Almost seven months into a sale - a week after we agreed to exchange - the buyer’s bank have flagged an “issue”

[Suitcasesuitcase]

We accepted this offer almost seven months ago. It has been an endless, tortuous sale with excruciatingly slow back and forth from their solicitor. We have threatened to ditch these buyers twice, but haven’t because of promises that an exchange could happen “next week” if we just hang on (those “next weeks” were months ago).

We finally agreed on a completion date (end of this month). Every day last week we were supposed to exchange.

At 5:30pm on Friday, we discovered exchange won’t happen because the buyer’s solicitor said the lender’s legal department have flagged a problem that the solicitor has answered and now they have to wait for the bank to okay it all. My experience with these buyer’s solicitor says to me that no completion will happen this month.

How is it that the bank - SEVEN MONTHS after we accepted their offer - have JUST flagged an issue?!

And what kind of issue would it be anyway?!

Not completing this month is going to have a bit of a disastrous financial impact for us. I don’t know what on earth to do.

Estate agents sounds more concerned about them than you I'd tell them to do one and relist

@Suitcasesuitcase they're suggesting amending the lease but I can't understand how their lender can demand it unless you've done something to the property that falls outside the lease. And FYI - they'll be demanding YOU amend the lease - only you as the leaseholder and the freeholder can vary the lease whilst you still own it.

I'm not a property expert but have done quite a lot of research around deeds of variation due to thinking I needed one)! You definitely need further info.

You need to call their bluff. They think they have all the power and the EA seems crap.

I would send notice that you are pulling out and will be relisting with a new agent at a higher price.

If they come back wanting to proceed but with some fluffy reason for delay I’d want the cost of mortgage and bills paid in cash immediately with a clear timeline and any steps that need to happen. I’d then give a deadline of a week to exchange and make it clear to the EA that if you have repost it won’t be with them.

Can you get a loan to cover 6 months of costs and pay it back with proceeds from selling at a higher cost?

Well I don't like their attitude! I think they'll keep stringing you along, and this new set of expectations that they're demanding sound unreasonable. Your EA isn't doing you any favours. Personally, and I know it's easy to say this having no skin in the game, but I would cut my losses. This is a clear case of sunk cost fallacy, and they'll carry on fannying about.

Good luck. This is awful

I don’t know if the EA passed on the price change for completion in June or not.

I would ditch any EA who doesn't pass on the instructions you give them. It's fine for them to offer advice, and you should generally listen, but you are in charge.

Actually, in this case I think the advice is very weak. There is nothing to say they need to alter their mortgage to find 2K. Your EA just don't want the hassle of relisting.

Put the house back on the market now. There are only 2 possibilities:

They are never going to buy the house (which this deed of variation stuff suggests), so putting it on now changes nothing.

They will buy the house but are incredibly bad at moving their solicitor along and think you will put up with it, so putting the house back on may be the shove they need and it's easy to remove when they complete.

Thing is op aren’t you going to have the same issue with every buyer with a mortgage? I’d give them a bit longer - bird in the hand and all that

New estate agent and new buyer

But you can definitely get a temporary tenant in because we’ve been those tenants - short term contract which specified until the house was sold. It had been on the market for a year and then sold within weeks because we made it look lived in

Only if the deed of variation is actually needed. You'd have assumed (hoped) the solicitors would've picked up on it tbh.

Hi
I sold an apartment and four months down the line the bank Barclays asked for the lease etc. they then had some queries which they asked the purchasers solicitor to answer, in order to Protect their investment/loan. If took six weeks as once the solicitor answered the query Barclays said that they had a service level of turnaround of three weeks so we had to wait until they got to it. All was ok but it added in around six weeks longer. I sympathise with you. A cash buyer wouldn't have this element but it's a bit late for you to know this. I've bought two apartments but never knew what a nightmare selling them would be.

While we’ve been waiting on this sale, two properties in our building sold with absolutely no issue whatsoever - and they were mortgaged because I’m still in touch with both sellers, who are really sympathetic to us.

It’s why we cannot understand what’s going on!

The lender is, in fact, Barclays!

We actually paid half the mortgage cost for the seller of our current house. They'd dragged the purchase out but then our buyer pulled out at the last minute. We were desperate for the house and knew we could sell ours again quickly so offered to pay half for a few months to keep the seller on side. But the agent said they couldn't have anything to do with it so we did it unofficially. Bit of a gamble because we didn't have anything in writing but it worked and we've been in the house 7 years.

I couldn't understand why it took our purchasers solicitor so long to send all the documents through to Barclays. I will never ever buy another leasehold property.

Barclays wouldn't expedite our purchasers solicitors email as they rightly said they had to get to people in turn, but it was so frustrating.
And a previous poster is right if there is any changes to the finances the solicitors will want/have to tell Barclays.
Having said that our purchasers solicitor wanted a £150 retention (to cover any under payment of leasehold fees) which my solicitor said no, too small amount for all the time it takes to manage. So I gave the £150 to the estate agent, the purchaser told his solicitor he'd go ahead without it and the EA gave it to the purchaser. But we were in a different situation to you so we're feeling more flexible.
If I were you and felt I'd get £5k/more increase on a new sale, due to values increasing, I'd put it back on the market and take the hit on the rent etc for a couple of months

your EA is not on your side. Pull out tomorrow. They will just keep finding something else to require and stall. You'll probably have offers on the table in a few weeks. Good luck!

You need to look at the TP1 form and it will have the wording relating to the management fee.

It will need to say something along the lines of ‘in the event of non payment of the management fee ‘the management fee owner’ will give the lender xx days notice of intent to place a charge on the house (not sure of the exact terminology).

if there’s no timeline mentioned (mort lenders want 2 months notice) the management company could effectively’trump’ the lender and have first dibs on any repossession.

lenders are very twitchy about these clauses at the moment.

That’s interesting - did you just approach them directly and ask what they needed to keep the sale going?

I think our buyer think we’re bluffers who will hang on forever, to be honest! So they’ll be surprised when we pull out tomorrow when they inevitably say no / don’t reply to our request for compensation for waiting!

Seems to me they have been Googling Ways To Delay A House Sale...

Make sure you tell the EA in writing that you are withdrawing from the sale as the purchasers are not proceedable. That way they will find it more difficult to claim their fee.

Could they charge us if we pull out and list with someone else?! Oh god I didn’t think that could happen!

It feels like they have and I don’t know why they would!

I called my dad to have a rant to about it today, and he said it’s like this sale is cursed!

I'd move to a new EA and relist, this one sounds hopeless.

You only have to pay your current EA on selling with a new EA if:

• you are still under contract with old EA (could be up to 12 weeks from the start)
• if your new buyer was originally introduced to your property by this useless EA

Get out and get a cash buyer. Next buyers could be with Barclays too. We remortgaged our leasehold and share of freehold property with Barclays and they were a nightmare over that too. I think they are afraid of leaseholds and share of freeholds. This will take at least 3 weeks ro sort in my experience.

Oh wow they sound like a nightmare!

I am going to quit out tomorrow (as I am almost 100% sure there’ll be no progress). And see if there are any cash buyers who want it!