Seller demanding cash as completion delayed

[Housebuyer2020]

We are in the process of buying a property..We the offered in mid October abs we had our mortgage by Mid November, I have been very proactive calling agents solicitors weekly to keep things on track.. searches sent out in December. Both party’s solicitors gave been slow.. and the vendors management company only sent out the pack in early January.I have been pushing for a fast completion and I was given the date for tomorrow. We asked the vendors if we could vidyut property before completion, they refused, so we asked for a video. Anyways I called solicitor this morning asking about completion for tomorrow. She turns around abs says the money hasn’t been released and the completion will be on 25 th of February... i was fuming but nothing I can do. The vendor,is also fuming and ha asked us to pay him £1000 or he is going to put it back on the market.. we reluctantly agreed, ( as he has done this to another seller before we put our offer in) now I’m concerned if there are any more set backs he will keep asking for money. I’m trying to get the exchange done tomorrow, it still worried can he pull out even after exchange??? Arrgghh so angry

I’d be very wary of the solicitor you’re using. When we wanted to incentivise our vendor to get things moving via a small payment upon completion it had to go via the mortgage lender/underwriter to make sure they were ok with it (which they were).

@Housebuyer2020- strange advice from the solicitor and a shame to give in to seller's extortion but it's done now.

Hope it works out for you.

The blackmail is completely inappropriate but both sets of solicitors didn’t seem to bat an eyelid and conversed like it was something very common occurrence.. my solicitor forwarded me email thread between her the vendors solicitors.. out solicitor is legit, it’s a big city firm.. maybe that’s why they weren’t too fussed about the “£1k”... but it’s going through legal channels and in writing

Just because it's a "big city firm" doesn't mean that underhand things can't happen! Anyway, I hope it's a good outcome for you and that the rest of the move goes smoothly.