To confront sellers who pulled out last minute

[Lemonyslice]

We were meant to exchange tomorrow, completing next Friday 6th, but the sellers pulled out last minute. "Changed their minds" apparently. The full story of this purchase is long and pretty wild, the sellers have been chaos from the day we put in our offer.

We need to leave our rented flat at the end of December as our tenancy is ending and our landlord wants to sell in the New Year. So we now have nowhere to live, and have wasted a ton of money on surveys and a solicitor.

Can I go round to theirs and ask for some contribution towards the costs of their "changed minds?"

There is no "system" in England.

It's sale by private contract. The "system" can be anything you want it to be. As a seller you can choose to impose a 10% refundable deposit on your buyer if you wish. Whether you can get a buyer who will accept that is another issue.

People complain about "the system" when it works against them. But not when it works for them.

It must always be remembered that before contracts are exchanged, a sale can fall through at any point. After contracts are exchanged then there is a significant penalty.

I would be surprised if a seller could pull out without penalty from an EA so late in the process if they were receiving an asking price offer, but obviously it would depend on the contract they signed with the EA. I don't know what typical EA contracts look like.

It would be hard to come up with any "system" that didn't bias the process in some way, either giving an advantage to the buyer or the seller depending on the particular terms that would be imposed.

Ahhhhhhhh
I understand your outrage OP but you have no recourse on this.
Sadly, you have no legal rights and this isn't unheard of.

I don't think the obligations before and after contract exchange should be the same, otherwise what's the point of the delay between offer and contract exchange, you might as well be railraoded into signing contracts the moment you make an offer. If you pull out after contract exchange don't you lose your 10% deposit? So typically at least £25,000, often £50,000 or more That's a much bigger penalty and disproportionate to the size of the offense. A much lower amount - say £1,500 should be agreed on acceptance of an offer as due from either side in order to ensure people only enter into the process in good faith with full intention of proceeding.

We made an offer on a house and went through tge process if buying, exchanged contracts and were due to move in a week. Thexowners moved into a house opposite my mother and left the keys with her. We moved in and our solicitor phoned up to check we'd moved in as he'd found out that they'd used an estate agent and had morecthan one contract on the house. We'd been lucky as we'd sold our house and had beencable to complete.

@bellabasset I don't quite understand - were they trying to sell the same house twice to 2 different buyers?

Since they’ve brought it to social media, I’d be replying to that comment with

“yeah it’s so funny that you’ve cost first time buyers £xxxx’s and potentially put them at risk of homelessness given they had to put notice to their landlord, since you were aggressively pushing for them to complete with 9 weeks of their offer being accepted. Hilarious (with a eye roll emoji)”

I wouldn't do that and lower myself to their level. They would probably laugh at it anyway. People like that don't give a shit about anyone apart from if it affects them.

What do you want? Money or revenge? You could PM off back of their “joke” and tell them about your costs and situation and ask for money or that you’ll share what they’ve done in the community FB group. We recently pulled out of a purchase, but way earlier than this and I felt terrible and had the seller incurred costs I’d have happily covered. I do also feel embarrassed and wouldn’t want it widely known we did this.

@snowmichael small claims court, depending on the amount lost. Knocking on their door or ringing them to ask. Not harassing them in person but if they didn't pay up then I would make sure they would have every piece of junk mail going through their letter box. cant prove it was me. Flame away !

This. The system has been like this for years and as much as everyone agrees it should change, nothing does, unfortunately.

However, I don't see there's any harm in dropping them a note to explain the issues that this is causing you. You never know, they might change their minds, but don't expect them to. I would want them to know the impact their decision has made, so they don't do it to someone else in the future.

Or... you can buy confetti cannons that can be sent anonymously... I may or may not have done similar when an inconsiderate arsehole neighbour had the loudest party ever until 4am one morning...

Oh yes... definitely the confetti cannon option...

Commiserations. We had a buyer pull out on exchange date. Infuriating but there is nothing you can do.

No, unfortunately you cannot.
They have the right to do it here, which as you said, seems pretty wild.
Sorry.

Was the joke about the house or completely unrelated?

If about the house, then that's shitty but if about something unrelated it isn't necessarily and indication of how they are feeling about it.

You don't know their situation, why they pulled out or if they feel bad. I get that seeing a joke on fb must have felt like a gut punch but equally they may be going through something themselves and just be trying to lighten their own mood; people rarely post anything real on social media.

