AIBU to message my deceitful buyers directly?

[beanbag19]

Someone please talk me down from contacting my buyers directly to tell them what I think of them!

We agreed a sale in June. At the time we knew we wanted a new build but there were none of the one we wanted available so we planned to move in with parents. Our buyers said their buyer wanted to complete by 20 August so we agreed that date. They then came back and asked for 10 August due to a holiday. I said no as we needed more time to sort things out.

From the second the offer was accepted she chased and chased. I did everything on my side as quickly as possible. When I came to booking removals, I had to book in advance as we need storage too. Before I booked I asked the EA to confirm that we were still working towards 20 August, our buyer said yes. After me chasing again on 9 August, their solicitor advised that their buyer was awaiting a revised mortgage offer and some docs from the LA. They also advised that 20 August was not possible as our buyers were actually on holiday then, despite the fact that the buyers themselves had previously requested and confirmed this date. They agreed 31 August instead.

They went on holiday on 13 August and I/my solicitor have been chasing theirs for an update. Finally they confirmed today that their sale had fallen through. Their solicitor said that they weren't even sure if our buyer knew as they had advised that they would be uncontactable on holiday and weren't back until 25 August. I told my EA who then had a call from the buyer directly to confirm the situation, apparently they got back last night, so another lie. I then searched for their house on rightmove to see that they had advertised on open house to take place on 11 August, which was two days after they agreed to 31 August completion, so they presumably knew at that time that 31 August was impossible.

In the meantime, we have moved out (because we didn't want to lose the £90 deposit we paid to the removals for the sake of two weeks) and reserved a new build that we have to exchange on in 28 days or lose. Obviously we're not going to be able to exchange.

I am livid. I need our buyers to know what absolute arseholes they are. Apparently they still want our house, which would explain why they lied about everything. But how can you do that to to people? We're losing money as we should have been saving money at my parents but instead we're paying a mortgage for a house we don't live in. We're probably going to lose the house we've been waiting 9 months for. Who is so selfish and dishonest that they would treat people like that?

Obviously I won't message them, but I needed to get that off my chest so thanks if you got to the end!

That’s awful, I’ve been going through the process recently and am gobsmacked at people's behaviour.
Put it back on the market, remember the market picks up again in September after school holidays. Hopefully you will find a more reliable buyer.
Good luck.

We had similar situation , they wanted us to clear out four bed home of 30years in four weeks ! They had two houses up for sale and it turned out they needed to complete with on of them in four weeks or lose the sale ! Actually did us a favour as we realised we wanted to stay here .

Please try and stay strong. Exactly the same thing happened to us - messed around terribly by buyers who were actually not in a position to buy. I was devastated as I thought we would lose our new build, but was open and honest with the sellars (Redrow). We put it straight back on the market and a few days later had a cash buyer who was able to move quickly, we did drop the price a bit but negotiated it and got a reduction at the other end - you will be surprised how flexible builders can be. Good Luck.

Quite right to be angry. They have messed you around. The advice about talking to the Builders is good. The market at the moment favours the chain free buyer. Put the house on the market again. If the stupid sods contact you, ignore. Good luck with finding the right buyer and a problem free sale.

Don't message them. Retain the moral hight ground. Ask your EA to keep marketing your house but if these morons do make it to exchange, all's good. Maybe offer your EA a cash incentive (£250) to push it through quickly. Do you know who is selling their place? Book a viewing, or ask a friend to do so. If the EA agrees, you know they aren't serious buyers of yours.

If they do proceed, get your vindictive hat on. There are loads of ways of getting your own back: prawns in curtain poles or under floorboards, wee on the carpets, take the lightbulbs etc etc. I'd probably drain the central heating down too - can't predict when there will next be a frost can you?

I was done over (not as badly as you) by a neighbour claiming it was going to be his first home as he lived with his parents. Exchange happened, I went to sort out stuff in my new place 250 miles away, came back and found a massive To Let sign on my house. Rang the number and asked WTF to be told (incorrectly) that the house no longer belonged to me. My reply was that when his money was in my account, it no longer belonged to me and I ripped the sign down - they burn really well. This guy had cried poverty asking for me to leave the fridge & oven. My new house had integrated appliances so I was ok about it, but after the stunt he pulled, I gave them to my sister and got utterly clapped-out replacements. I said I'd leave a fridge and an oven and that's what he got. My sister swapped with some from her BTL and we were both happy. I took all the lightbulbs, pulled the bracing struts out of the shed and didn't bother to clean anything. Karma's a bitch!

