Buyer's Funds/cash buyer - any thoughts

[House2home21]

Hi so we're in the final throes and have been hoping to exchange for the past two Fridays but TNA.

Our buyer is a cash buyer which we've been told he's finaced via selling part of a business he's a partner in. EA and Sols have supposedly seen PoF. However, now he needs money it seems to be very tricky to get hold of. We were told it was taking a while to draw down as it's coming from an investment account??

This was at the beg of last week, we got a message yesterday from the EA telling us that the buyer wanted to let us know the funds have now been 'released' and should be in his acc today (as in yest) or tomorrow (as in today). Werdly we bumped into him today as he lives local currently, he apologised briefly and seemed very excited still but said he still hadn't recieved the money and was checking his phone evey 10 mins.

Our sol called his just now and they said they haven't received the funds and hadn't had any comms from the buyer to say he had.

Should we be starting to feel nervous, does this seem dodgy to you, why is it all taking so long, we have our own ltd company and move large amounts of money regularly and we've never encountered anything as complicated as this.

It sounds odd that he doesn’t know how long it should take. But, it is entirely possible that funds in an investment take a while to appear - depends on the institution holding them and the ts and cs of the investment. Even some building society accounts are not instant access but may take eg 28 days to release funds to you.

Thanks, @madrush yes we thought so! So sounds pretty plausible then?? Just wondering why if they told him today or tomorrow he hasn't had it, if it were me I'd be on the phone wanting to know where the heck it was!!

We're going into rented and have already missed one property as they were nervous we'd not exchanged, another one has just come up so I'll be furious if we miss out on another.

Entirely depends who he's dealing with. It took me 6 weeks to get my money out of a Zurich investment last year and it's recently taken a friend of mine 4 months! 😱 Hopefully your buyer doesn't have similar misfortune.

Yes it is plausible, and it's too bad the solicitor set a date without knowing exactly when the funds were available.

We’ve had this before...cash buyer, who doesn’t actually have the cash just yet. In our case because they were selling a house they’d inherited!! So a chain free buyer for our chain, but actually in a bloody chain elsewhere 🤦🏼‍♀️

People say they are cash buyers meaning they don't need a mortgage rather than they actually have the cash readily available, it's misleading estate agent speak!

@HelpMeh well he said on Thurs the funds had been 'released' and was told he should have them today (last thurs) tomorrow (last Fri), they obviously didn't appear so I'm just a bit perplexed about why he's not chasing and able to explain why! Blinking BH as well, it's all going to fall into Weds now!

@Hazel444 you would have thought he'd have researched how long it took to get out and would have been making plans to do so once everything looked ready for exchange.

Our estate agents appear to be acting on behalf of the buyer and not us and are really reluctant to chase and get a proper grasp on what's going on!

@HelpMeh do you know why it took Zurich so long.....no money yet and now it turns out, oh no, the funds haven't been released, they're 'awaiting manager sign off', the buyer was distinctly told last Thurs they'd been released on Faster Payment and he would have them in 24 hours, looks like nothing of the sort has happened, is this the fun and games you had?

Sorry, only just saw this. I think it was just general Zurich incompetence and their ridiculous processes.

My money was invested via an employee savings scheme. You could view your investment online but there was no way to actually withdraw. I had to fill in a withdrawal request form and email it to them, then they told me I needed to send them certified ID copies . Then I waited. And chased them. And waited some more. Every time I called they'd tell me to wait a few more days... Then I was told similar to what you've said - that it was with "the panel" for final approval . I was pulling my hair out by the end of it but it seems they've got worse since. When my colleague was dealing with them recently they'd stopped answering the phone completely...

Maybe they've laid people off and have a skeleton staff working from home. I've never had to work so hard to get my hands on my own money, it was actually quite worrying.