To think there should be a fine for vendors pulling out of a property buy/sell process last minute?

Any buyer pulling out at the last minute will have incurred many more costs than the vendor for a survey, legal fees and searches. So the financial costs are considerable which is a strong deterrence

That's what happens here in the US. Once you've accepted an offer and signed the purchase agreement the contract is binding. You can only pull out without penalty before closing if the house inspection uncovers something.

Ahh sorry, I thought I was the same person replying again - I should learn to check usernames!

but to answer the rest of your post - Just becasue it isn't their fault doesnt mean it shouldn't be their responability. What I propose in a nut shell is a "you drop out you pay" system - where the person dropping out is repsonisble for all costs.

The only exceptions should be if someone had been mislead about the house in someway or the surveys/searches find something significant (there would have to be some discussing round what exactly "Significant" means!)

I can't see why my bad luck should cost a stranger money

I think there needs to be a better system but Im not sure that sellers being responsible for doing the survey etc before putting it on the market would work (the homebuyers pack), as I wouldnt trust that it was done properly or that it wasnt a mate of the sellers who missed out all the bad parts to get them a sale.

I would have little faith in getting a positive outcome against the person who did the survey if I wasn't their client so I wouldnt trust what was given to me and would have to commission my own, which wouldnt save anytime (& was probably why the homebuying packs didnt take off).

However, I think selling in a 'chain' isnt necessary - you should be able to buy a house in 4-6 weeks as a sole purchase and then look for somewhere else to buy after its gone through. Bridging loans would need to be involved and there would also need to be short term lets available which is probably why it wont ever happen.

Are the vendors responsible for your pregnancy? If not, how is it relevant?

This is two completely different issues (unaffordable housing/limited supply vs free option to pull out at any point if you change your mind/find a better or cheaper place elsewhere despite the time and cost incurred to the seller). It would be extremely unfair, shitty behaviour (but completely legal under under the current system) for your kids to do this down the track if they've put in an offer and had it accepted just because you think they overpaid, please don't try to justify this as in any way fair on the original seller.

That's horrendous, I'm really sorry. They must have had a legitimate reason though, they themselves would have spent money on legal fees and searches etc ?!

It works for solicitors ... that's why it continues.

I agree.

I am absolutely gutted for you, its so stressful and an absolutely ridiculous system in the UK. However on the flip side I've now got kids looking to buy a flat and the pressure to get in an offer above the asking price and panic that they wont get anything in London, I think has made them pay over the odds for somewhere and to be honest if they did find something more sensibly priced later on I would not blame them for pulling out.
The system is to blame for both the issues. We would all go for the highest bid but also there seems no consideration for who the "best buyer" would be. I also think estate agents don't give this enough consideration.

We all hope these people shit Lego, but I'm not sure it's helping you to take this SO personally. Hatred, the cruellest thing that's ever happened to you, broken hearted, angry, despair, cold, cowardly, pathetic... just a selection of the words you've used in this thread. You seem to think this couple is sitting with a bottle of champagne laughing at you, when actually they're just selfish and not giving you a second thought.

I get it but I think you'll feel a lot better if you try to dial down the emotional response.

I didn’t “pick it” as such, it was the in the comment you’d quoted when I replied to you. Some of these things aren’t anyones fault, they’re just like force majeure in regular contracts - what do you propose someone does when due to a serious change in circumstances they can’t get the same lending facility? A proportion of the fees people incur would be the fairest way but you couldn’t really take it much further.

The system is awful, but most people don’t go out of their way to drop out of sales at either end just for the fun of it.

The issue is that (broadly speaking) no-one wants anyone else to be able to pull out but everyone also wants to be able to pull out if they themselves deem it reasonable.

It's not easy to square the circle.

They think they’re clever / funny….

There is. It’s when everyone agrees to and signs the contract.

Echoing this although in my home country (Nordics) there's also a much greater burden on the seller to do the surveys and be upfront about potential issues. Overall a better system - it drags out so long here because buyers have to do endless investigations. Even if they don't find anything majorly wrong, it gives more time to get cold feet!

Which is now?

A friend of mine recently had someone pull out a week before exchange - turned out she was buying a different house and just kept it quiet! My friend was so upset she'd spent lots of money meeting this woman's demands. It isn't fair to be able to do this

There should definitely be a no backsies point.

Absolutely crazy system here, one of the (many) things that as someone not from the UK I will never get my head around in terms of why people tolerate this system and there hasn't been reform. Completely inefficient from an economic perspective and OP as you have sadly experienced, it has a major impact on people's lives as well as it's such a long process both financially and emotionally and you can be shafted at the last minute by unscrupulous buyers or sellers. For those saying people's circumstances change, yes, it's a risk allocation though - even where people pull out due to unforeseen circumstances such as marriage breakdown, cancer diagnosis etc (rare cases in any event compared to time wasters or people who just change their mind) that should be their risk and they should lose say a 10% deposit, that's the way it works in most other countries, rather than shifting the risk to the counterparty to the sale. Solidarity OP, we are in the same boat at the moment, pregnant and now won't be able to move before baby arrives due to shitty behaviour from buyers.

It's absolutely wicked. I can't comprehend why a government hasn't found a bit of parliamentary time to sort out a system that everyone hates - apart from people looking to take advantage.

Awful people. I’ve had that happen but with the sellers pulling the plug and it turned out they had done that twice before to others - insisted they wanted to sell and then pulled out on exchange and then started the process over again. It’s disgusting behaviour.

I think there should be a cooling off period of about two months after you commit to buying and after that you should only be able to pull out if there are serious defects that you weren’t aware of. Not just because you don’t fancy it anymore. If you want to pull out after that, you should be made to pay some sort of fine (maybe not 10% but a prohibitive amount).

Except they wouldn’t. The home buyer’s pack was a disaster because nobody wanted to pay for it.

Ultimately a house is the biggest purchase you’re ever going to make in your life. By forcing people into paying deposits up front, paying fines if they back out etc you would ensure that only those who were ready would proceed, but you would narrow the market hugely, because people would decide to stay rather than to risk buying while e.g. between jobs/expecting a baby/ttc/so many other things.

It is shit. I’ve had buyers pull out but I also pulled out of a sale a week before exchange for perfectly valid reasons.

Should people be penalised for life changes?

The law strives to reduce ambiguity/subjectivity if possible. Subjective clauses are what lawyers can make most money on.

What is important to people is very subjective. Should you be able to pull out if your partner dies, you are made redundant, your parent dies, if you have a miscarraige, a much loved pet dies ?

These all mean different things to different people and therein lies the problem of coming up with a defintion within the law.

When you look at a law or rule, it's always instructive to question why it is written the way it is and if you try to think how you would rewrite it it is often the case that a rewrite brings in a whole new load of consequences you hadn't actually thought of originally.

That's why people saying, it's simple and obvious are nearly always wrong. Because if it was simple and obvious something would be done about it.

At the moment as regards house buying in England there is no real process and a sale is governed by contract law. Any defintion in law of a process that must occur before the contract is signed has to be thought of carefully, because it will nearly always lead to some sort of skew towards either the buyer or the seller in terms of benefits gained in the process.

My guess is that any process imposed in law will not probably solve the issues, but it may change them and create a whole load of new ones and bias the process with benefits to either the seller or the buyer. Whether these would be worse or better than the ones we have at the moment would be hard to tell until people start trying to use the system, and the inevitable happens as people try to exploit it and we see the consequences of that.

I did, but it was still confusing- about them ''kitchen shopping''.

Assuming they were looking at kitchens to go into her house?

Also 'Children' - sounds like they are first time buyers.