Bizarre seller behaviour - Would you pull out?

[oatleytap]

This, to me is bizarre, and I'm 95% sure I'm pulling out of buying this flat.

Just wondered what other sane people would do in this situation?

• Offer accepted March 28th
• End of May seller says their mortgage offer is expiring on 26th June
• I almost kill myself trying to push it through on my end by this date
• Get close to date and I say it's looking unlikely, can you get an extension on your offer
• Seller says ok, but HSBC will only give max 5 days (should be enough)
• 10 days later seller says HSBC want a letter from their solicitor to consider the extension and they're working on it
• Yesterday agent calls out of the blue and says seller has "double checked" their mortgage offer and it actually expires in July.
• Today I tell the agent I need the exact date and he gives me it saying "the seller is very sorry HSBC made a mistake"

How on earth could HSBC make a mistake with the expiry date? He's also forgotten he already told me the seller "double checked".

Feel like I've lost all trust in everyone and they've lied to try and push through the sale quickly.

Would you pull out?

@Twiglets1 it is comparable as all leaseholds have their issues. I sold my London flat because I’d bought the headlease (900+ years) peppercorn groundrent.

neighbours then thought they could get the same - no one interested due to ground clauses they had with their leases.

in my current flat 150 year lease £50 pa ground rent. No increases.

neighbour flat 88 years and £250 ground rent. She tried selling - no takers.

just avoid leasehold.

I’m just pointing out that you were talking about the problems of short leases costing a lot to renew, but this flat is not a short lease.
It’s not always possible to avoid leasehold. In London for example most flats are leasehold & houses too expensive for first time buyers.

@howrudeforme
yep totally correct that if you don’t pay the GR the freeholder can take action to repossess the property and unbelievably a judge has no power to stop this once it starts the process

it’s another reason why banks no longer like leaseholds and require DOV which can cost the seller thousand and no guarantee the freeholder will agree

Diddums.

Theres no inherent god given right to sell property easily. What an entitled attitude.

Funny, in the end the seller did me favour by lying to me.

If he hadn’t, I never would have got suspicious, and wouldn’t have found out about this ground rent issue.

My useless solicitor hadn’t made my bank aware, and my useless bank only asked for the current rate and made no attempt to investigate the terms (even though when I offered them the information they said yes, that’s against their lending criteria). So the deal would have gone through, even though it shouldn’t!

In 2026, the ground rent will already be £500 - half of the assured shorthold tenancy threshold after just 10 years of the lease!

I totally agree this RPI linked ground rent thing is a ticking time bomb. If you’re stuck with one of these flats with peppercorn new builds going up all around you, if you need to sell nobody is going to touch you.

What an absolute shambles all around.

Thank goodness the seller got caught in a lie, or naive me would have been lumbered.

This is big chat from someone who hasn’t even managed to buy a property yet. Still, hopefully when you come to sell you won’t have to deal with an amateur with a dipshit solicitor who has completely overlooked something and pulls out late in the process as a result.