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.

Going through exactly this right now. The buyers have sat on a Level 3 survey for 12 weeks, 6 days before exchange they have offered £15,000 less than agreed price, basically back to their initial offer. Yes the house needs work but it was priced to sell. We have said NO. And given them until noon tomorrow to honour the agreed price. We have had a a hard push from the estate agents, saying that we need to offer some discount and they can’t guarantee getting the same price again. Still a NO from us. We are happy if the sale falls through, they think we are in a rush to move, but we are not. It is sad that the chain will collapse, but I will not be forced to drop the agreed price. Also not the moving dates will move even if they go back to their initial offer.

I believe you mean ‘Gazumper’… guzunder is actually a chamber pot!!!

Oh, and you’re 100% correct to tell them to sling their hook. Hope all goes through without issue today! 🤞

Gazump is when a buyer offers more for a house which has already had an offer accepted - and tries to "steal" a house which has already agreed a sale.
Gazunder is what's happened to OP, ie. offering less at the last minute.
Funny that it's also the name of a camber pot though - v appropriate!

"Gazunder" is also the word for this.

"Gazumper" is someone who makes a higher offer that the seller accepts after initially agreeing to sell to someone else.

Well done for sticking to your guns.

I would take everything not nailed down when I move in retaliation, but I'm petty like that. Blinds, light bulbs, smoke alarms, everything. Cheeky fuckers.

Our horrible buyers demanded that we pay for a full electrical check about a fortnight before completion. We told them to get stuffed.

Ahhh, we’ve always just referred to both scenarios as ‘Gazumping’!

The chamber pot guzunder is spelled with a U in place of the A, but I just looked up Gazunder and thank you, you learn something new every day!

And yes, totally appropriate! 💩 😂

I think - although I could be wrong - that gazumping started first, probably in the house price boom of the 80s, and "gazunder" was derived from that in the corresponding slump of the 90s!

They're definitely trying it on, they think you're 'stuck' as it's do far down the line and that you will just accept it. Say No and watch them come back with their tail between their legs. Or better yet say you want £5k more!

Why would you pay their fees? That's not right is it?

I think this was clarified in subsequent posts as meaning that the OP would still be responsible for her own solicitor's costs for any work they had carried out to date on the purchase. Unfortunately, if buyers pull out during the process some legal work is already likely to have been carried out and it's the responsibility of each side to pay their own legal costs.

I'd expect the estate agent to push back hard on them and make it clear that their names will be mud with them in the future should they want to buy again. You have to be able to trust people not be dickheads in property transactions, this is where agents earn their commission.

I think you meant to say fuck off!

We had this. We accepted an offer, then 2 months later our buyers dropped their offer by £30k.

We said no, and they walked away. They came back 2 weeks later and asked for a 15k reduction. Our estate agent managed to negotiate a £15k reduction on the house we were buying, so we ended up no worse off. What was important to us was the difference between how much we were selling for, and how much we were buying for.

CF’s
Tell then you’re walking away. They’re either testing you and will retract the request abd take it back, or they didn’t mean their original offer in the first place. Tell them ‘no, your move’ and state them out

Fair points.

I doubt many EA"s are that bothered TBH, loads of them are going bust I heard, they just want the money.

How did things work out OP?

I popped back to this thread to see if the sale completed.

Whether it did or not this is simply an example of why the property buying & selling process in the UK, especially in England, is an absolute farce. The amount of house sales falling through for all sorts of avoidable reasons including gazumping is diabolical. Surely in this day & age they could find a better & fairer system.

The term "sold" applies to a completed deal really? This house is "under offer".

This! The EAs are meant to work for you!

England needs to move to a system more like the Scottish system though

I've done a little research & apparently in Scotland only very few transactions don't complete within a decent timescale with legals taking on average 8- 10 weeks unless there are serious issues. I don't know exactly why, something to do with transparency of information.Every buyer must receive a home report & the fall through rate is 2%. I believe its 35% in England 😳

To be fair although I have now read a little about the different processes I still dont know enough about the actual differences. Comparatively though they must be doing something right in Scotland.

What was the outcome O)? I'd have done what you did.

What was the outcome OP? I'd have done what you did.