To hate flaky house buyers?

[HackedOffSeller]

13 weeks down the line on a house sale and onward purchase. Last week my buyers pulled out and I'm back in the nightmare that is first time buyers. So far I've had 10+ viewings and two/three offers but the problem I have is with the flaky buyers who are putting in offers and then pulling out a couple of days later with rather ridiculous excuses. As a result I'm likely to lose the house I want to buy. It's so frustrating.

When I was a first time buyer it was always the case that you only put in offers when you were certain you want to actually buy the place. Is this a situation that other people are experiencing or am I just incredibly unlucky to be attracting the indecisive?

We pulled out of one as we offered in October, all paperwork our end was sorted by early January....the sellers kept stringing us along and along until in March we finally decided enough was enough and pulled out.

They still haven't sold their house and have been blacklisted by most of the main estate agents in the town.

Our sellers told us they were completely chain free as they were moving in with parents. Came to the day we were hoping to exchange and they said ‘oops, our house purchase isn’t ready to exchange yet’. Said they ‘forgot’ to tell anyone the situation had changed. In fact, they’d only offered on the house they were hoping to purchase 3 days previously. Strung it all out for another 12 weeks. As FTB’s with no chain, large deposit ready to go etc we would have pulled out if we’d known they were going to be such prats about it.

it makes me very glad that I’m in Scotland where an accepted offer is binding
Not true. Even a written offer is only binding once missives (the contract) are concluded. I only put written offers in for serious clients who have proved they have the relevant finance. Hardly anyone in my experience pulls out for no reason.

she had signed a contract for the bungalow and couldn't get out of it. I had signed nothing. Silly woman.
Negligent lawyers, more like. You never, ever sign or allow a client to sign a contract for a purchase before your sale contract is concluded. (Assuming you need the sale money to do the purchase).

actually as a solicitor you don't "allow" your client to do anything - you can advise them but their instructions to you can be as moronic as they want them to be. As long as the pitfalls have been pointed out to them, the client's word is what goes.

PS = OP, tell your estate agent that you want them to only put forward buyers who have mortgage offers in principle / have demonstrated proof of deposit etc.

ChickenVindaloo2 Yes, negligent lawyers also, but she knew what she was doing and was party to the deception. In fact, my lawyer told me that they (both seller and lawyer) were shocked when I pulled out because they knew I didn't "need" the home (I wasn't selling to buy and could stay where I am living indefinitely).

dancingqueen what you said exactly.
We are first time buyers and my dh and I have agreed that if a seller won't take the house off the market, then we won't proceed.
It is more about my mental health tbh. I honestly don't think I could cope with being gazumped. We don't have a lot of money to play with.

It's the system. It stinks.

I can't understand the attitude of some sellers. When we sold last year our number one priority was keeping our buyers happy, because without them we weren't going anywhere! Luckily for us they were lovely people, and committed to buying our house. I wouldn't have done anything to risk pissing them off. It's hardly a seller's market is it?

Our sellers gazumped us just before we instructed our solicitors. Then they lost their new buyer. We did decide to proceed again after a lot of begging, because it was the right house for us and they promised not to bugger us about again. Fortunately it went ok after that.

OP, tell your estate agent that you want them to only put forward buyers who have mortgage offers in principle / have demonstrated proof of deposit etc.

Agree with this 100%

Welcome to the wonderful world of house buying and selling! It happens from both sides, we’ve been on the receiving end of this flaky behaviour from buyers and sellers.

When we bought our first house, we were extremely keen. Paperwork sent on time, finances sorted etc. Our sellers were apparently after a ‘quick sale’, and planned to move in with family after the sale - great! No chain! Until 2 days before exchange when they told us that they’d now found a house they wanted to buy so could we put things off until that had all gone through? Oh, and the house they wanted to buy was in a chain.

Fuck. That.

When we sold, we had a realistic offer from a couple who were downsizing (so no mortgage issues). They then proceeded to nitpick about every little thing, until they pulled out a week before exchange when they had badgered us and badgered us the exchange by X date.

When we put the house back on the market, we received a lower offer from a family who were ‘in love with’ our house. They then retracted the offer the next day. We later found out that they had offered on THREE houses on the same day, and wanted to see which offer was accepted.

It is absolutely infuriating - you have my full sympathy. We spent the whole of 2017 selling our house and the stress of it all is quite overwhelming. It’s put me off buying/selling for a long time now.

PJBanana your situation as a FTB was almost exactly the same as ours! So bloody frustrating.

In Scotland, it's solicitors who sign the contracts so a client couldn't really sign with action on my part.

