Exchanging tomorrow. Buyers just pulled out

[Newhousename]

It’s not about money apparently . They just went off the house. The night before. After five viewings and months of paperwork. &@£$**>%€

anyway. Trying to be practical. Does anyone have experience of those we buy any house type organisations? Please. Or any other thought that could help.

A 30% deposit is ridiculous for anyone in a chain or even a first time buyer

How many buyers have 30% of the value of their house sitting around to exchange?! Everyone I know is using proceeds from a precious sale or their ftm deposit (which is 10-20% max) to exchange

I don’t think I would have been able to buy any of my previous houses if I had been required to put down a 30% deposit to exchange because you can’t get that from mortgage funds or from equity in an existing house

Yeah I've bought and sold three times here in last five years (own home + rental property x 2) and it's all been smooth sailing, but I do know a couple of people have had some issues in the last couple of years. But we've had missives signed and a date agreed early every time and no issues. From offer accepted to conclusion within three months.

When we sold my MIL's flat, my poor SIL had to rearrange movers three or four times because of stuff happening in 'the chain'.

It's also a lot harder to gazump/gazunder here, as once an offer is accepted, your solicitor cannot accept another one. So you'd have to arrange new legal representation if you decided after accepting an offer that actually you'd like to accept another one, which is just an extra level of 'hassle' and delay that I think puts people off.

At the end of the day there has to be a point at which both parties make a firm commitment (currently in England that is at Exchange). There isn't really much way round that.

I think a lot of people misunderstand the process, where they think they have actually bought at offer but in actuality you have bought nothing until exchange.

They only way you can really improve things is to make the availability of information up to the decision point easier, so the commitment point is reached more quickly. There was an attempt of this at the homebuyers pack, but there are two pretty good reasons why this didn't work, i) because it is unwise for the buyer to rely on information provided by the seller and ii) because VIs in the industry were hurt by this (sellers surveys means less surveys in general).

No direct experience, but beware these 'we buy any house' companies. Obviously they'll offer a very low price but there was an item (I think R4, 'you and yours') a few months ago about how even getting an appraisal of your property via these companies can lead you (in effect) entering into a contract. Of course I might have got totally the wrong end of the stick, but I was shocked st thd tactics used. Might be worth a google.

Yep, just been through this 2 weeks ago, already to complete and buyer drops the agreed price by 15k, we refused and they pulled out. Straight back on the market and just accepted a higher offer 10 days later, I also think there should be some sort of penalty for this.

@BitOutOfPractice 20 mins ffs. I think I'd hunt them down.
Hope it eventually went well.

Don’t use 1st suggestion they are for people who are really desperate and you will not get anywhere near its value.
Secondly get it back on the internet ASAP. and keep fingers crossed.
What an awful thing to do to you, my heart goes out to you.

So sorry to hear about what has happened to you, buying and selling is stressful enough without this sort of thing.
I don't believe those We Buy Any House type organisations are good news. You certainly wouldn't get a good price from them, they know your back is against the wall. Were there any other offers for your house? Or does the agent know anybody who is under offer and would be interested? If not I would pull out of the whole thing. This is what we did when our buyer pulled out after nearly four months. We lost the house we wanted but found another buyer and another house and were very happy there.
Somebody I know pulled out of a purchase recently. The seller (a builder) had told her that he had come to an agreement with the neighbour that he would build a fence and the neighbour had agreed to cut down some trees which were making the garden very dark. In the end the neighbour refused to take the trees down (though the fence was built) and my friend pulled out. I honestly don't blame her, nobody wants a dark garden.

Wasn’t the night before but we’d agreed a sale, taken it off the market, 3 months passed - they “went off” the house. Relisted and got a better deal. Don’t do anything hasty with your biggest asset.

This happened to us and inquired with those ‘buy your house for cash’ companies and they offered ridiculous amounts for the house. My Estate Agent was fantastic and said he would find a buyer with no chain and he did and it went through in around 6 weeks. Stay positive.

