To think there should be a fine for vendors pulling out of a property buy/sell process last minute?

[BrokenCookies]

Just had this happen. Pregnant, strung along for months, collapsed a sizable chain because a couple of immature children think it's acceptable to pull out the day of exchange. I'm broken hearted, wasted all my money and savings and I have never felt so much hatred for two strangers. From speaking to the agent they have no genuine reason, just playing a bit of a game with us all I guess. How is this legal? It is the cruelest thing anyone has ever done to my family and I don't want to start it all again but now I have to with way less money. We had spent months getting our house ready for them as their first home, deep cleaning, painting, repairing.. turns out they never deserved any of it. It's really knocked me and I have no faith in anything now or people but I have to just get on with it :(

Yanbu - there should be a fine to stop this from being possible after a certain point.
Yabu - it's okay for people to do this.

I genuinely believe that if something could be done to improve the process it should be.

But I don't see it is possible without somehow biasing towards either sellers or buyers.

My guess is that people will just post that they have been pissed off in different ways. This week its a seller. Next week it will be a buyer. Knee jerk reactions you see on here - the process must be fixed ! They never have any sensible solutions once they are considered.

One thing I do think the government could do is maybe help speed up the process. They could do this for example by having a national register for searches that responds immediately rather than taking time. They could also make it so that a mortgage company must be capable of doing a survey at 7 days notice for example. Thus the ability to survey would be implicit in being offered a mortgage. Of course in order to do this, mortgage fees would go up, which would be a cost on the buyer.

The fact other countries have managed to evolve property sales mechanisms that avoid this problem suggests that it's there by design and unlikely to be changed without a clear demonstration of benefit.

Bearing in mind benefitting the masses rarely achieves changes as much as benefitting those in power.

In theory you make some good points but I think the downsides of db searches is there is a chance the data will be out of date unless there is a guaranteed constant updating on the information stored - IT systems are not always good enough.

Surveys in 7 days, many mortgage evaluations, or basic surveys are conducted, quite wrongly imo, by drive by or even just looking at the prices of recently sold properties, insisting on 7 days would mean more of them are conducted by not even visiting the property for sale. All this would do is mean any issues are found further down the line in the buying/selling process.

Too many people instruct solicitors, surveyors etc and do not chase. The people who chase and keep on top of the process most likely do not experience as many delays as though who don't.

Unless moving considerable distance and therefore not viable, I always use the professionals local to the property, not only do they know the area, but it means I can go into their offices to collect and drop off important documents which always saves times, even if using email. I know they have been delivered.

I think you are 100% right that people get annoyed when something goes wrong in their purchase or sale, considering the amount of house sales during the year many proceed without any issues - just as in life you only hear about those that go wrong.

I agree with most of what you are saying.

Most of the points I am making are attempts to try to improve "the process" without biasing it towards either sellers or buyers.

But ultimately I don't think there is much that can be to improve it as it stands.

At the end of the day it is probably more about educating people about how it works and how their house cannot be considered sold until contracts are exchanged, and to make provision for that possibility if the sale gets stopped.

I think it is something like 30% of sales fall through between offer and completion, so people should see that as a very realistic possibility rather than something that is unlikely to occur.

I definitely think a way of improving things is reverting to the custom of a period of time between exchange/completion instead of this silly same day or 1 or 2 day. At least people can plan, give notice, book removals without stressing it’s going to collapse.

DD is currently viewing property and I am guiding her towards vacant property with no chain to try and save her from awful experiences.like this. It happened to me in the past and it's just so wrong people can do this, I remember the heartbreak and stress all too well. I'm so sorry OP

I'm back as been a few more posts. Thank you so much kind people! Have focused on getting where I am now as lovely as I can for when the baby comes and been reshuffling. I'm still gutted that the next six months won't be what I expected and I'll be away from the family and support I was moving closer to but having a week off of the stress of all the emails and back and forth we were in when we were being messed around is lovely. Dh took me to a spa and we had a nice dinner away which really lifted my spirits too. Really grateful for all the kindness on this thread x