I'm quite willing to take the house off the market once I get an offer that sticks, as I'm sick of cleaning the place! It's extremely difficult to keep it clean as the cats are walking over surfaces as soon as I wipe them.

Sounds like there are loads of chancers out there so I think I will speak to the estate agent about vetting the people a bit more. Hopefully the house I want doesn't sell too quickly (it was originally on the market for 6 months before I came along as it needs a lot of work) but I need to remind myself that if I'm meant to live in that house it will go through eventually. I'm also hoping karma will hit the 4 lots of buyers that have messed me around so far.

But yes, often I get a client when doing something "moronic" to sign a letter saying they appreciate it's against our advice.

In the dark days when I did criminal defence, I used to get clients to sign to confirm they wished to plead guilty so they couldn't backtrack and blame me.

Our buyer pulled out the day we were due to exchange, the absolute bastard. If I ever meet him in person I'll struggle not to punch him in the face, the stress (and illness) it caused us. Something like the Scottish system might help, but it seriously needs reform.

Pjbanana that sounds horrendous. I'm really hoping it's not going to be like that for me. I get the feeling that the buyers have been putting in multiple offers, as one that withdrew had an offer accepted on the same day.... Does this mean I just have to accept a lowball offer just to get it sold in this market? I can absorb a certain amount of reduction but I'm already on the market at below market value just to attract the buyers.

Good luck HackedOffSeller.

Karma will get them because of their greedy flaky approach to life. Like my seller, they'll get cocky and mess up big time.

To be honest, I think it is just pot luck (sadly). Some people are just absolute shits. I honestly have no faith in England’s house buying system and I am definitely in no rush to buy again.

To give you some hope(!) we ended up selling to a lovely family whose parents were buying them the house. They made everything so easy and tried as hard as we did to get everything sorted as soon as possible. So good buyers do exist! We completed in November last year.

All you really need is for a buyer to come along who absolutely loves your home. I understand how frustrating it is having to wait it out.

I really hope there is a reform soon. I cannot believe this system has been allowed to carry on for so long.

I wouldn't blame solely first time buyers. We had an offer accepted last year (first time buyers). After 19 weeks of waiting for the sellers to find somewhere we gave up and bought a different house. The original house is off the market. It turns out that they just wanted to test the water

Some people are just dicks.

I think it's almost become a race to the bottom. People get messed around, they think bugger it, everyone's doing it, why shouldn't I take the chance to drop my offer at the 11th hour and save a few grand?

When we accepted our buyers' offer we still had two viewings booked in. The EA said to let them still come round and if either offered we could tell the buyers that they had viewed it before and only just come up with an offer. I told him I didn't like that type of behaviour and to cancel the viewings. Evidently our sellers had no such qualms.

As my Dad said when I was having a rant "this world is fully of tossers and arseholes", which from everyone's responses, is totally true. It's only been back on the market for a week so it's still early days, but I'm looking forward to the day I don't have to allow these tossers and arseholes into my home

Being Scottish doesn't save you from idiots entirely, unfortunately. We were all signed, moving day, packed up in the van ready to go when instead of the green light we got a phone call telling us our buyer hadn't got a mortgage in place!! Now that's stressful. Thankfully it was a new build we were buying and the developer took over straight away and arranged everything that needed to be done financially. I dread to think how awful it would have been to do it without them. I very much hope our buyers got hummed for the bridging costs and I will never sell to anyone without concrete proof of finance in place again. They were first time buyers.

the problem I have is with the flaky buyers who are putting in offers and then pulling out a couple of days later with rather ridiculous excuses

At least it is only a couple of days later . I had 3 who wasted 9 months of my life pulling out on the day of exchange or the day or so before.
With excuses such as "I cant go ahead with the purchase because I am dead"
"My dad looked at it and said it is the wrong Feng Shui"

"It is not haunted enough"
"I think if I save for some more time I can afford better" (the following week I put the price up and got £20k more from a BTL ll)

I think I have heard it all

We had an offer from a ftb who then pulled out because our house was 10 mins walk from the nearest indian restaurant and he actually wanted to live 5 mins walk from it 😂

The estate agent is not even managing to get proper answers out of these buyers about why they are withdrawing their offers (my original buyers pulled out because they couldn't get a mortgage so nothing about the searches etc)

I thought EAs wouldn't consider offers if the mortgage wasn't agreed in principle or other proof of funds was in place? (Certainly mine wouldn't when I sold recently)

What with this and not getting answers out of buyers, it sounds as if you need new EAs

Our EA wouldn’t put our offer forwards until we sent evidence of our deposit and Mortgage AIP