Seller playing games

neverdespairgirl

I'm selling a house in London for £250k. The walls, roof, windows, floors and ceilings are a mere £400k extra....

slipp_digby

Can't understand why you got into a 'contract race' with another party. Someone was going to lose.

Accepting both offers - an obviously 24 carat gold sign of a greedy, unreliable and unscrupulous vendor which you failed to heed.

Other posters are offering sympathy that you lost when in actual fact you are partly to blame yourself.

Dr_Moe_2

slipp_digby wrote: »

Can't understand why you got into a 'contract race' with another party. Someone was going to lose.

Accepting both offers - an obviously 24 carat gold sign of a greedy, unreliable and unscrupulous vendor which you failed to heed.

Other posters are offering sympathy that you lost when in actual fact you are partly to blame yourself.

If it was that simple then contract races wouldn't exist. I got into a contract race because I knew I was going to win. I had all my searches done and I was ready to complete within a couple of weeks whilst the other buyer was still trying to sell his house. The EA agent also wanted his commission and he fought hard to finalise the sale quickly.
I only decided to buy the house because it was under the stamp duty threshold and the vendor knew that all along. He was told by the EA that I wasn't going to pay over 250K and he agreed to that. Had he mentioned earlier on that he was going to ask for 8K or even £5 in F&F, then I would've told him to stick his F&F where the sun doesn't shine. Instead he only returned the F&F questionnaire once I had my valuation and searches done. So he basically moved the goal posts to stop me buying the house at that price. The other buyer (knowing that he was going to lose) took the bait and decided to pay the extra amount to secure the house. Yes, I took a gamble and I'm partly to blame but I never thought that a wealthy professional could stoop this low.

slipp_digby

Just re-read and maybe I was a bit harsh. The seller is slippy, but I would have asked a lot of questions when they wanted two offers on the table at once. If the other buyer had not sold you were effectively only racing yourself anyway and the vendor obviously thought this woudl add pressure and force you to accept the £8k hike when it was revealed.

I personally wouldn't pay out fees on a survey, searches or convyeancing on a property that wasn't off the market and I was the only buyer dealing with the vendor. at some level there has to be a degree of trust between you and the vendor, which IMO wasnt there from day one.

The right thing to do is to walk away and accept the loss of the conveyancing fees. If the vendor is unreliable who knows what else would have happended later on at exchange/completion?

You may view this as a lucky escape.

Dr_Moe_2

Thanks all.

I've moved on but the estate agent hasn't :rotfl:. He was so upset by all this (he did miss out on a sizeable commission) that he fell out with the vendor and his solicitor. He then reported the vendor to Inland Revenue and also informed the district valuer.

Watch this space.

carpetbelly

haha, awesome, so sometimes there is a use for an estate agent

(to be fair not all are bad)