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.

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

I think the principle behind this horrid practice is that you're both locked in because you don't want to lose the sale and your onward purchase, so it is worth a try because you might just say yes to keep things moving.

I think you've done exactly the right thing and the more people who flat out refuse, the quicker this will die down.

A friend of mine has just tried it and been told no as well. The thing is, she was very happy with her purchase, has been crowing about it for weeks and good for her, but now because she tried to get more of a bargain and couldn't, she says she feels like she's being ripped off?! It's a daft practice that seems to cause everyone involved a degree of pain!

Why did you ask the rest of the chain, that's crazy, it's not their problem.

We had this. Just before exchange they suddenly asked for a £10k reduction on the price. No real reason. Just that they felt the property was worth less than the offer they made only a few months ago.

I told them to fuck off. Well i told the EA to tell them those exact words.

Went ahead and exchanged 2 weeks later.

This.

Babies playing 'dare'. I wouldn't sell to them on principle now.

I had that…..they tried offering £10k less a week before moving date (a day before exchange)

we told them if they wanted to pull out that was fine as someone else had offered an additional £20k and we didn’t accept because we were doing the right thing

they decided to go ahead with the purchase at the price we accepted

Ive heard this is a tactic some of the younger generation of buyers use (i'm in my 40s). They see it as a reasonable part of the negotiation. I absolutely would not agree to this and if contracts are signed, just say you can sue them for breach of contract

It's a common ploy. They think you won't want to jeopardize the sale at this point. Just call their bluff and say no. They won't want to start all over again and they're just being cheeky.

This happened to my parents. At the very last minute they wanted a discounted price. They knew they had a hold over my parents as we were moving house and any delay could result in losing the new property so they gambled that we would take the money off. Essentially it is a horrible tactic to reduce the price when you are vulnerable. Totally unacceptable behaviour really.

Should be illegal to do this!

once you have mortgage offers in place etc it’s incredibly hard to just “knock 11k off” the price. It doesn’t work like that. Banks are basing mortgages on exact figures. Just tell them that.
you could be getting a much bigger mortgage for your new house, which you could tell them but I’d be inclined not to. It’s none of their business

You and me both!!!

Second word ?off. Next purchaser please!

Very cheeky. What's the market like near you? I'm wondering if some other properties similar to yours have come on the market at a lower price?

I think the system is fairly similar in Scotland. The difference is more in the implementation

So eg we would expect to conclude missives (exchange contracts) quickly, not a few days before the sale. So, people are locked in sooner and can't mess you around do much

It happens at both ends of the chain.

Before we bought our current house we had an offer accepted on a place I really liked. All was going well and we even bumped into the sellers on one of our visits to do measurements and shook hands to agree that we would work together to make things go smoothly.

Sure enough, a week before completion the phone rings and it's the estate agent to say that all this pressure is bad for the seller's heart condition, but if we were able to increase our offer by another 10k he was sure that miraculously it would be okay.

I said that we had shaken hands and that was the deal we would make, but I would leave the offer on the table should his heart feel any better in the next few days. It didn't.

In the end we found a much better house at a cheaper price and three years later their house was still on the market at a price much less than we had offered. Am I a bad person to admit that made me a tiny bit happy???

As to OP, no advice other than stick to your guns. Never let the CFs win or they'll be back for more.

Same here. And to a few friends as well. It's been going on for a long time, unfortunately.

Taking this further, if you already happened to own a second house, should you give this one to them because you obviously don't need it? 😏

Not sure if the house sold? If it didn"t sell then obviously the mortgage market is very different to when the thread started a month ago, the seller is likely going to have to reduce by more than 11k now, wouldn"t it just have been better to take the offer before the buyer moved on?

Say no and relist. Ive had to do this 3 times- better offers in all cases.

Has the buyer been back in touch? TBH they will probably be glad of their decision to start reducing the price looking at today"s news, there are always two sides in a house sale, plus the economy.

Happened to my friends last year and contracts were signed and the buyers were silly enough to email directly that they would pull out if they didn't get a 10% decrease in price.

My friends were moving in with family for 6 months and weren't under any pressure, so they accepted their withdrawal from the sale.

The buyers were so poorly advised.
They tried to back track when their threat was accepted, but my friend is very honourable and was furious at their behaviour and wouldn't entertain them.
Their solicitors and the EA had very little sympathy for them as it was a fair price for a good house.
They lost their deposit and were caught for some costs too.
The buyers wife was distraught at her husband messing them around, as she clearly didn't agree with his actions, but my friends wouldn't relent.

The EA went to the slight underbidders and gave them the offer of the house if they were prepared to move quickly.

You need to be very careful when you choose to behave like this.
They had mistakenly thought our friends were in a chain when they weren't.
The sale went through painlessly with the under bidders and the messers lost a great house. Friends husband is superb at diy so every job done, was to the highest standards in an older house.

I love stories like this. It gives me faith in a justice in the universe.

Well done your friend. I love her for refusing to accept the back track. I would be the same.

I think it depends on individual circumstances and personality and that you don't know who you are dealing with. I love my house and if I were selling it and were mucked about like that by someone chancing their arm, I would feel that these were untrustworthy immoral and 'bad' people and I wouldn't want them in my house at all. so I would be like your friend and be 'deals off' then. See ya.

Last year was a completely different market, if the last minute reduction is reasonable to account for a changing economic environment many sellers now would be wise to accept, I can"t see the bailout culture of 2008 and Covid being repeated here, we can"t afford to do that anymore.