AIBU to set exchange of contracts deadline for the purchasers from Hell ?

[AmandaJanePisces]

Sorry can't be too specific about the tale of woe, but have discovered that the purchasers we chose as 'quickly procedable' have told various downright lies & are trying to gazunder us knowing that we need to relocate for FIL's health & have got new schools lined up for our DC etc.

Stress

Has anyone done this (given the pathetic-ness of our EA) ? Did it work for you ? Our conveyancer thinks they're out of order.

Thanks for reading. Need

Laura I've dictated Fri for exchange, had to sign a waiver with conveyancer as our purchase (is not yet but should be) ready be mid-Dec, to help DC & FIL have a good Christmas. The fear was that our gazundering buyers were taking full interest in the situation while simultaneously planning to screw us @ the last minute, so we could not afford our new house. Our imposition of next Fri deadline seems to have worked, so thanks to all for making me brave enough !

I have always had to put the council tax account number on for school applications. Possibly why they wanted your bill?

Good luck with your move x last time we sold I ended up asking my estate agent who was paying their overinflated fees - as i thought I was but they were giving the impression that my buyers were. They improved a bit after that.

It's been liberating, Swampy, jotting down the litany of the EA's failings, in prep for refusing to pay anything like their 7k bill. Starting with the fact that we have discovered that we overlooked signing their Marketing Agreement ... They didn't chase us & we didn't realise until the other day. Now they agree that there's no paperwork, after ducking & diving when I asked them straight. So if our sale does exchange next Fri, obv we will have to pay them something, but it won't be that amount after they rolled over & let the purchaser gazunder us by 10k ...

How did they let the purchaser gazunder you???

By not standing up to them re. v v minor issues from survey (would cost v little to rectify eg insulation in 1 room, fire hinges on 1st floor windows) & letting them call the shots at the last minute, knowing our DC & FIL were our priority & we were reluctant to re-market

Well you can call the shots at the last minute and them you've changed your mind and that you feel that £10k was way too much and you want £5k back...

Tempting, but now we know they lied about being in rented accomm & in fact can stay where they are (in their own house in Roughsville) we don't trust them not to pull out/try more gazundering @ last minute)

Have the EA fully grasped that you will absolutely not hesitate to full out?

You could do one of those races to exchange thing if you could get other buyers interested who would be in a position to exchange quickly?

Oh yes, the EA (despite not being the sharpest tool) is very well aware that he :

• underpriced our house
• omitted to get us to sign the Negotiation Agreement
• didn't properly check purchasers' situation, so we chose them over (nicer people) others
• has allowed us to be gazundered by never answering the phone & dumping on the poor office junior girl
• office junior girl rolled straight over when GazunderHusband (who has a v high opinion of himself) emailed with 'rocky horror show survey pics' & told us : 'You're very lucky they're still buying it' [wish there was a bollox emoticon]
• because were close to exchange on purchase & don't want to lose it & really want to focus on DC & FIL we panicked into accepting the 10k lower price

We could re-sell it next week for 10k more & have 2 other EAs squirming to get their hands on it. Just can't face more uncertainty & delay & impact on DC.

My plan is to write to directors of EA chain, explain the above points & ask them to justify 'negotiation' fees

Can you contact any of the nicer couples and offer them first refusal at the 5k more than currently?

south we will do this next Saturday (unfortunately they were through current EA though) if GazunderCouple fail to exchange on Friday. From then on we're switching to a proper EA. Part of me almost wishes it comes to this, although we really need to get moving :(

Why not do it now? I appreciate you've a lot on your plate, however you're not tied contractually at all to Gazundercouple & you're already £10k down so it would only be a positive move on your part (at least financially). Good luck!

I agree with RandomMess. There is nothing to stop you increasing the price. "Owing to the delay in exchange, we feel that we are no longer in a position to offer the 10k reduction, which was offered only as a goodwill gesture as the buyers were keen to proceed quickly. The price now will increase by £5k If contracts are not exchanged by Friday 12pm, then we revert back to the original price"

It is v v v tempting to do this.

In favour would be :

• not selling to lying cheating gazunderers
• not using twatface EA & switching to lovely alternative
• prob getting at least 10k more for ours therefore 20k better off overall less new EA's reasonable commission

Against would be :

• this 'deal' (at the originally agreed price) was agreed & signed in August & the house we're buying has cost us 1k for a full structural survey, plus it's hard for us to get down there & try to secure another deal at our destination
• I am quite confident that we won't have to pay twatface EA his full 7k once we point out all his failings, not least because he failed to even ensure that he had our signed Marketing Agreement
• (big priority) our DC are now psyched to move before Xmas & start their new schools
• FIL (stroke) & DH (heart condition) will be stressed by our having to start over
• we don't want to end up in an upward and/or downward chain, or mess our vendor around, who is lovely & has 4 DC

The thought of the possibility of celebratory next Fri is blinding me to flouncing off from their low gazundering behaviour

(And milk powder & glitter are on my shopping list, although I don't like stooping this low, it's prob the hangover causing it !)

