House sold months ago, buyers now want a

[Roseyliv78]

Hi all, wondering if anyone can give me some perspective…

We sold our house a few months ago and the buyers were fine up until last week. Out of the blue, they suddenly asked for £11k off a £300k purchase. They also apparently told our estate agent that, because we’re moving to a much bigger house, we can afford to give them a discount. We have no idea how they even got our new address, the estate agent says they definitely didn’t give it out.

The mortgage valuation guy said there were no down valuations at the end of the visit, and all the surveys came back fine, so nothing has come up to justify this. Our buyers said it was due to local area but the surveyor and bank surveyor both said it’s been extremely strong.

We obviously said no. We also offered to talk to the rest of the chain to see if the £11k could somehow be sorted that way, but they didn’t respond. Then they said they were disappointed we didn’t renegotiate, even though we had already negotiated properly at the time.

Honestly, we’re just a bit confused by the whole thing. Has anyone else had buyers suddenly try this months after the sale?

is this a classic attempt to try and give us a headache?

its strange as know they’ve paid all the legal fees, surveyor fees. Surely very risky as we could tell them to do one, and they could lose all the fees if we didn’t want to sell to them now.

allot younger then us as we both in our early 40s and our buyers early 30s don’t know if it’s a social media trend etc.

@ZippyDeer do you mean the solicitor acting on the sale charged for work they had done?

Surely this poster must mean they had to pay some of their own solicitor's fees?

yes, got ti be that. The solicitor has done the work and now has to start from scratch which the new house.

I think this is a new (AWFUL) tactic by buyers: it happened to my mum recently when she sold her flat. Underhand tactics, but people know that the stakes are high and sellers don’t want to lose their buyer so close to exchang, especially if they’ve already lost one due to similar mucking around. Worse than gazumping, imo.

Our solicitor said we were obliged to pay the fees for the work already done, when I protested they said there was no legal obligation for the buyers that dropped out to pay our fees. I presume they had to pay their own fees as well. As the second buyers paperwork was already being done, it was agreed they could take it out of the final payment.

Yes, we had to pay for the work already done on our behalf

Yes you would have to pay for work your own solicitors have done regardless - sorry I thought you meant you had to pay towards the buyer’s solicitors

Yes, I do, apologies didn’t make that clear. The potential buyers had the same solicitor so I presume they made them pay for their work too.

Update our solicitors said they are going ahead. we asked them if they wanted to withdraw and they ignored that part and asked for an update and said they intend to stay.

Different people and separate files @ZippyDeer . Did you really expect to not pay for legal work that was done for you?

Good! Cheeky gits

Offer them £50 for the survey report!

You’d be surprised at how many buyers and sellers take fixtures and fittings. When I worked as conveyancing sec we had one buyer really shocked as all fixtures and fittings he’d thought were being left (as per the form) were taken. I can’t recall what happened but the seller was in breach of contract for doing that.

They're just chancers. People are getting weirder these days.

I don’t want to be pedantic but when you say you “sold” your house, obviously you didn’t sell it, you just mean a sale was agreed. My father taught me at an early age that a house isn’t actually sold until contracts are exchanged. Until then it’s still very much maybe/ maybe not. Well, in this case it’s no longer maybe not but certainly not. I would have told the prospective buyers to do one at the very suggestion of a price cut.

Think it can be more than that - our survey (3 bed flat, tiny) was £2500 a month ago!! Conveyancing fees around the same again (and we were quoted around £4000 by one well know national firm!).

Ours installed a sold sign within days of the offer being accepted. The house was sold subject to contracts, and was off the market.

It's a not uncommon 'get a reduction' strategy and it's a vile thing to do. They ask for the reduction at the last minute in the hopes that the sellers can't afford the time and trouble of putting the house back on the market.

About 20 years ago, someone did this to me - tried to drop the price by £10,000 at the last minute. I was luckily in the position of not needing to sell to move on - we had accommodation provided with the new job, so though we planned to buy, we could take a bit of time. I told them no, and that I was putting the house back on the market. It did cost me a bit, but I was so angry, I really wanted to kick them. So I did. They put their offer back up again, but I sold to someone else - and got a bit more, so I broke even. Say no. They're bluffing.

buyers trying to get a late discount is pretty common. Some even threaten to pull out the day before exchange. A flat no is the right thing to do!

What you consider a fair price and what the market (buyers/lenders) consider a fair price could be very different though.

Correct yes

Your post made me very happy @Tekknonan ! Good for you! Taught them a lesson.

On this general topic, it is rarely a good idea to give information about yourself to an estate agent beyond what they really need to know because you can't trust them and you have no idea what their relationship is with either party. The less the know the better.