Gazundered!! Give me tales of your success stories please!

[WonderWoman36]

A month before lockdown we accepted an offer on our house and within a week we had an offer accepted on the house we wanted. Thankfully, both parties involved managed to get quite a bit like valuations etc done before the lockdown and so the rest of the non physical things such as searches etc were able to slowly be done during the lockdown and as a result we were ready to exchange and complete as soon as Boris lifted the restrictions for homebuyers.

Our buyers have been wanting to exchange and complete as soon as possible and to minimise any risk would like to do it on the same day. We were OK with this but wanted a non refundable deposit from them as I didn't want to be all packed and ready to move on the day only for them to pull out last second. As soon as this was suggested, the buyers suddenly went missing for a week and we got really suspicious.

This week my suspicions were confirmed, the reason they did a disappearing act was because we'd ruined their plans of trying to gazunder us on the eve of exchange most likely. They've finally reappeared and want an almost 10% reduction in price (from 735k to 665k) 3 days before we were originally meant to exchange! We live in North West London where house prices are unlikely to fall that dramatically so immediately we've been told so I can't understand the reasoning behind this kind of reduction.

Whilst I know that realistically prices will fall slightly, it is unlikely to fall in the amount that people think. But also, if they wanted this then why wait until the last second to spring this on us?? Why not be honest, especially if this was their plan all along and we could have saved the heartache and made a decision regarding price at the beginning.

To top it all off I'm pregnant and due in under 4 months so needed this move to be done ASAP, but also had already started packing a bit here and there as I didn't want to leave it all to do at once.

Now it means that we will most likely lose the house we offered on as they are ready to exchange and it will take quite a while to now put the house back on the market, find a buyer and go through the whole process again!

Basically, AIBU to tell the buyers to fuck off with their offer for doing it so dishonestly??? If they had come at us with a realistic offer then maybe we would have considered it but that is far too low for us to accept as we would then not be able to afford the new house anyway!

Please give me some success stories if this has happened to you. I honestly do believe things work out for the best but just feeling a little deflated right now!

Thanks for reading this far!!

If they've been dishonest once then they'll do it again. Put the house back on the market, if prices fall then the price of a house that you want to buy will also have fallen.

Happened to me, though not in such difficult circs since it wasn’t our own home. Buyer tried to gazunder just a few days before exchange. I was particularly pissed off because after accepting her offer, I’d turned down a higher offer, because I’d given her my word.

Wretched bloody estate agent seemed to be on her side, too.

I said no, was quite prepared to stick to it, and she gave in.

It is a gamble, though. You need nerves of steel!

We just got news that we’re in this exact situation. We’re screwed and there is nothing we can do as we need to sell. I hope the person in at the bottom of the chain gets its due karma.

We had a very turbulent time trying to move in late 2018/early 2019. I was, like you, also pregnant and we were really motivated to move pre baby as needed more space/move areas for schools for our eldest child and securing mortgage on my salary as I wasn’t sure I would go back to work after baby #2. The first attempt to move, our sellers pulled out on the day of exchange with no reason and broke the chain. We managed to keep our buyers, found a new place to buy with thankfully a short upward chain and moved heaven and earth over Christmas to move early in the new year. At that point our buyers decided that Brexit was worrying them 😒 but that it would worry them less if we reduced the cost of the property by 3%. It was incredibly frustrating to say the least but we sucked it up in the end and the other two parties above us in the chain also chipped in if that makes sense. We finally moved 3 weeks before I gave birth. It’s completely immoral of people and it’s tempting to tell them to do one. But the system we have in England enables this type of behaviour. It’s very very difficult to put your emotions to one side but as others have said you need to look at this pragmatically. Re what you can afford/how desperate you are to move quickly. I’m not suggesting you just say yes but you may conclude it’s in your interest to negotiate to get the move done. This is where estate agents should earn their money by negotiating something across the chain if all parties are open to it. Good luck. It’s such a stressful process and people are shameless I’m afraid.

P.s. Our buyers did come a cropper by finding an expensive issue their survey didn’t pick up/they didn’t investigate properly (we genuinely weren’t aware of it). I tried not to laugh a lot. I failed 😂.

Ask for s compromise offer of say 70, meet in the middle.
I was shocked at having to pay a deposit moving here, and then waiting for the renters to move ( so effectively I’d wasted 3 months), advised if they didn’t , to go looking elsewhere .
Never discussed refundable or not, got s good discount tho, partly no chain, and it’s condition

It's bonkers that the UK housing market is as unregulated as it is. Desperately needs reform.

This happened to my parents recently - sort of. Their buyers weren't CFs but their vendor was, she suddenly said she wouldn't pay the price for their house so they were stuck, and really upset about it, as they were then unable to pay the full price for my parents house (they were about £5-10k out). I basically gave them the advice that @Bartlet has, which was that it depended if they wanted to win "on principle" or get the house sold. In the end they somehow met in the middle and reduced by £5k. I was sceptical in the current market that they would get the same offer again anyway. Sometimes winning for the principle is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory!