house sale

[lilybird]

just wondered if anyone could offer advise, my mum & dad are looking at moving closer to us, the survey on their property has been done and buyers were happy to go ahead, the sold sign went up on friday, they have just received a phone call to say the buyers no longer want the house as they have bought another one.
no contracts have been signed so are they well within their rights to do this?

yes they are

Yes. Only binding when there has been exchange of contracts.

sorry .. in England its not a contract until signed

if they're in Scotland then it is deemed contractual when the offer is accepted

though they were, just such a shame, mum has applied for a job transfer which has been accepted which will now have to go on hold, they've packed all their things up, and have a house here that they were having a survey on, which looks like they will loose now.
just goes to show that you can't trust anyone!

Sorry lilybird, that's unfortunate. We have done the same and had it done to us too, unfortunately it's allowed by the english system.

it's just made me mad that in a space of a few days, they've said yes they wanted the house and in the meantime bought another!!
crazy!!

You can pull out at any stage up until completion but if you pull out after the contracts have been exchanged then I think you have to pay 10% of the purchase price to whoever wasn't withdrawing IYSWIM.

Sorry lilybird- it's v frustrating, happened to us last time we moved too. Turned out our buyers decided they didn't want a old house (our was a victorian terrace) - you wonder why they paid for a homebuyers?! some people just weird.

until contracts are signed you are not bound by law, once you have exchanged you are bound..so sadly, looks like they have been stuffed

shame

Your parents need to get their agent back marketing their house pronto. It is a huge purchase and people do change their minds for lots of reasons. Their buyers must've been serious if they shelled out for a survey. We did the same, then a house that we'd missed out on came back on the market because the buyers pulled out at the last minute, and we jumped in and bought that instead. It didn't feel right, but we had no choice, i wasn't going to let my dream house slip away.

think mum and dad will just give up and forget the move, too stressful!!

lilybird, it happened to us.

We 'sold' (although it isn't actually sold until money changes hands) to one buyer, she was very keen to push things through asap, wanted to get into the house quickly blah blah. They eventually pulled out of the sale about a fortnight later. We then found out that as well as our house, they had also had offers accepted on 4 other houses at the same time. They were just 'reserving' them with offers whilst they made their mind up which one they wanted & . We obviously then had to pull out of our purchase (which we'd gone to great lengths to arrange). Very, very frustrating but entirely legal.

liquidclocks - maybe your 'buyers' survey showed something up that made them reconsider the potential costs/commitment of buying an pre-war property?

This happened to us three times when we sold our first house. Each time we managed to get an offer within a week of having the house on the market but each buyer pulled out 3 months down the line. It was really annoying .

buying a pre-war (was going to type 'an old property' and changed my mind)

thing is, it's been on the market since last june, and they've hardly had any viewers

is it too expensive ?

does it need a bit of updating ?

clearing of clutter ?

the odd bit of diy ?

they've reduced the price twice, so for the area it's cheap, they've totally de-cluttered
no diy needs doing.
the only thing is it's opposite a primary school which is why their moving, but the buyers seemed okay about this as their two kids go to that school.