I'm not emotionally involved.

SouthCoast

Reading the OP's comments, I get the feeling that the vendors are strapped for cash and may well be forced sellers.

Running_Horse

SquatNow wrote: »

24 hours before completion tell them you are dropping the price by £3k

Someone who knows so little about buying and selling houses really shouldn't be offering crazy advice to vulnerable people on the Internet. If you had ever bought or sold a house you would know the difference between exchange and completion. You would also understand the dire consequences of doing anything to scupper the deal 24 hours before completion.

mdj1

Well, i'm sorry but I would play them at their own game. I'm a fair person but no one screws me over.

I would play along with it. wait until the day of exchange, when they've paid their money out for the house they are moving too and then tell the estate agent. "The market has changed alot. My offer is now XX" where XX is 10% below the original agreed price. You have nothing to lose, you are not doing anything illegal all you are doing is playing the same games as them.

At the end of the day there are plenty of other houses out there for you to buy and as a FTB you have the upper hand!

Don't feel guilty about it, infact if you don't feel bad about an offer you have made, then you have offered too much!

emmamc252

thankyou very much for everybodys advice, i'm not the kind of person to play games or try and trick people, think thats why i'm so annoyed about this, if i'm honest i expect other people to be. we upped our offer as they said they wouldn't accept the lower one any way but agreed to "sweeten" the deal by leaving all the stuff. i am going to phone the estate agents now and very calmly and politely explain that we received allt he info from the solicitors yestaday and that we were really surprised when we read through the list of items they were leaving and what they were taking, and say that we are not at all happy and really do not understand what is going on as we had already discussed and come to an agreement on this based on the offer of 208, including items that are even in the read up. i will let everyone know what they say, i doubt it will be good as this esate agent is real "salesman" type anyway, but theres no way we are letting them get away with this.

thanks again everyone who posted!

Trollfever

Two comments:

paid their money out for the house they are moving too

Do we actually know this?

real "salesman" type

In the current climate he will be desperate for his commission.

emmamc252

ok, just been in. firstly no we don't know that they have put any money into buying the property they have had an offer accepted on, what i do know is that they are selling the house and planning to move down due to financial issues, i know this as i indirectly know the vendors through a member of my family who has told me this, therefor i know or at least have good reason to believe that they need to sell the house.
so, went in and spoke to the guy handling our case, he basically said, maybe they didn't understand the form, its tick boxes i pointed out, maybe her husband filled it in and she hadn't told him, pull the other one mate, and then eventually said well i'm sure we can come to a compromise but the people are on holiday so i'll contact them when i can.
in relation to the last comment about EA wanting their commision, by salesman i ment arrogant and condesending a**e. for example, the comments above, also when i asked if i could leave him a list so he would know all the items in dispute when he spokke to them he kind of huffed at me and got up up to get me a pen. when i wrote it he said are you sure you don't need any more paper, really sarcastic. by this point my mum was getting a bit annoyed, so she said that really my partners mum who had made this agreement with the vendor was very annoyed and said she's the type of person that if she thinks people are trying to be dishonest, that she would want us to walk away. and the guy replied, yeah well we could probably have guessed that from the start, implying that she was an a**e. i know we are not buying off the esate agent but he certainly doesn't help things by acting like this, and it makes it really difficult for me as if i had took my partenr in this morning and he had spoken to him like that then he would have gone mad and told him exactly what he tghought of them! sorry for venting but its very irritating!

so anyway, its now in his hands, he will speak tot he vendors when they return from their holiday and get back to us,

ruggedtoast

Emma - they probably want to keep the dishwasher and fittings because theyve realised they cant afford to replace them. Too bad for them but not your problem.

Sounds like they need money, and at the moment if you dont buy then they dont sell. Dont be messed around, they knew what they agreed.

debsy42

When I bought my house the sellers said they were leaving quite a bit of stuff, wardrobes, washing machine, curtains etc. When we went to the solicitors to exchange and looked over the list of stuff, the washing machine had disappeared. We queried it with the solicitor who did a bit of phoning around and then advised that the sellers were now prepared to add it back on. Everything then went through although we did have a problem with the completion, they moved it back by 3 days which meant we ended up squatting as we had given notice on the flat we were renting :eek:

Come moving in and we got a bit of a surprise, the washing machine that had been there when we viewed was a lovely Hotpoint one, the one left was a cheap £20 one that you'd pick up from the market and it didn't even work. The boiler wasn't working and we had to get someone out to repair it and the Dolphin shower didn't work either :eek: When we queried this with our solicitor we were told that as we weren't specificed a particular washing machine we couldn't do anything as we had got one

So, I would be very careful about any dealings with someone who is being awkward about fixture and fittings, people are not always honest and truthful and can take advantage of situations to fleece you :eek:

Woody69_2

I think I would ask for a £1000 reduction as they have gone back on their word, in particular the dishwasher should be left as it was on the origainal details and you probably already know this but light fittings if removed must be replaced with some alternative even if its just a simple fitting with a bulb. I would try and reach a compromise, either a reduction or they agree to at least leave the dishwasher and curtain poles for example. I recently bought a house and my vendors were dead mean, they even took the toilet roll holder and soap dish and they even tried to take the doorbell but just broke it in the process.