Vendor pulled out of sale

[Everafter1]

Hi, I'm new here!
Looking for advice/feedback or even someone to talk to.
This is a Scottish property, survey is done before marketing & max mortgage given to the value of the home report.
We decided to move to a larger 3 bedroom home as we wanted to start a family. We found a house that we loved. It needed some work & also renovating but we planned on staying long term. Our second offer was accepted (Feb) 97% of the home report value as work needed done & I fell pregnant about a week after. The house is heavily extended. All of the building warrants should've been in place prior to marketing & valuation.

We sold our place, arranged a move in date. About 2 weeks before move in we were informed that the house in fact didn't have planning permission for the upstairs, a 2 room attic conversion. One of which is a bedroom. The council rejected retrospective permission as it failed on just about everything & served a notice to reinstate back to an attic within 28 days. The house had to be revalued. We were assured that the vendor was completing this & asked if we were happy to proceed although it would affect when we could move. We were & knew it would be up to us to start a new planning application for a compliant upstairs.

The revalue & reinstatement were continually stalled, we were chasing up so we could keep our buyer informed & it was a requirement for pur mortgage. It valued £10k less when it came back, so we amended our bid accordingly. Still 97% of the value.
We inquired about extending up & would cost significantly more than £10k.

7 days before the 28days was up, the vendor rejected the bid. The counter offer was that we increase our bid (to almost the same amount as the initial bid for 3 bedrooms) on the basis that we carry out the work for them!

That wouldn't have given us enough time. Our lawyer advised the job could be bigger than anticipated & the council could take legal action against us if it's not completed on time and that our mortgage lender probably wouldn't release the funds until the work had been completed & inspected.
We had to say no. The vendor pulled out of the sale, no negotiating.

We felt we couldn't increase the bid as 97% of the value had been agreed initially, we kept it the same to make it as fair as possible although it would now cost us a lot more in the long run. We were now down 2 rooms, & it would be a 2 bedroom house. It would've been impossible for us to take on that work for them. None of this was a factor when considering the property & a pretty big job adding pregnancy in the mix.

I am gutted as I've imagined us living there as a family. Guess I'm looking for feedback, were we right not to meet that counter offer?
We're still proceeding with our sale.

I'm sure there must be more houses available without the hassle.

Find another house. That one sounds like a whole heap of trouble.

Completely right.

You’re buying a new for you second hand car. A bmw 330d m sport - the agreed price is 9k

You find it will need the timing chain in the very near future. You agree with the seller it is now valued at 8.5k

All going swimmingly when you actually find out it’s a rebadged 320d non msport.
It’s got a hybird turbo and a remap and all the extras so it’s the same car but not actually a 330d.... your insurance company and lender don’t think so either!

You’d be a absolute nutter to pay the orginal agreed price.

Just take the word home/house out of the equation and replace with another purchase item and you’ll see your decisions were perfectly logical and correct.

To explain further a 330d has a 3 litre engine vs the 320’s 2 litre..

Thanks so much for the responses, it's a hard one to take when it's out of your control. When you've had months to imagine living there maybe some common sense goes out the window as you get more invested.
Yeah squirreltamer you're exactly right. I actually keep thinking if it was new build & the builder threw in the curve ball of removing rooms and wanted us to foot the bill, take on the work for them & pay as much as a house with more rooms, it would be completely unreasonable!
A lot of "what ifs" have been going round in my head but I think realistically the vendor wasn't ever going to budge on the price regardless. Their solicitor hinted at that before the valuation came back.

You were right to stick to your revised offer. I could bang on about a similar situation I had, but the upshot is that I found an even better property for a better price not long after the first one fell through. As the saying goes... ‘What’s for you won’t go by you’. Good luck with your search.

Thank you Chunkers. I'm glad you found something better. It's good to hear that you've been through it and it worked out in your favour, gives me some hope
When I think about the whole process I imagined myself living there so much I comprised on things that had been non negotiable before. Surely, there must be something else.

We had a situation whereby the mortgage lender wouldn't lend due to a particular structure very close by. I was upset as it hadn't bothered us and I was scrambling around looking for other lenders etc. We then put our sensible heads on and thought about resale plus it was really overpriced for the area but nicely done. We really dodged a bullet as we found a really lovely house in a much nicer area a couple of months later and we are so relieved looking back that the original house fell through. It is a pain having to start again and although it may not seem like it now, you have had a lucky escape.

Yeah Lightsabre you do get invested, sounds like yours was a blessing in disguise, you dont want to be held back being able to move on in the future. That's great a better property came up.
I think this property would've cost us tens of thousands in the long run & the majority of it is covered in a flat roof in a very wet part of the country. Maintenance would be a recurring theme.

Sounds like you've done exactly the right thing. This house had turned into a complete lemon. It's gut wrenching now but hopefully somewhere much much better is round the corner.

You've done the right thing 100%. Think the vendor was trying to pull a fast one.