We also knew a similar situation with my DDs purchase two years ago when she saw a flat in June and offered but the Estate Agent recommended another buyer to the vendor "because she was a cash buyer" and they needed to move fast to get their DS into primary school in September. Three months on both were ready to exchange and then the vendor discovered that the buyer was only going to be a cash buyer when she had sold her own place - and she hadn't!
We heard what had happened and went to see the vendor again, offered her the same cash price as the other buyer and bought the flat in two weeks.

I think there should be a financial penalty for time wasters like this, our system is not fit for purpose

Absolutely. Somebody should start a petition for this to be debated in parliament.

The problem with the uk system is that you have to put your life on hold for 6-8 months (even if your buyer is the first person to walk through the door) and you are in this vortex where you think you might be moving but you don’t know when or even if.

From my own experience the blame lies with not just the system that allows both buyers and sellers to pull out after agreeing to buy or sell months down the line but also the mortgage companies who seem to operate an archaic slow process.
My buyers of my last house had to search for a fax machine as the high street banks mortgage department would only take certain documents if they were faxed and then they wouldn’t give them a list of documentation they needed to provide but insisted on asking for the documents individually and would only process 2 documents per week. Then after 6 months they had to start again as the original documentation had run out of time and weren’t valid so had to be done again.

Something is going very very wrong.

Totally different in france when buying, the buyer pays the seller a security deposit and has soo many days to come up with the remainder. If not the seller keeps the deposit and you as the buyer cant do anything about it. But id be peed off aswell.

It did. I got the full asking price 10 days later and it Went through quickly because of the pre-existing searches etc. The stress was immense though.

I didn’t seek revenge, despite severe temptation to post shit through her letterbox. What can I say? I’m a saint and my reward will surely be in heaven 😂

This happened to us 5 months after accepting the offer, our useless solicitor forgot to include the exchange deposit in the contract on the Friday, by the time they had included it on the Monday they pulled out. We never had a good feeling about them ever though they offered well over the asking price, they used a professional viewing service on their behalf and never viewed it themselves, they asked ridiculous questions and wanted copies of all our bills in advance despite us being on meters so it was irrelevant and a large amount contributed to the estate fees for reserves even though we had already paid an annual fee. We very nearly lost our new build property because of it.
We ended up relisting the same day, didn’t use an agent but my husband did 10 viewings in one afternoon and managed to get another offer that was slightly higher than the first, they were the perfect family living in rented accommodation all ready to go. It also meant we didn’t need to live with family for 3 months waiting for the house to be finished.
Sometimes it just all works out best in the end, even better than you thought it would. Don’t lose hope!

GasPanic
At the end of the day there has to be a point at which both parties make a firm commitment (currently in England that is at Exchange). There isn't really much way round that

Other countries manage it. A contract on agreement of price to buy if nothing untowards is discovered.

I think the home pack just added to the process rather than quickening it up. It would have been a great thing if it had come with a contract for the buyer to sign and pay a deposit on agreement of price as long as when the buyer did their own survey and searches nothing was materially different to the one in the home pack

If a political party decide to actually quicken this process up in a meaningful way I would vote for them.

The law needs changing to ensure these people are made pay some financial penalty for doing this to sellers. That might make them think twice if the only reason for withdrawing is to force the seller to drop the (already agreed) price. I do hope you get a new buyer soon.

Once an offer is accepted, either party that pulls out should have to pay the other 10 percent of the agreed-upon sale price. That would nip some of these situations in the bud.

If you do get another buyer quickly, to speed the sale up, tell the new buyers to contact your old buyers solicitors to purchase all the paperwork off them, such as searches etc. which the people who pulled out will have already had done.
We purchased a house 2 years ago after the previous purchasers backed out and did just this. We completed much more quickly because of it (6 wks).

im so sorry for you op, I would be devastated. No practical advice just sending commiserations

The laws need changing absolutely disgusting behaviour, I really feel for you. Hope you get another buyer asap.

I would 100% support this.

Happened to us after we’d found a house, had searches done, no reason given. We’d had several offers, and accepted the one from an older couple who were downsizing, had sold and were renting. Our solicitor was then told by theirs that they were no longer interested. The estate agent contacted people who had offered previously, only one hadn’t found somewhere else, he decided to knock off thousands, we declined.

Lost the house we were interested in, but fate is strange, the one we eventually bought has been a great place to live. I hope things work out positively OP.