In auctions, which I suggested we have a similar system, the buyer presents a package of information
including searches and a survey. Auctioneers can arrange these for you, estate agents could do the same. You market the property with that property package so valuing it makes it easier too as the survey will be taken into account.

Once you accept the offer you are both tied in.

If life get in the way and your plans change then the 10% deposit goes to the other party.

I think that’s fare and gives people some security

I feel for you . I have always said a deposit of 1K should be put down on each house in the chain . The deposit should be non returnable should anyone pull out . The money would help pay for any loss . I don't see why this couldn't be implemented.

A horrible thing to happen to you .

The person who pays for the survey and the searches is the customer, and if there was a flaw in the professional diligence of the person carrying out the survery and searches, the customer has the right to sue that person for professional negligence.

It's not at all unusual for a significant issue to be noticed and flagged up by one practitioner and not noticed or flagged by another.

If the person doing the searches is the conveyancing solicitor handling the transaction they have a large motivation to be very careful to do all searches dilligently. If the searches are being done on behalf of the seller, what motivation is there for the person commissioned for the work to be working at maximimum diligence? This work isn't trivial and often requires close reading of archaic documents and cross refencing. It would be in the seller's interests to commission the service from someone who is likely to be quite slapdash and unlikely to pick up on something easy to miss.

There's a reason why most sales for the intention of owner-occupation don't happen from auctions - it's an incredibly risky thing to undertake. Properties generally only go to auction if they are expecting them to be bought by a professional developer who can afford to take those risks because of the large number of properties they churn through.

Everyone is saying no but I'm in favour of you going round .
Provided you can remain deadly calm and can present your huge disappointment .
I think I'd take a letter to deliver with a list of costs and the consequences.
They should be confronted by you as a real person .
Obviously if something dreadful has impacted them it's different .
But of they are joking on Facebook it doesn't sound like that's the case.

What is the point? Clearly they're not going to get anywhere with these people!

For me the point would be taking some action .
And personally seeing the people in the hope ( albeit vain) of making them see me as a person who they've inflicted damage on .
It would make me feel the tiniest bit better that I'd tried to shame them and made them think about what they've done.
I have a friend who has form for 180 degree reversals when buying and selling property and she just dissociates from the consequences.

I'm not suggesting that the OP goes round all guns blazing or seeking a row.
And they need to be prepared for a shitty , possible aggressive, response.
But of they can keep icily calm and deliver something in writing , then I think they should go .

It’s rubbish, but unfortunately, just how it is.

I’ll tell you a great story about karma though. We had an offer accepted on a house just before the first lockdown, early March 2020. We rumbled on through conveyancing when it was all chaos and were finally about to exchange and the sellers pulled out (actually due to illness, I would have done the same).

They came back to us a year later saying they were putting it back on the market, but had raised the OIRO price by £200k from £625k to £825k (!!). This was in the COVID rural property buying madness. We laughed and said no thanks, though it did piss me off.

We finally managed to buy our house a year and a half after the purchase fell through. We love it. It’s so much nicer than the original house. That house is STILL for sale. It’s been 4.5 years. It’s being marketed at £300k more than our offer. When it didn’t sell 4 years ago, they raised the price by £100k+ (£950k!!) and re-marketed it with a new agent. They are absolutely mad. But it’s coming up to 5 years and they still haven’t sold. We feel very relieved that we got out of that mess before we realised how bonkers it was!

You will feel grateful one day too. Your home is still out there. It’s just going to be a bit of a bumpy road before you get there.

I know how the system currently works, the problem is it doesn’t as is unfair on people buying and selling when one pulls out

I am suggesting an alternative that works very well in the auction world. I am not suggesting all properties go to auction, if you read my posts, just that we adopt the legally binding system it adheres to.

Surveys are not a thing in France. You can get a full structural survey, but the kind of "lite" survey that you get in the UK doesn't exist.

I have never bought in the UK, but someone who was familiar with the two systems explained to me that "exchanging" in the UK is, legally, roughly equivalent to the French "compromis de vente". So after that you are committed.

The difference is that the "compromis de vente" comes at the moment when your offer is accepted, at which point both parties are committed. After that completion can take two months or more, but up to the point where you sign the "compromis" (which can be done at your kitchen table on a sheet of A4) nobody considers that anything is settled. The weakness in the UK system is that an oral "We'll offer £450k / OK, we accept your offer" is not worth anything until you exchange, yet you have to plan the entire move around that "OK", including handling the chain.