To think this gazundering site is shameful?

[Fancyashandy]

We are in the process of selling our house and buying another. Just found this website and after reading their splurge, think they are a load of fuckers. They are also smugly posing for a photo and feeling quite pleased with themselves. I'm really quite disgusted and shocked, we would never fuck people about in the callous way they are promoting.

The entire system here needs a complete overhaul! In other countries, you must have the mortgage in place, not just an agreement in principal, before being able to bid on a property. Once the bid is accepted, it a legally binding contract to go through with the sale on the date in the contract unless one of the parties dies or is deployed for military service. The job is done. None of this crap that goes on here. Don't know why people put up with it.

Scumbags, theres no contact us on the website or id have given them a piece of my mind.
I got gazumped on our first property. My partner and I used to make up fantasies about subsidence, flooding etc to get over it.
My parents were so sure they were going to be guzundered on their last house (very weird buyer) that they refused to look for anything else and moved in with us for two months after selling theirs and buying a new one. Thankfully they weren't but we were all stood with screwdrivers ready to remove everything not on the inventory if they had been!

Btw next house my partner requested a clause put on all offers that should the seller pull out of the sale for any reason they had to cover our costs plus £1000 for compensation and likewise for us to them. A couple of sellers didnt want to sign it so we didnt make an offer, we felt the trustworthy ones could see the benefit.

i see now.

thank you. agreed it is horrible practice.

We did something similar to Prettykitty, having been ripped off in the past. The agent told all viewers that we would not allow gazumping and that if they tried to gazunder us legal action would follow.

Gazumping is also horrid. If you have accepted an offer presumably you are happy with that. Why cause a load of misery by gunning for more? It's greedy and nasty.

Gazumping happened to us. On the day of the exchange - at 4pm - with DH away and me 8mths pregnant. We agreed to pay an extra 10k, (£182k instead of £172k) but seller went back to other buyer to instigate a bidding war. DH wanted to pay it as we were in such a difficult situation but I said no. We lost the flat - but found somewhere nicer later. The seller sold for a more reasonable market price many months later.

Don't be a part of a chain,

Most sales around here, the vendor will not accept an offer if there is a chain involved.

oh and take a deposit with the offer.

It needs to be made unlawful to do this

What a strange little site.... seems like it's written by one person with a very specific grudge. All that stuff about property owners knowing the "game" they were getting into reads like someone who's bitter about not owning a house

I had someone try to gazunder just before signing contracts when I was selling my house a few years ago. She was a first time buyer and I suspect her dad had put her up to it.

I was really pissed off so said ok I'm not selling it then and pulled out of the deal. I wasn't living in my house at the time or buying another one straight away so was not under any pressure to sell it.

I put it back on the market 6 months later at a much higher price so in fact, she actually did me a favour. Karma!

oh and take a deposit with the offer.

This sounds like a good idea, but isn't really worth anything in practice. From what I understand, you can't actually 'use' the deposit until the sale goes through, and can't keep it if it doesn't so it's just extra paperwork and a faff for all involved.

I agree that the housing market in this country is managed very oddly - taking months from offer to completion even in the simplest cases being one of my MAJOR bugbears (and solicitors who try to sell you a million pointless indemnity policies being the other one!).

Few buyers would be inclined to put down a deposit before exchange. What if they were forced to walk away because, for example, the structural survey reveals something insurmountable that their mortgage company won't lend for? Not their fault.

DoJo I feel your pain re the indem policies but they are often
the quickest way to deal with a defect in title etc. It's at your discretion if you are a cash buyer but a lot of buyers seem to forget that if they buy with a mortgage, the lender's interests are just as important and most will require the policies to be obtained. The lawyer is working for both the buyer and their lender in most cases. Although I appreciate it can be a pretty slow process. A chain will only go as fast as the slowest lawyer!

Scantilymad - our solicitor suggested policies we didn't need, including one to cover our boiler installation because he couldn't find the Gas Safe certificate - he didn't even ask if I could send it through again, just said that we needed a £300-odd policy to cover any issues with the installation! When I realised that he was suggesting that, I looked at the others he was suggesting and it turned out that a bit of work on my part (maybe an hour or so) and I had all the paperwork together to negate the need for any of them, saving myself about £1000 in total (although raising my blood pressure to dangerous levels!). I honestly think he just assumed I would be too confused over the jargon to question them and they would get an extra wedge for selling them to me, but I was buggered if I was going to spend more on stuff that just wasn't necessary, particularly as one of them was to cover a deficit in title that only existed because our solicitor had provided incorrect information to our buyer.

Really horrible thing to do.

We have been in the position where we had to pull out of a sale a couple of weeks before exchange. This was due to following a very complicated paper trail to discover that the house had a beautiful looking but poorly built new extension. Would have taken thousands to put right. We offered to go halves if the seller dropped the price accordingly. They refused and we had no choice but to pull out. We agonised over the decision and felt awful.

I think it's terrible that people would even consider blackmailing people over silly reasons just to be the "winner" in a chain is awful. The process is stressful enough without worrying if your buyer is going to pull such a stunt.

We were kept waiting and waiting to buy a house whose vendors had said they wanted to move quickly and then they refused to pass paperwork on for eleven weeks. They also refused to sale agreed until we had the survey done. Survey found significant problems with rising damp and they refused to lower price at all over that. And then when paperwork was handed over reluctantly it transpired that they'd done a load of alterations to a listed building without permission, the fines for which can run into tens of thousands and pass on to new owner. They offered a retainer of two thousand as a final non- negotiable offer. We pulled out. When they thought they'd sorted out the listed building thing they came back to us, but I lowered the offer by £10000 because they cost us a bloody fortune in extra legal costs, rent etc. plus they should have made some contribution to the damp. They didn't accept, and actually I was relieved. Couldn't bear to think of them by then, but I'm sure they tell people we gazundered. Some of the stories you hear aren't quite what they seem. Shame in some ways as it was a lovely house.

DoJo - apologies I had wrongly assumed that the policies has been for your purchase of a house, hence my want about lenders.

You are right - a little work on your part was the best course of action :). Although lawyers don't "sell" the policies; they come from a third party insurance company and the lawyer doesn't take a "cut". The cost of the policy premium is what it is.

It does sound like you weren't best served though. I think its lack of communication and clarity that can make the process so frustrating.

There's a trend over here now to ask for $5000 off the contract price after the building inspection done. $5000 it's the magic figure. I had my solicitor tell me to do it after the building inspection on the last property I purchased and I said no, then when I sold my last place I had the seller come back and ask for $5000 off 'just in case' he didn't get council approval to have his dogs. Then when I bought this one I got told the same. This is coming from solicitors. Insane! Absolutely insane.

I'm about to put my house on the market and am dreading this whole minefield tbh. I wont entertain gazumping, for me a deal is a deal and I wouldn't change the goal posts after accepting an offer in order to get a better price. I don't know about gazundering though, if there is a valid reason for the drop in price eg damp that only becomes apparent after the survey then fair enough, but I've heard of people suddenly dropping the price the day before contract exchange for no reason other than They think the seller will have to go with it as they don't want the other sale to fall through.
I may make it clear to the estate agent that I will walk away from the sale rather than take less than the agreed offer price at whatever stage of the sale we are at. That way people know not to try it on, and I would stick to that.