Thanks to all for your wishes & support, it's great to get your robust & grounded perspectives

AJP x

PS New EA is hot !!! Is that clouding my judgement ?!

I wonder if they have digitally manipulated your council tax bill so that it has their names on it? Why else would they need a copy and how else would they have provided the valid identity documents to get their daughters into the oversubscribed school? I would phone up the council schools department and let them know. If they have done everything by the book then presumably there will be no problem but if they have comitted fraud then they will be denied the school places for their daughters?

The weird thing is, evil, that somehow they've already got their DDs into the (3 mins walk from our house) excellent primary, despite having lived in Roughsville 10 miles away since 2005. I think their next hurdle is getting them into our town's excellent secondary ... Having somehow achieved the first (I cannot see how that was done honestly), they are now conniving for the future. I wonder whether the (now superseded by their gazundering) Offer Acceptance from the EA for our address has helped them this time round ? I can't believe they would date to use the Council Tax bill fraudulently, but will definitely contact LEA even if we don't exchange with them, for the sake of clarity.

I feel that manipulating school places and gazundering are equally immoral & they are clearly arrogant enough to think they can get away with it.

Dare, not date !

As you haven't signed the EA marketing agreement/contract can you not go to new estate agent and ask if they have anyone who can proceed very quickly? Doesn't mean that you'll lose the house you are purchasing and in some ways it would nice for your dc to have their Christmas celebrations at their current school.

random I've already advised him that our house might be available from next Saturday & that anyone can view it on Rightmove, although the current EA has it listed as Sold STC. I'm half hoping that this might lead to something, given the lack of property in our area & the availability of other purchasers. We've just become cynical about the whole process now, these grabbers leave a really bad taste in your mouth :(

Firstly, it's up to you as to what price the house sells for. If you are not happy, do not go ahead - really, it's not worth it if you are going to feel so resentful about it.

Secondly, the solicitor is likely to deduct the EA fees directly from the sale proceeds so you'll have to check this aspect as you may not be able to wrangle over the fees efficiently if they already have them. Check how they will be paid.

Fiz our conveyancer is onside & has said her firm has had lots of complaints re. our EA, I'll copy her into my letter pointing out the issues & offering a corresponding 'fee' comensurate with their 'service'

Not wishing to add to your stress but be careful re EA. did you see the marketing agreement at all before marketing the house? If so, may not matter that you didn't sign it as you were aware of its terms and you let them carry on and market the house, so could be argued that you accepted their terms. These terms will probably include a clause that says if you stop marketing through them, but go on to sell to someone they introduced, a fee is still due to them. For this reason, it might be less stressful and less expensive to carry on with the current EA and argue with them afterwards (keep them on side as much as possible for now) about their fees, making sure your solicitor knows you are in dispute with them over their fees so they aren't paid out. However, don't pin too much hope on ombudsman - they often find in favour of sellers, but awards are small. Their website says

"The Property Ombudsman, which covers 93% of sales agents, awarded financial redress to the customer in 324 cases in 2011. This accounted for 56.8% of all cases brought to its tribunal. The other 43.2% of cases were found in favour of the estate agents. However, the awards given out are quite small. Most successful complainants were granted between £100 and £499, although they can be up to £25,000".

Sorry if this sounds negative, but don't want to see you posting in a few months time about 2 agents chasing you for fees!

Hope it works out soon. House buying is sooooooo stressful.

Fair play eternal, will bear that in mind, thanks

If your conveyancer knows of the EA, see if she knows how aggressive they are re chasing fees/enforcing terms. New EA may have a view too, but they will want your business at the same time.

We had tour walk away from selling our old house as the buyer who put in an offer was getting divorced and through a litany of issues discovered she was nowhere near financial settlement in the November despite having put the offer in in June! We were meant to be moved by the end of September! I was due to give birth I December. Would lose our mortgage offer by end Jan and because it is my salary that's the main one - had to happen then or we wouldn't get a new mortgage for a year (mortgage companies assume I wouldn't go back to work). We took the decision to cut our losses and find a new buyer. We did. Nearly lost our new house but eventually exchanged at 9.30am and completed at midday on 30th Jan. We moved with a 7 week old.

Don't let idiots push you around. Hold your nerve!