Selling a house in lockdown

[NewHouseFreshStart10]

Just seeing if anyone else is going through a similar experience..

We had an offer on our house (not our main residence so no chain involved) at the end of February, which we accepted, no estate agents involved as the offer was through a friend of a friend, solicitors were instructed and the bank had been out to value the property and the wheels were in motion so to speak. That was in early March, and since then we haven't heard anything, mainly for my partners lack of chasing which he is going to do tomorrow. But has anyone else had buyers pull out or reduce their offer?

Just wondering what we could expect in the coming weeks, although I know it will be all guess work as who know where we will be in a few weeks!

We are buyer with offer accepted before lockdown. We have decided to pull out. Haven’t informed the vendor yet. Estate agent office currently closed.

I am also curious to see the sentiment. Our plan is to restart the house hunting after lockdown is lifted and bid 10-20% under market price before coronavirus and see what happens. We have reasonable LTV (75%) but still concerned with remortgage should price fall. I think we either buy a cheaper place with 60% LTV or pay similar level as before but have to been convinced the price already reflects a discount and unlikely to fall further. We don’t have anything to sell so suppose we are in a strong position.

I imagine that buyers who have high LTV and worried that they may get another mortgage may press ahead, particularly if for them buying is still better off than renting in term of cash flow. It is a huge risk though.

The way I see it, it is more likely prices will fall than they will rise, you only have to Google it and you will not see a single article of house prices rising in the future, just that they will be down by between 10 and 30 % depending on which news storey you believe.

Some online articles quote EAs saying that most of their ongoing sales are “still processing nicely”. I personally doubt that. Some buyers may have changed their mind while haven’t broken the news just like us. Others may want to see what happens at the lockdown then make a decision. The recent news that GDP is set to decline -35% this quarter and -13% for the full year must have got many worried if they previously thought this would be a short dip. Also we will see what happens at the end of 3 months period during which the government has pledged to pretty much bail out the economy via furlough/ loans. They cannot pay for million people’s wage bill forever.

On the other hand people may have varying attitudes towards financial risk associated with house buying... on other forums I have seen people wishing to push forward the mortgage application after being furloughed and people wonder if government will bail them out should they end up in negative equity. Obviously I don’t know everyone’s circumstances but I feel some may be taking on very very big risk financially.

It kind of depends what your chain is like. If it is long, I'd probably pull out of any sale right now, it's highly unlikely to hold. If it's very short, 2-3 parties involved, it may be worth holding on and renegotiating if necessary, but in a longer chain you're not likely to get everyone to play ball.

Sales are progressing fairly well but exchanges and completions have stalled unless it’s a new build plot that’s already built. There have been a few cancellations of course. Agents are still working so if you’ve decided not to proceed try and give them a call or an email so your seller can remarket 🙂

OP as presumably your property is empty it should be okay to progress to an exchange if your buyers are still happy to proceed but that’ll depend on whether there is a chain below! Get your partner on the case!

We are buyer had offer accepted and got mortgage offer before lock down. The only missing part is the search result. We have decided to ask for a 10% off, or pull out if seller say no. We think it is fair, as seller is buying new build, they should be able to ask for discount too. So not much loss for them. We haven't told the agent yet, as market could go even worse later, then we might have to rethink the figure.

We have about 65% LTV, and cash for deposit, nothing to sell. So we are on a fairly strong position. We like the property, but we are comfortable to loss it if we have to. Paying the original offer price feels a bit silly now

“ We have decided to pull out. Haven’t informed the vendor yet. Estate agent office currently closed.”

OMG. so the EAs aren’t even taking calls to pass on info like this?

@KatyRyan that sounds very sensible, please let us know how you get on.

Solicitors have put many staff on furlough so the conveyancing is being done by fewer people (also working from home) and will therefore take longer to do. Solicitors only get paid once a transaction completes, so the priority at the moment is getting as many completions done as possible. Everyone else who is at the beginning or middle of their transaction is having to wait until their turn comes.

So, to answer your question, yes transactions are progressing but they are taking longer because not only are the solicitors working from home, but many of the third parties are too, i.e. the banks, estate agents, management companies, search agents, landlords etc. Post is having to be collected from offices and distributed to the correct person/department. Most outgoing post is being emailed where possible, but not everything can be emailed.

As you are selling, can you confirm that you have already sent back the protocol forms (ID, Fixtures & Fittings, Property Info Form) and paid some money on account so they can start work?

@NewHouseFreshStart10 Lots of buyers are pulling out or reducing their offers. Completely their prerogative obviously and if they're not that attached to the house then they have nothing to lose.
It's when people pull out because they expect a chain to fall apart that irritates me - they're the ones breaking the chain! Also if someone really loves a house they should go ahead and buy it anyway, longer term the house price will only go up.
There's short term pain for everybody coming :(

We accepted an offer yesterday from buyers who had originally offered in January. Their chain collapsed, but they stayed in touch and are now proceeding. We are buying an empty house and had already viewed and agreed a price, so just putting it all back together now. We have a fairly low LTV, and have been told there will be a desktop valuation.
If it gets valued down at that point, we will have a conversation, but it is an area which has historically done better than other parts of the country in previous recessions. We are buying for the long term, so if prices fall it wont impact us as we wont be selling or remortgaging for some time.
It was either go with this option or sit tight for a year or so, and we want to get moving.

We accepted an offer early March and were looking for somewhere to buy when everything locked down. Now in limbo waiting to see if our buyers pull out/ask for a reduction (I’d be surprised if they didn’t really). Who knows what we’ll be able to afford when we’re in a position to house hunt again. I just hope we can do it this year in time for school application deadline in Jan.

We accepted an offer in feb. The sale is still proceeding we believe. Currently waiting for searches to come back and we have been given a date of May 1st. Our sellers haven’t tried to renegotiate (yet) they did negotiate 25k off asking so we would be absolutely screwed if they needed more but hey ho. Shall have to wait and see I guess. We are desperate to move as trying to relocate counties and DS starts school in September. This has all totally messed everything up. It’s awful.

We have an offer on our house, it is empty at the moment. We had higher offers on it but accepted a considerably lower proceedable offer. It all seems to be going ahead, I think they'd be cheeky to lower their offer in the circumstances so I will probably tell them to bog off.

Exchanged and completed on the sale of DM's house today. Although there was no chain.

We were close to exchange on a sale and purchase. No idea what happens now. We want to go ahead but our buyer might pull out? When can we go ahead anyway?

I accepted offer on mine 22nd January. Buyers pulled out last week (no idea why). Solicitors we're taking forever. I despise the company I was using. I'm now auctioning my house to try to get rid of it ASAP.

*were

@sanityisamyth

How does the auction work? Is there not a risk it goes for something stupidly low?

@Hiddentree122 I've put a reserve on it so it safe from that POV. I tried auctioning it last year with no interest so not holding out much hope. This year it's marketed through Purple Bricks which are good at getting views and offers and the auction is being done by them. The buyer has to pay £6k upfront for the searches and documents which puts a lot off (hence not much hope) but at least hardly any chance of them pulling out if they've already committed.

AFAIK, the vast majority of searches are continuing - I work for a real estate professional organisation and got a press release this morning that I think said 80% of searches were still ongoing.