Buyer just pulled out on the morning of exchange

[WhatAWasteOfOranges]

Tell me about when this happened to you and how it ended up being for the best. Bloody nightmare... strung us along for three months!

Oh so sorry that sucks! It probably won’t be any consolation now but it will happen just not this time.

It's so shit, our vendors pulled their house on the morning we were going to exchange, 5 and a half months after we'd agreed the sale. House all packed up, removals booked, all set to move. We then pulled our house from sale because there was nothing else available but buyers stayed in touch and we've since managed to find another house, so are attempting it all over again.

So, not quite worked out for the best yet, but this new house does feel like a better fit for us, if we manage to pull it off this time!

Sorry it's happened to you, the house buying system here is just awful.

Prices have gone up a lot the last 3 months and lots near us are going to sealed bids, as there's nothing much available - you could end up selling very swiftly and for more money. That's not just invented to cheer you up, either! Go on Rightmove, plug in the price range for your house in your area, search including SSTC, and do it by 'newest listed'. The area we are searching, the difference is 40 to 14. We've not even been able to look at the 2 we were interested in, as they had 5 offer within the first 48 hours and stopped viewings. Honestly, you may end up considerably better off!

In normal markets, though, no such consolation exists. We need a better system, so this can't happen.

This happened to me. Thankfully, my house sold again quickly and it went smoothly after that 'blip'.

It will sell again quickly. Just get it back on the market. If they come back with their tail between their legs then offer only full asking.

This happened to us. We were waiting for a call to say we’d exchanged and instead got a call saying our seller had pulled out. Apparently it had “taken too long” even though it had only been 6 weeks. We even went to see them to beg, but to no avail.

We bought a completely different house in a completely different area and, although we are moving on now, it did work out for the best. We bought near my parents and had lots of babysitting and then it had been very helpful for elderly care the other way around. So it did work out for the best.

I still feel resentment to the vendors. I hope Karma got them in the end.

We've had the same happen to us a year ago. It has taken us a year to get another offer, at a much lower price. Exchanged today.

Thanks for the encouraging stories! What will be will be I guess!

And congratulations on exchange @Frenchfancy 🥂 though not really the sort of story I was after!! 🥲😅

So sorry that happen to you OP. Buying& selling is so stressful. We have moved recently so I can empathise. There are so many people that mess about. It seems strange to me, we have brought every property we have ever offered on, no tricks always paid the agreed price, and we have never messed our buyers around either. The system seriously needs an overhaul. Good luck OP, I agree usually these things work out for the best.

I really feel for you. We had vendors pull out on the day of exchange for no understandable reason. I was 6 months pregnant at the time too. It was truly rubbish.

But in our case we managed to keep our buyers and find another house and moved before the baby arrived!

And the house we ended up in was much better for us than the first. So it worked out for the best, but didn’t feel like it at the time.

Give yourself a few days to stew and moan then regroup and move forward. You will look back on this one day and it will just be one of those things.

Good luck.

Really sorry this happened to you and I read so many similar threads. From my experience there's only one way of preventing this sort of thing and it's hardly acceptable to most people...that's offering too much on a purchase and accepting too little on a sale!

Could be worse - there is another thread running at the moment where on the morning of exchange after several months of surveys etc the seller demanded another £33k 😡

Buying and selling a house is grim. Our buyers exchanged on time but on completion day didn't have their funds in place. It was an absolute nightmare. I still haven't forgiven them or the vile attitude of our estate agent and it was years ago.

This happened to us. First time buyer spooked by a comment from the tenant (long back story).
Put it back in the market and she ended up buying it anyway and for the same price. Added a few weeks delay and a lot of stredd

Happened to us. Buyer pulled out on the day we were due to exchange. Took us another 4 months to find another buyer. Had to get a bridging loan to ensure we didn't lose the house we wanted to buy. The stress gave my husband shingles and he was extremely unwell.
The Times has been running a campaign to reform our broken property system, which I couldn't be more supportive of.

These threads horrify me. The first place I ever bought was in Hong Kong and we had to pay a deposit when our offer was accepted. If we pulled out, we would have lost the deposit. If the seller pulled out, they needed to return the deposit x2 so the financial penalty would be the same for both parties. Makes sense.

Thank you all for the supportive messages!

This happened to us too, after several weeks of our buyers making increasingly unreasonable demands. We couldn't even put the house back on the market again to try and save our house purchase, as we were just weeks away from our local authority's "closed" period when you couldn't change address if you wanted to be considered for a school place (our oldest child was to starting school in the next school year, in an area that had all sorts of restrictions to stop fraudulent claims from people who didn't genuinely live there).

It honestly did all work out for the best, though - we stayed put for the next few months, got the school place, tidied up the last remaining things that needed to be done around the house, then sold for quite a bit more money and were able to buy our dream house. It was more or less a block away from our old house, had always been our favourite local house, and coincidentally came on the market that year. It was bloody awful at the time though, and I did enjoy the imagining ways in which karma might have made life difficult for our buyers...

This happened to us when we were selling my late parents' house. Our buyer had a rubbish online solicitor who took even longer than you would expect to do anything, and five months after accepting their offer, when we were just waiting to hear a date for exchange, they pulled out as their buyer had just got made redundant and pulled out of their own sale. So not entirely their fault, but if they weren't such cheapskates and went for a better solicitor it could have all been done and dusted before their buyer lost their job. Anyway, we put it on the market again straight away and got £10k more than the original buyers offered, but it was a stressful time, so I really feel for you OP. Hope things work out for you quickly!