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ChesterSingh
Posts: 4 Newbie
Hi all,
New to the forums and looking for some opinions thanks in advanced!
Our case:
Our house is sold and moving on well to Exchange of Contract stage shortly so we viewed houses and made an offer on a property to purchase. We have a young 6 month old baby so was hoping for a quick and smooth transaction as we need to get him into a nursery local to a new place. Note the seller of the property works as an estate agent in the agency selling the property (also estate agency itself is very new and not very well established). The EA has shared email box so for sure the "conflict of interest" is just lip service.
Now during the viewings there were the following things mentioned to us:
1. The house previously was marketed a year before for, lets say, £Xk, it sold, but the sale fell through and the current owner had vacated the property before exchange of contracts. (I guess she got burned by some costs!)
2. The plant about 500m to the rear of the property was 100% a water treatment plant and, after me specifically asking was it sewage works, they said no 100% not.
3. That our offer is based on the seller vacating the property before exchange of contracts i.e "breaking the chain" to use their terminology. We "upped" our offer a little extra during negotiation for this specifically.
So now the deceitfulness of the EA comes through:
1. Property history shows that it was marketed at £100k less than they told us, I actually have the brochure for this exact period they are referring to so thats a lie.
2. I rang untied utilities directly and they confirmed the plant was infact a sewage treatment plant so another lie.
3. We expedited the searches and surveying to align the exchange of contracts on our selling end with the buying end and low and behold, we receive an email a few hours after the bank gets in touch with them to arrange a survey that "the seller can not find a place to vacate to and rent and now wants to buy a property which will not available for a few months" - This is catastrophic to our plans (chains, mortgages completion next year etc.) and I immediately went to pick up the phone to pull out completely as they have 0 credibility now in my eyes and I feel that even if this goes through they will make it a very long arduous process but my wife quite rightly said sleep on it.
So here I am.......what do we do?
Pull out find another place (our sale will progress as we will move to parents place - really not ideal at all with amount of admin and removals aswell as nursery complications and living out of suitcases with a 6 month old)
Pressure the EA by specifically stating no movement and we walk if they dont agree to original agreed terms?
Something else?
We are just baffled that words carry no weight anymore and this may have been the strategy from the start given the Seller had been shafted in the past by vacating.
Thanks again for your support,
Chester
New to the forums and looking for some opinions thanks in advanced!
Our case:
Our house is sold and moving on well to Exchange of Contract stage shortly so we viewed houses and made an offer on a property to purchase. We have a young 6 month old baby so was hoping for a quick and smooth transaction as we need to get him into a nursery local to a new place. Note the seller of the property works as an estate agent in the agency selling the property (also estate agency itself is very new and not very well established). The EA has shared email box so for sure the "conflict of interest" is just lip service.
Now during the viewings there were the following things mentioned to us:
1. The house previously was marketed a year before for, lets say, £Xk, it sold, but the sale fell through and the current owner had vacated the property before exchange of contracts. (I guess she got burned by some costs!)
2. The plant about 500m to the rear of the property was 100% a water treatment plant and, after me specifically asking was it sewage works, they said no 100% not.
3. That our offer is based on the seller vacating the property before exchange of contracts i.e "breaking the chain" to use their terminology. We "upped" our offer a little extra during negotiation for this specifically.
So now the deceitfulness of the EA comes through:
1. Property history shows that it was marketed at £100k less than they told us, I actually have the brochure for this exact period they are referring to so thats a lie.
2. I rang untied utilities directly and they confirmed the plant was infact a sewage treatment plant so another lie.
3. We expedited the searches and surveying to align the exchange of contracts on our selling end with the buying end and low and behold, we receive an email a few hours after the bank gets in touch with them to arrange a survey that "the seller can not find a place to vacate to and rent and now wants to buy a property which will not available for a few months" - This is catastrophic to our plans (chains, mortgages completion next year etc.) and I immediately went to pick up the phone to pull out completely as they have 0 credibility now in my eyes and I feel that even if this goes through they will make it a very long arduous process but my wife quite rightly said sleep on it.
So here I am.......what do we do?
Pull out find another place (our sale will progress as we will move to parents place - really not ideal at all with amount of admin and removals aswell as nursery complications and living out of suitcases with a 6 month old)
Pressure the EA by specifically stating no movement and we walk if they dont agree to original agreed terms?