On a practical note, go and talk to your bank, they may be willing to offer a bridging loan

Forgive me if this has been said ( I’m at the field and haven’t yet read the whole thread) but some builders do a “we buy your home” thing, maybe yours do that ?
I’m in the middle of moving at the moment except I’m also changing job, so I can’t do anything until I finalise where my job is going to be - it’s all a bit of a nightmare at the moment.

House buying in England is so stressful and this is why.

You’ve learnt a hard lesson about exchange. My parents sold recently and started packing everything once all offers had been accepted. I advised them not to until exchange and they laughed at me. Sure enough, the sale fell through and twice more after that. They lived out of boxes for months, had to do viewings in that state and couldn’t have anyone (inc. previous grandchildren) to visit. I tried not to say I told you so.....

What happens in Scotland about surveys and stuff though? If it’s legally binding from offer stage, what if the survey uncovers something terrible?

Why would EAs lie? Who bloody knows.

I would put money on at least half of the confusion and 'lies' by your buyer as being based on misleading or made up on the spur of the moment info given to you by the EAs.

I've bought and sold 3 houses. Before i started with my first everyone and his wife told me to be careful as EAs are lying arse holes and don't believe a word of what they say. Me being me, well i decided to see for myself. They can't all be self serving arse holes i thought. I'll be fine ...

Guess what? .....

Here's one example: on the sale of my house in London my agents were telling me my buyer was desperate and couldn't hold on more than 3 more weeks. On the verge of pulling out, we might lose them ect ect. Push push push. Niggle niggle niggle. We were moving over a hundred miles away (year 2000, pre home computer days and everything was done over the phone and by post - i was driving letters around rather than post them!) and i was juggling 1001 things to push this through. Getting so stressed. Desperate not to lose my buyer. EAs on about buyer pulling out - So i found out the contact number for my buyer and rang them up! Awkward at first but it turned out they were in no hurry at all! They'd been told by the EAs that WE were in a tearing hurry and were thinking of pulling out and they'd been calling us all the names under the sun!! We joked about our agents being wankers and both relaxed in the knowledge that neither of us would pull out of the sale, both happy to let it trundle along to completion. Sent each other 'be happy in your new home' cards in the end. EAs were well cats bum faced when they found out

I had a buyer do something similar, he mad his offer we were thrilled and found our dream home. We started getting worried when it all went quiet and we hadn’t even had a survey from his mortgage company. About a month in and I chased the estate agents they said everything was all ok, still no movement a week or so later the estate calls and says the twat had been turned down for a mortgage. He had gone and got a huge loan for a motorcycle the same day as making the offer on our flat. Then to add insult to injury for around a month afterwards I kept getting furniture companies trying to make deliveries to us! He’d bought loads on credit to our address!

Write the stinkiest letter you can think of ...but don't send it. As they are decietful morons they won't care one bit about their actions and may even enjoy your rage.
That's what I did when Our stinky buyers messed us about for 9 months before announcing the day they heard I was home from hospital after a very difficult birth that they wanted us and our 3 children out within two days or they were pulling out of the sale. The estate agent, salivating over the commission rang me and grilled me quite agressively with intensely personal medical questions which made me cry until I realised I was stupid to be just taking it and said my medical details were none of his business and to only communicate with my husband in future. He rang my husband and said I was unreasonable and hysterical!!!!! They gave us a final deadline of 5 days. It was such a horrible time.
Tell your neighbours what the EA and new buyers are like.

EA are the laziest bunch of people you could have the misfortune to deal with! It took 7 months for me as a CASH buyer to complete on a vacant property with no chain involved. All because one piece of paper needed signing by a previous owner as their solicitor had cocked up when they sold it to my vendor. The crap I was taking off the estate agents was ridiculous! At one point I was in the Far East at 2am our time watching an email row between the EA and my solicitor. The only reason the sale completed is because I took matters into my own hands and traced the previous owner, phoned her and asked her to go and sign the piece of paper. The sale completed 24 hours later. It was that easy to do but they were too bloody idle to sort It themselves

Money, money, money - chill out, your putting your health at risk with all this self induced stress - life is not a straight line.

I did this a long time ago.
The buyer's solicitor had a reputation for wasting time and money and she really led us a song and dance - had us measuring the garden, wanted receipts and planning permission for our neighbours' extensions, wanted an assessment done on the conifer hedge, even though it was nowhere near the house, demanded that an electrician came and tested the circuits one night, etc. and all communications charged to her client, of course.
I was finally so angry that I telephoned her and told her what I thought of her

Our own very nice solicitor phoned me and had a friendly conversation along the lines of "Please don't do that again!" so I promised him I wouldn't. I expect he'd had enough of her, too.

