AIBU to be furious with the creep buying our house?

[reallypissedoffhouseseller]

We're selling our flat and moving to get a garden for DS. Had two good offers at asking price within the first week of it being on the market, and went for the one we did because the line was that he was a cash buyer, no mortgage, no sale to arrange, and could do speedy exchange and then complete when we wanted to.

Fast forward two months - we have found a house to buy, and we're all ready to exchange on the purchase. I discover this week, from our solicitor who also had no idea till now, that the thing holding up the sale is that the buyer is getting a mortgage from HSBC, who are separately represented and holding it up - they're insisting on getting a lease extension drafted and agreed before we can exchange contracts. Solicitor and I had been cheerfully carrying on assuming that we could get consent to the lease extension (which we have), include it as a condition of the contract that we do it, then get it drafted and signed between exchange and completion. Now our seller is jumping up and down wanting to exchange, and we can't till the buyer's mortgage, that he said he didn't need, is sorted.

AIBU to be absolutely livid at being lied to? To be honest, if we didn't want to avoid letting our seller down, we'd just pull out and write off the money we've spent so far. There is now no good outcome: either we saddle our nice next-door neighbours with a dishonest lying creep when we move, or we let down our blameless seller.

YANBU but you should be aiming your anger at the estate agent that passed this man through as a 'cash buyer' when he is nothing of the kind. Selling and buying property is a minefield at the best of times and the professionals you employ are meant to facilitate.

As a cash purchaser you should be asked to provide evidence by the estate agent I think. I bet they would argue that you didn't ask them to check so it isn't their fault.

Agent knows the guy's family and has dealt with him before (money comes from a trust fund) - he definitely could pay in cash, he's just chosen to get a mortgage on this occasion. We checked and double-checked with agent before we accepted the offer.

YANBU. Put your house back on the market today. That should give him a kick up the arse and you might even get a really quick response from someone who IS a cash buyer.

Morally, I would have no problem with putting the house back on the market as he misled you. Speak to your estate agent and get back onto rightmove! (And make sure they inform your buyer that this is what you are doing)

Agent, incidentally, is grovellingly apologetic and is racing round trying to sort things out...

Apologies are cheap. Demand a refund on their fee.

Call his bluff and threaten to pull out.

I have, hiddenhome: I've basically said that if we don't get sorted by close of play on Monday, the deal's off. I just wanted a general feel for whether I was being totally unreasonable in doing that!

I suspect the agent is on some kind of backhander from Mr Trust Fund.... When I briefly went into the BTL business I discovered that some agents were 'saving' nice little properties for their mates, deliberately excluding other buyers and taking a cut as a finders fee. Something similar may be going on here if he knows the family and you could legitimately complain to his line managers or HQ... no wonder he's panicking.

Same thing happened to us but in reverse. Our vendor was supposedly moving into rented to give them time to look around properly for a suitable castle house and we proceeded on the basis of v short chain. Our buyers were our lovely neighbours who were buying our house so the bloke's mum could move in ASAP & spend her last few months near then before dying of terminal cancer.

Our vendors then decided they didn't want to rent, needed a mortgage, which they'd done NO research into etc etc etc We pulled out & they moved pretty sharpish. I'm currently sprawled in my lovely 'new' house.

Good luck, hope it all goes well. What a bastard though.

for you. I hope you get it sorted out.

I know someone who owns a lot of property, turns over a lot more and ALWAYS lies about being a cash buyer to get the sale. Estate agent and his sol are totally complicit in this. He's super fast on the mortgages though, so it's not letting the people down.

And properties do get held back for buyers that estate agents know, or at the very least the person I know will get the heads up about it way before anyone else. It's not the most salubrious world.

You're telling me, Clytaemnestra - it all feels incredibly murky. I'm seriously thinking about whether or not to make a complaint about the agent. I just feel grubby by association because we've been telling our seller and his agent that all should be pretty straightforward because we've got a cash buyer for our place.

