Buyer pulled out one month before my mortgage offer expires

[Nessib]

I currently own a 2 bedroom terraced house and decided to sell it and buy a bigger house. Our house sold pretty quickly and we were offered 12k above the asking price. The person buying it was inheriting his nan's house and then selling it to pay for our house. He would need to get a small mortgage though. My partner and I found a 4 bedroom town house and we offered 10k above because we were going to get 12k more on ours. This all happened in May. Things were progressing slowly but when everything was ready on our part, my buyer said his nan's house hadn't been completed yet so we would need for that to be done so whe could get the funds. We were aiming to complete on the 2nd of December, however 2 days ago he pulled out because the inheritance wasn't his but his dad and even though his dad was gifting him some of the money, the lender wasn't happy and would not given him a mortgage.

I don't know what to do. I feel like both the EA and solicitor failed us for not checking the buyers funds. My mortgage offer also expires middle of December and there is no way we will be able to find a new buyer and complete until then. We don't think we'll be able to get a new mortgage because of the way interest rate is now. But I also don't want to pull out and lose over 4k when someone messed up.

Any advice?

You have to tell the owners of the house you’re buying that your buyer has pulled out. Say you still want their property but ask if they’ll wait for you to find a new buyer. It’s up to them whether they do or not.

However, you need to check what price your Estate Agent thinks you are likely to get on your property in the current market - it might not be the same as before. You could try getting your mortgage offer extended but you should also work out how much you can afford if applying for a new mortgage with today’s rates, which is most likely what you will need to do, unfortunately. Unless you get it extended by a month to say, 2 Jan and manage to find a chain free buyer who is able to move fast.

I’m sorry your buyer mucked you about. If he said the inheritance from the nan’s house would be his, the EA would just have done a chain check and believed that. If they did that and buyer showed a mortgage in principle it’s not the EA’s fault if he lied about the fact that the money from the sale was actually mainly going to his Dad.

May to December was ridiculous- that was in indication it wasnt going well
14 weeks -anything over that means something is going wrong

We have told the sellers and said we still want to buy, however we haven't heard if they're happy to wait or not. They wanted the weekend to think about it which is fair.
My house is back on the market and I don't mind if I get less, which I'm sure it will happen. I have asked my mortgage advisor as well for an extension but it's not possible. I'm calculating how much I can afford and will have to make a decision on Monday.
I just wished I found about this earlier on

At first there wasn't a problem with the buyer. I even asked my solicitor and he said everything was done and he was ready. The problem was with the house that we are buying due to the garage being leasehold. When we finally managed to sort out the garage in October, this new problem about the inheritance house popped up

That’s a difficult situation OP, buying & selling is often problematic. I spoke to an Estate Agent yesterday, he said properties are taking longer to sell atm, a lot of buyers are dropping out due to interest rates etc. I hope it all works out for you.

I take it you're not buying/selling a house at the moment? Many people's purchases/sales are taking considerably longer than 14 weeks at the moment. Solicitors are swamped, the Land Registry has epic delays etc etc etc. I'm on week 22 due to a title plan issue and I have no chain.

My solicitors have only just got around to verifying the source of my deposit but checks on deposit/mortgage were done by both estate agents and solicitors right at the start - I had to show evidence of the DIP and deposit cash sitting in my account otherwise the estate agents wouldn't even let me view.

I buy and sell all the time
4-6 weeks used to be my standard- now 14
Anything else is likely to fail

Sounds like they’re more thorough in your area - we are looking now and estate agents are asking for details of our deposit and AIP but not asking to see proof.

Aye of course you do

This was back in the summer when houses were selling before they reached the market and it was difficult to get a viewing even for the crap stuff.

Different story now - I've got estate agents ringing me up asking if I'm still looking, and the crap stuff is hanging around for weeks with regular reductions. I've had a couple of viewings when I thought my purchase would fall through, and they didn't ask for any proof!