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.

I hope you've told them that you're putting the house back on the market. If they want to play dirty - so should you. If it's already on the market, start talking to other estate agents

Need to put the pressure back on them.

we had similar many years ago - the people at the bottom of the chain wanted money off and everyone in the chain wanted the next people up to knock something off

we said that ok but we can't then proceed so will have to bail

it reverted back for us - don't know what happened int he rest of the chain

as we were about to get sorted the people at the bottom of the chain said they needed to move on 5th of April - again we said can't do that as our mortgage offer runs out on 6th February - so we will need to start the process again.
we moved on 6th of february

some people just want to call the shots - that fine but others can't always fit in..

Absolutely agree. When I bought my first house 20 years ago missives were signed a good month before we moved. Last year when we moved the missives were signed the day before we moved and it was all cash buyers in the chain other than us and we were porting our existing mortgage with no delays. Couldn't understand the wait.

However I've never heard of lower offers being made at the last minute and I've bought and sold 5 times in 20 odd years. Is that more common in England?

Why give them until Tuesday? Phone EA Monday and say unless you know by 4pm Monday, it'll be back online 5pm Monday.

@Roseyliv78

Call me paranoid, but I'd have your post where you mentioned the amount of your profit either deleted or redacted to remove the amount.

You've given enough info about the 'issue' that someone might be able to figure out more than you want them to know.

We had this, a chain of 5 and a side chain as the couple below me were divorcing.
Ftb at the bottom apparently was 8k short 🙄 number 2 in chain, myself 4 and my vendor 5 refused to drop our price, I wasn't fussed if I moved, my vendor had multiple offers, but due to the person, number 3 in chain divorcing and wanting to cash buy my property they caved and paid the ftb 8k to keep the chain going,
estate agent reckoned its become a thing

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

They're clueless, or incredibly cheeky or both. I'd consider their offer a disingenuous one from the start.

Our estate agent even said that it could easily cause the chain to collapse if we did, which makes it all feel a bit tactical

Yes, your estate agent will be thinking mostly about themselves, the targets they need to hit, and other people in the chain. You might have to delay the sale of one house. They stand to lose or delay sales on potentially multiple houses at the same time if this falls through. Be careful and don't cave into pressure from them.

I hope the EA didn’t add this to your fees.

House was not sold months ago. Why are you entitling your OP in such a misleading way?

A friend of mine had this recently, and he told them via his solicitor that it wasn't acceptable, and they've got until the next day to buy it at the agreed price, or he's putting it back on the market. They came back the same day to agree to the original price.

They are trying it on.

Not everyone gets the terminology. When you read the OP posts it’s clear she means they received and accepted a proceed-able offer several months ago and are a considerable way into the conveyancing process now.

Clearly not exchanged yet, though.

Yeah, I'm sorry I wasn't trying to be mean but I had to read a bit before I realised it wasn't sold at all. The terminology is pretty important in this case.

I think it will be related to the fact that in Scotland the Home Report is available at the time of offer. In England buyers use the survey to get a reduction, sometimes when it's not justified.

Good for you! CF’s should not be tolerated.

I think we all know what OP was saying. It’s clear it isn’t “sold” yet.

It wasn’t a problem before Home Reports though. You simply made your offer “subject to survey” and that was usually done a day or two later. If there was time you would have the survey done before you made your offer. Everything else was sorted out and missives concluded early. The greatest benefit of the HR wasthat buyers didn’t have pay for a survey which was ultimately useless as they were outbid.

Edited to add - the HR has improved the survey and valuation part of the process while the missives aspect has mysteriously deteriorated.

Unfortunately you didn’t sell the house months ago it was just offered on, so sadly they can (technically) do what they want up until date of completion. I would tell them to get lost quite frankly, I actually can’t believe a lawyer would be as frank as to email you telling you their reasons, how on earth they know about where you are moving to I would have got my lawyer to question, breach of privacy perhaps?! Say no, if they back out then so be it. I don’t reckon they will I think they are testing their luck

edited to say sorry, just read your responses! You have handled it well.

sorry wasn’t my Intention to mislead, I see sold sign that what I was referring to.

Houses that have had an offer accepted always have a big SOLD stc on them. Is it really that confusing that the OP wrote that given she also give the description of where they are in the selling process? Don't take a genius to work out what she means.

Hold your nerve OP. Sounds like they heard where your buying somehow, got a bit jealous, thought you are loaded so don't need the cash so trying it on. Did they give any other reason as to why else they think a 11k reduction is reasonable?

“Local market” they said but the bank surveyor said the valuation 2 weeks, no down valuation, if been case bank would have down valued.

@Roseyliv78 They will know as part of the conveyancing.

I remember when we bought our house how much the nearly zero balance mortage on it was and the sellers were haggling over some shitty light fittings and dusty curtains we told them to stuff it, so they took everything with them.
Not sure what it was called, but it was around exchange that the buyer finds out how much is outstanding on the sellers mortgage.

I doubt that correct, never seen it on any paperwork, we don’t know sellers we buying from!

Is that in England? Am pretty sure that mortgage information/debt outstanding is confidential financial information that noone else is ever allowed to see, other than the solicitors acting on their behalf and arranging transfer of funds.

This is correct as far as I understand it - we only know how seller’s name now because we have had preliminary sight of all the documents related to the purchase. Until that point we have simply been speaking the EA and our solicitors about ‘the vendor/seller’.

To summarise

1. Buyers have until Tuesday.
2. We won’t move on selling price.