Homebuyer's insurance against gazumping

[MrsJamin]

Does anyone have any experience of taking a policy out to insure against costs associated with buying which you can claim on in case the purchase of your house doesn't go through, for a reason such as gazumping? We are worried about being gazumped on a house we have an offer accepted on so were thinking about taking this out. They seem to be around £50 and cover costs of around £1500-£2500.

No, but seems attractive if will pay out

I pulled out of a purchase years ago was developer and would not stop marketing: didn’t want to lose survey costs as high chance of being gazumped

Is the house still on the market? It’s not a massive possibility if the house is marked under offer and no one else is viewing? Best thing you can do is push the sale along to exchange of contracts ASAP. It might be worth the £50 (not a huge amount) but I would definitely read the small print and check in what circumstances it would pay out very carefully.

They had a few offers from people who hadn't sold yet, so we are concerned what would happen if they did sell, they might still put forward their offer that might be higher than ours, as we offered under the asking price.

It is now changed to SSTC but I don't think that would put people off who were prepared to offer when they hadn't even sold themselves.

We were gazumped a month ago and I really wish I had known about this insurance. In your case, I would definitely go for it – 50 pounds is a very small amount for peace of mind. We are about to make an offer at the moment and will definitely purchase it.

Meantime completely agree with the small-print. It usually doesn't pay out if the previous survey indicated problems, if you yourself exit the deal, or some other circumstances to avoid scams. I am a person that loves reading terms and conditions and I couldn't find any dodgy conditions for the one's I looked at (Surewise and hoa).

The situation you described is still currently happening. We accepted an offer, whilst waiting for them to provide proof of funds we continued viewings. We received another offer but they weren't proceedable so we said no and our house went SSTC. A few weeks later they came back having sold and offered even more. We again turned them down because I didn't want bad karma for letting the first people down but I'm sure many would of accepted the higher offer.