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.

The FTBs can buy another house if they don’t think this one is correctly priced. They could, in theory, keep paying for searches, surveys and solicitors’ fees on several houses and reduce their offer each time. Or they could pay the price they offered for this one.

Personally I’d put this house back on the market tomorrow.

Can you stop with this rest of the chain nonsense. The answer is no, no reductions and no discussion with a chain that has nothing to do with your sale.

If they want to screw around, let them, they’ll have wasted the money.

Lots of missives in Scotland are not concluded until the day of settlement so the system is not that much better now
One difference is that under the rules if a client asks a solicitor to drop the price, the solicitor has to withdraw from acting (unless offer subject to some kind of survey the terms of which are poor and
In the OPs circumstances I would give them 24 hours to confirm they will go ahead at original price failing which you will remarket

This - or spent time on Reddit, or their Dad told them to chance their arm.

Some friends had this the night before signing, buyers demanded £4K off. They agreed in the end because they really didn't want to lose the house they were buying. Obviously hard to know if you're not in the exact situation but I'm of the opinion that only scoundrels would ask such a thing and I wouldn't want to sell to them.

Above advice to tell them tomorrow it’s being relisted Tuesday is spot on. You never should have offered to go to the rest of the chain! They’re nothing to do with it and you’ll cause chaos. You’ll also likely push the vendors of the house you’re looking at to relist.

The parties in Scotland can still pull out up to the exchange.

I used it more a threat “that’s how I know they going ahead” they never wanted me to ask chain for money off to cover there 11k.

No more of this OP

Maybe they’ve measured up for some new carpets and etc and think that essentially you’ll pay for them by knocking you down at the last minute

so entitled

All the stress and worry all boxes packed up made me have the flu.

If you go forward then push hard for the exchange date.

As FTBs they probably don't realise they'll need to get a new mortgage offer and it will delay things if you were to drop the price.

And for the benefit of all those people on this thread with poor reading comprehension, I know the OP isn't going to drop the price. This kind of situation is where estate agents actually earn their money. Get your EA to contact their solicitor tomorrow morning and say the buyers need to confirm they're going ahead at the previously agreed price by 12 noon or the house goes back on the market at 12:01.

This ✔️

What an awful way to treat other people. I wouldn’t tolerate it even if it meant the move falling through.

I wouldn’t. I would do the opposite. I would say we don’t need your sale to complete on the next purchase. So you better decide now whether you want to proceed or not because your only wasting your own money on solicitor fees.

i wouldn't be surprised if one of their fathers is coming over all Billy Big Dick and telling them they are fools to not try and gazunder or pressure you.

That was my first thought.

Hello Buyers,
Thank you for your communication re price adjustment.
With this in mind we’ve decided to re advertise the house for sale at a higher price of X.
Im sure you can see from the comments made by bank survey, that the house was of value, so we’ve decided it might be worth us advertising for a little more.
However, as a gesture of good will, we will let you complete the sale, at the original agreed price, you have 24 hours to proceed.

Happened to us years ago but we knew that another couple had been keen to buy it and they could move quickly. We told out solicitor to have no communication with the first lot but to set up selling to the second. The first lot only found out very late on and were furious they'd been played at their own game. Not sure it can be done now though. When the second couple had wanted it we had thought we were doing the honourable thing in sticking to our agreement with the first, more fool us.

I'd put the sale price up by a couple of grand.......

We had this a couple of years ago. We'd done extensive renovations which obviously increased the value. All set to complete and the buyers suddenly wanted to know why we were able to make that amount of profit and wanted us to reduce. I listed the new kitchen, new bathroom etc and told the EA to advise them that I was happy to relist the same day. They completed as planned.

One of there dads was very interested and brought his own torch to inspect our brickwork on our house

Btw OP, they likely don't know for sure where you're moving to, they've probably gleaned a couple of bits of info and worked it out from there. If you've said you need somewhere bigger in X area then they'll at least have an idea of the cost from a cursory look on Rightmove and what's showing as sold STC.

The biggest thing with any negotiation is to put yourself in the other person's shoes and think how whatever you're thinking of saying/suggesting will go down. Your buyers are naive because they think they hold all the cards. Due to the system in England and Wales you can tell them piss off at any point before exchange and there's no come back for them. They are idiots. Hold firm. And if they pull out, you'll find someone else.

Good grief that's beyond nice of you! Three visits would be the limit for me.

After their current shenanigans I assume there'll be no more accommodations of this sort - they've had more than enough of your time and patience.

Let's face it, in the UK the system involving the buying & selling of property is an utter mess.