Buying a house help

[newhomeproblems]

Hi

Name change just incase

We are in the process of buying a house and the past couple of weeks have been very hard with certain problems that have come up.

So much so we are thinking about pulling out of buying it and going to view more houses. We think the sellers may also be looking to pull out so don't want to be left with nothing.

The sellers (of the one we are currently buying) haven't been very forthcoming and have made us wait for lots of things.

Would we be unreasonable to continue with this purchase until we find a suitable new house, pulling out once we've got a new offer accepted?

We love the house we were trying to buy but I don't want to wait until it all falls apart, I want to have a back up option, obviously we'd only put another offer on a different house if we really needed too.

Looking for a bit of perspective really I think.

Thanks

What's going wrong?

Are you a FTB, OP? You don't mention selling any property yourself.

If I was a vendor and you put an offer in on my property when you already had an offer accepted somewhere else, I'd be wondering if you would do the same to me further down the line!

Without knowing what the issues are, it is hard to say. It usually takes around 12 weeks from acceptance of an offer to completion. How far into the process are you?

House buying is time consuming, how long ago did you put the offer in? What are you waiting for from the seller?

We sold our house already and we've been trying to buy this one since February.

There are some structural issues that we are asking them to sort out but we've been waiting two weeks already for an answer! They haven't spoken to any builders or anything and I don't think they want to fix it.

The new house we're looking at hasn't got any structural problems so should be more straightforward to buy.

They accepted the offer in February

We aren't very far into it at all!

There solicitor wouldn't get back to ours for ages then went on holiday and left no one in charge of it

We went to the estate agents in the end for answers direct from the sellers but they are just as bad at getting back to us

I think you have to make up your mind one way or another with the current house.

Stringing them along until you have a new house under offer is a shitty way to behave.

Give them an ultimatum and if they don't get their act together walk away.

Have you posted about this before, OP?

If you are not happy, then pull out of the first one. Fine to point out that you would be expecting to exchange shortly but not without the structural work/assurances. I would, however, check that the structural points raised in the survey are serious and not just a standard phrase or clause that the surveyor includes as a matter of course.

Can you lower offer as they won't sort the things needed?

We could put a lower offer on but the work can't be done while living there (they have already moved out) and we wouldn't be able to afford the work even at a lower price

So the vendors aren't going to "get their money back" for doing the work in the sale price?

I can't really see what their incentive for doing it is.

Their incentive is selling the house. If your surveyor picked up structural issues so will the next buyer’s. I’d say to my solicitor and the estate agent if you don’t have definite confirmation in writing in five days about whether and when the work will happen you’re pulling out. Then make the offer on the other place.
There were damp issues in a flat I wanted to buy that was the managing agents responsibility and they were dragging their feet. I said I wasn’t going to exchange until it was sorted (it was an investment flat and I didnt want it empty and not earning for the few weeks it would take for me to deal with). In the end the seller got the work done and she then got the money back from the agents. You sometimes have to play hardball.

When our sellers were dragging their heels and making things difficult for us we booked appointments to view other houses and let the sellers agents know. We felt that things might go wrong and we didn't want to lose our own sale. Obviously we only went to look at alternative houses we were genuinely interested in ... we didn't want to muck anyone around.

Funnily enough, the sale got moving again after that. If it hadn't we had seen another house we would have offered on (and I often kinda wish we had gone for the second one, 14 years on!).

If the work costs that much they may not be able to afford it either, or they are trying to raise it behind the scenes? Why have they moved out already?

You need a frank discussion with their agent, tell them if you don't get an answer about the remedial works by a certain date you will be pulling out. No pussyfooting around it.
If they do get another buyer, surely this issue will come up again.

What region of £ are we talking about for the works? It may be a complete surprise to them and has thrown up all sorts of problems their end, however not communicating will not solve their issue.

We very nearly pulled out of our house purchase, as the vendor was being a right PITA, as it happens after trying to find another property we realised we had a very good deal for a lot of house. So it made us more incentivised to push the sale through. We just got tough with their agents which did the trick. Most stressful time of my life and one I won't be repeating anytime soon.