Seller being very difficult. GRRR

P_Zero

Hi folks.

We recently put in an offer on a flat, which the seller accepted. Well, its a bit more complex than that...

We're in Scotland, so Scottish law applies;

We put in an offer on a flat, we were in the middle out of three offers, but the top offer pulled out only hours later. The flat went to fixed price on the same day. We put in another offer the next day. It was about £2k higher than our original offer, but still £4k lower than the asking price. It was immediately declined. About 3 hours later we received a call and were told that they wouldnt accept our offer, but would accept £1k more. We said no. The next morning we received a call saying that our offer had been accepted.

Anyway, 8 working days later, and they were putting pressure on us to conclude or they would withdraw from the sale and put the property back on the market. We refused to conclude at that point, because we had not yet received confirmation that our mortgage application had been successful.
Fast forward another 3 working days and the seller had withdrawn from the sale and telling us they were putting the property back on the market.

Typically, our mortgage was approved the very next morning. We called our solicitor immediately and asked them to contact the seller, stating that our mortgage was good to go, we could conclude immediately and still meet the requested handover date, in just over 2 weeks time. The sellers solicitor stated that the seller was unwilling to enter back into negotiations with us.

It is now two days since they withdrew, but the sold sing is still on the property and their website still lists the property as 'under offer'. The property has not yet been relisted on the local solicitors property guide.
This seems a bit odd, and I can think of a few reasons why this may have happened;

a; The seller has accepted another offer
b; The seller had an offer on aother property which has fallen through
c; The sellers solicitors are trying to get us to offer more money

Either way, in the current market it seems silly to go through the added time and cost of putting the property back on the market, when we can now conclude immediately and meet the rapidly approaching handover date.
We really like this flat, and having paid for surveyors, etc, and spent the time and effort getting ourselves into the position to finalise we don't yet want to give up. We will not offer more money though, its not worth more.

I have the sellers phone number and was wondering if I should give them a call, just in case their solicitor is not being totally straight with them. I could also explain our situation properly rather than going through two different solicitors, and maybe find out why they are now refusing to sell to us.

Sorry for the novel! What do you folks think?

And no 'you shouldnt be buying now' advice, we are fully aware of the dangers of buying at the moment

AMILLIONDOLLARS

Did they know you were waiting for your mortgage offer to be confirmed? If yes is seems very odd that they could not wait for this to come through! You should contact the seller to see what's going on, whether they have found another buyer, at least you'll know one way or another. If they try to push you again on price politely decline and start looking elsewhere before your mortgage offer expires.

AMD

P_Zero

As far as I know, they knew we were waiting for our mortgage to come through, but I'm assuming that our solicitor was relaying my messages exactly, and not passing on their version which may have ommitted that information.

I think I'll give the seller a call direct tonight. Its out of the solicitors hands at the moment anyway and I would like to find out whats going on.

wallacebob

Sorry for your situation, but I recently sold my house and would have never even considered you as a serious buyer. I had similar, but forced signing of missives . The purchaser ended up in deep doodah. Your solicitor should not have allowed an offer to be placed which was not backed up by available funds. The delay of 8 days would sound alarm bells to me, if you haven't got approved funds why did you offer? If the property is in a fast moving area like Edinburgh/Glasgow/Aberdeen then the seller can re-market and move on.
Sorry if this sounds a bit mean, but I have been taken for a ride by buyers in the past. Always get mortgage offer in principle, before you offer on a property.

P_Zero

wallacebob wrote: »

Sorry for your situation, but I recently sold my house and would have never even considered you as a serious buyer. I had similar, but forced signing of missives . The purchaser ended up in deep doodah. Your solicitor should not have allowed an offer to be placed which was not backed up by available funds. The delay of 8 days would sound alarm bells to me, if you haven't got approved funds why did you offer? If the property is in a fast moving area like Edinburgh/Glasgow/Aberdeen then the seller can re-market and move on.
Sorry if this sounds a bit mean, but I have been taken for a ride by buyers in the past. Always get mortgage offer in principle, before you offer on a property.

We did have an offer in principle before we made the offer, but an offer in principle is exactly that, and is still subject to the application and approval process based on, amongst other things, the results of the survey of the property in question.

Either way, I called them up and the property was sold to another buyer just hours before our mortgage was approved.