Something else?
We are just baffled that words carry no weight anymore and this may have been the strategy from the start given the Seller had been shafted in the past by vacating.
Thanks again for your support,
Chester
0
Comments
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A water treatment plant and sewage treatment plant both treat sewage. The type of sewage and process in use is what differs. Trickling filter plants are less smelly than activated sludge plants and plants with an anaerobic digester smell the most..Officially in a clique of idiots0
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Start looking for somewhere else.
If you find somewhere else then pull out of the original.
If you don't find somewhere else then you might as well continue with the original purchase.
Estate Agents can never be trusted. If you want to rely on some information then ask your solicitor to get it in writing.
If you need to adjust your offer then do so, but I'm afraid the estate agents won't care that they have lied to you about anything.Changing the world, one sarcastic comment at a time.0 -
500m is quite a distance form the water treatment/ sewage plant. Many people must live that close and probably be unaware of its presence. Can you smell it from this house? Have you been closer to it and downwind to see if it really would be a problem?
It seems very common for people to say they will move into rented to keep the chain short and then at a later stage change their mind. The thought of moving twice and extra expense become more of a reality as a sale approaches.0 -
RedFraggle wrote: »A water treatment plant and sewage treatment plant both treat sewage. The type of sewage and process in use is what differs. Trickling filter plants are less smelly than activated sludge plants and plants with an anaerobic digester smell the most..
Rubbish! A water treatment plant takes the water from a reservoir or river and turns it into potable water. Sewerage treatment plant treats, err, sewage.
The two are separate such that people working on such plants have different coloured clothes for sewage and water treatment work0 -
Having found out that the EA lied about so many things to do with this house will you ever be happy about buying it? What else are you likely to find?0
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Start looking for somewhere else.
If you find somewhere else then pull out of the original.
If you don't find somewhere else then you might as well continue with the original purchase.
Estate Agents can never be trusted. If you want to rely on some information then ask your solicitor to get it in writing.
If you need to adjust your offer then do so, but I'm afraid the estate agents won't care that they have lied to you about anything.
Thanks for this response - does sound like a win-win situation.... I will inform my solicitor first thing Monday0 -
500m is quite a distance form the water treatment/ sewage plant. Many people must live that close and probably be unaware of its presence. Can you smell it from this house? Have you been closer to it and downwind to see if it really would be a problem?
It seems very common for people to say they will move into rented to keep the chain short and then at a later stage change their mind. The thought of moving twice and extra expense become more of a reality as a sale approaches.
It is quite some distance and we called united utilities who said there hasn't been any reported issues in at least 2 years. But its not so much the plant it is the fact that they lied. Had they told us the truth we would have gone ahead anyway......but whats next with these folks? "oh by the way the roof isnt included and you need to pay extra" suddenly doesn't sound so unrealistic with these lot.0 -
Having found out that the EA lied about so many things to do with this house will you ever be happy about buying it? What else are you likely to find?
Thats the thing - emotionally, I am ready to drop it as they seem the kind to pull out a day before EoC and given the seller is the estate agent I wouldn't think its unfathomable that they are already marketing it "under the table" so to speak. But with a calculated mindset it seems we should stick with it with the main reason being that on this small hamlet, this was the only one house on sale during 2017. We will now for sure need to start looking for a backup regardless and this will be in the neighboring village really. The moment another house comes up on the estate then we will be buying it but until then, as the previous poster suggested the win win situation is keep this one ticking along and then drop them when another property comes up. Its crazy that such a solid sale with a fast pace (us expediting) that they are willing to let this sale slip through given they have had problems in the past selling it and had 0 offers in quite a few months!0 -
It is hard to stop emotion coming into house buying and selling but it is not a good idea to make emotional decisions.ChesterSingh wrote: »Thats the thing - emotionally, I am ready to drop it
If this is a house you really want, you could be cutting off your nose to spite your face if you pull out because of your opinion of the seller. You know not to rely on what this agent/ seller tells you so check things out yourself and get a good survey.
You do not need to like a seller - they are not going to be a future friend and you need have nothing to do with them once the sale has happened.0 -
If this is a house you really want,
But that is also an emotional decision. If the bad taste has eroded all the illogical happy feelings about buying a house, then I would pull the plug immediately. It's only going to get worse the next time you get a heat wave and all you can smell is the water treatment works.0
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