I also had to leave the house 24 hours before DH because the buyer and solicitor didn't want run into me.

I'm usually such a quiet, gentle soul, too!

This is what I'd do:

Change agents because I smell skullduggery. They are all lying bastards.

Consider renting out your home unfurnished for 6 months. Get that underway. Make it clear it is still on the market for selling..

Continue with Plan A to buy the house you want. If you are living with your parents, assume you can afford to pay the mortgage on the new house because you'd need to pay it anyway.

The agent that lied about me (story posted yesterday, he told the seller I would wait for a property in which I had no emotional investment at all. It was rubbish, it was a pure business deal to me) did so because he hoped it was true I think. I was young and female, I hope that had nothing to do with it.

They may have been trying to "rescue" the situation with good news of another buyer before telling you, so you didn't panic.

I've been involved in 4 chains, none of which completed for various reasons and I've literally lost the will with it all now. We are going to rent instead as I can't deal with the emotions of it all anymore. But at one point we lost a buyer and got a new one a few days later so we delivered the bad news with some good news. It wasn't that near exchange of course, but it wasn't because we were trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.

You really shouldn't have moved out before exchanging. People pull out right at the last minute. Trust me, I know too well.

Hopefully things work out for you in the end. I would put it back on the market ASAP but sell to your original buyers if they catch up. It's clear they want it so may be less likely to mess you around than others.

Haven’t read the whole thread, apologies but I would speak to your solicitor first to see whether you have any come back on them to recoup loses-probably not but worth asking since they have obviously lied and you can prove it. Then I would be honest with new build company and see if can offer you an extension under the circumstances. I’m clutching at straws here but maybe you can get parents or someone to vouch for you financially so that you can still go ahead with the sale while you try to sell yours or sort it with the buyer. We had to Some creative thinking to get our new house as we hadn’t sold our old one so I know it doesn’t hurt to ask and it’s amazing how people can veer from restrictions when a little pressure is applied and you ask for help. Good luck!

Will the developers do a part exchange for your house?
There’s lots of new builds where I live and they’re all offering this, it saves estate agents fees and it’ll be pretty speedy, see if they may pay your stamp duty too as that’s a common deal

That’s s good idea littlestlily, I’ve seen those offers also.

I ended up on ADs as a result of our move. The stress was unbelievable.

My advice - go dual agent. So get another EA on to it and dual market with an agreement that winner takes all in terms of commission. There's the incentive for them to find you a proceedable buyer and get them through to completion.

Try and stay calm. It's shit and horrible and there is nothing you can do about it.

Do not do anything like move out, book furniture, movers etc until you have exchanged contracts - without exchanging you have zero guarantees and therefore your buyers can pull out at any point without having to pay you a penny.

Erm. I’m prepared to be flayed but I see a house purchase/sale as a business transaction. I don’t trust anything until the signature is on the contract. People and agents lie to protect their own interests. Here your buyer didn’t want to lose your house so hoped they could get a new buyer quickly so they could go back to you when they were in a certain position again. Ok it messed you about but not getting the house and losing their own buyer messed them about. That’s self-interest and human nature in my book.

We had a similar situation 15 years ago on a new build - we had to complete and exchange contracts within 4 weeks or lose the house - we sold our house to the first viewer and despite him knowing that our move rested on him, he decided to pull out of the sale at the last minute.
I was literally ripping my hair out especially as our EA told us that someone had tried to gazump us with a higher offer and to pay in cash. I really thought we'd lost the house but we contacted our vendor via solicitor and amazingly they gave us an extra two weeks to complete and exchange. We found another buyer a couple of weeks later (although we did have to agree to drop a fairly hefty chunk off our asking price as his solicitor was being a bit of a git because we'd put a strict time limit on the sale so we didn't lose our new house.
Against all the odds, it worked out and we're still in that house now - don't lose hope - it can still happen no matter how much it seems like the odds are stacked against you x

I feel for you op. Our very first house the seller pulled out after about 6 weeks. Was more annoyed when EA casually told me that he'd done it to 5/6 other people!

I’d google the builders of your newbuild, I’ve seen reviews of one certain “chain” of builders and the reviews for their houses are appalling. There’s even a Facebook group for people who’ve had issues with them.
Could be that your shitty buyers have done you a favour :-)