Yes, the agent hasn't done their job properly so I would make a complaint about them. If they came to you as cash buyers he should have had all the paperwork showing he had the cash in his account and that it was ready and accessible asap.

The stupid thing is that we did need a mortgage for the purchase (what with being normal people without a trust fund), I got going as soon as we'd found a house and the formal offer was in place before Easter! So I'm actually furious twice, once about being lied to and once because the guy is clearly an incompetent twit - if I can get a mortgage sorted within weeks in spite of being trust-fund-less, I can't see why it's taken him so long.

Ask the agent to contact the person who put the other offer in, to see if they are still interested.

I probably will, suburbandream, but the odds are rather high we'll lose our purchase if we have to start again with a new buyer - the seller of the house we're buying has to move within a certain period for work reasons.

The issue is probably with the agent. It does happen where buyers are put through as cash buyers until they last minute when they decide they want a mortgage and normally the most furious are the agents, who have also been lied to. However if the agent is cosy with Mr Trust fund I'd wonder about their honesty.

Normally with Lease extensions they have to be drafted and signed prior to exchange. It's madness for a buyer or their solicitor to agree to do this between exchange and completion. There's no protection for the buyer. Why hasn't the work on the lease extension been going on along side the transaction as normal?

If the lease extension is not yet drafted and HSBC are the buyers lender then you are talking weeks before they'll be ready to exchange.

When we bought our current house the sellers were in the same position as you - they had already "sold" it to a cash buyer, and they needed to move quickly (she was PG). Their "cash buyer" then needed a mortgage, and they lost patience and put it back on the market. We were able to move in quickly and get our survey and mortgage offer arranged within a week.

I did feel bad about gazumping the previous buyer, but he had messed our sellers around, and they had made the decision to remarket the property.

OP - make sure the EA knows how urgent this is, if your buyer realises you are contacting the person who made the other offer he might get his act together. Big sympathies - we moved 2 years ago and it was v.stressful!!

It's grim, isn't it? I think if they haven't sorted it by end of Monday as per my furious phone call and email to the agent yesterday, the only thing we can do is put it back on the market. It's not actually the end of the world for us, as there's no deadline for us to move: all we lose is the money we've spent so far on the survey etc for the house we're buying, which is a pain but not a calamity. But I feel terrible for the seller, who thought he had a good bet and turns out not to through no fault of our own, or his.

Rdoo, he lease extension is a bit odd in this case because we're selling a lease, but we're also transferring a majority shareholding in the freehold company, plus the right to be appointed directors, to the buyer - so they don't really need protection because they're getting control. The only thing that really had to be sorted was getting the other shareholder's consent, which has been done.

Oh right, that's different then. How many years is left on the lease?
Unless there's under around 70 the lender wouldn't normally insist on it being extended particularly if he has a share in the freehold.

HSBC are about the worst lender to deal with though and will insist on instructed only a select number of firms in the country to act on their behalf. This only came in in the last few months and it's an absolute nightmare.

Will your seller not hold on and wait for you to find another buyer?

64, unfortunately. I can see exactly why they wanted the extension wrapped up in the sale - after all, they might have wanted to get a mortgage any time in the future - but it's a bolt from the blue that there's a lender involved now.

I've heard all about HSBC. I'm not a property lawyer myself, but I manage some and they're tearing their hair out every time they have to deal with it. So not only has this guy lied to us, he's then gone off to the most notoriously obstructive bank in the country.

YANBU.

We were in the very lucky position of being cash buyers and the estate agent insisted on seeing evidence of funds at a fairly early stage (our bank account has never looked the same since )

Don't think seller will hold on - he's pissed off with us already because our solicitor said we ought to be able to exchange week after Easter, and a full week later nothing's happened. We've had an ultimatum from him: basically we have to exchange this coming week or he's putting his back on the market. What a mess.