Tempted to tell my buyer to **** off

[ISeeARedDoorAndIWantToBreakIn]

Please talk me out of doing something stupid like telling my buyer to off.

My buyer and/or their conveyancer are driving me mad. Despite telling the estate agent they were “desperate to complete”, they have dragged their feet and stalled by asking myriads of trivial questions. (although not sure whether it’s the buyer themselves who keep coming up with more questions or if it’s their conveyancer) We should have exchanged weeks ago.

My conveyancer (chocolate teapot springs to mind) has told me that the buyer is now complaining about the title plan. The pavement alongside my house is curved, but the red line on the title plan is a straight line, and doesn’t quite meet the edge of the footpath. They are now saying that they are not happy to proceed to exchange until this has been sorted out and want me to contact the landowner and arrange to buy the very small (couple of inches) stretch of land between the red line and the edge of the pavement! I am not going to go to the County Council and ask to buy this patch of land.

The Land Registry plan says, as it always does, that the lines are not exact, but somehow my buyer and/or their conveyancer can’t accept that. They have had 4 months to bring this up!

Due to a thread on here about buyers dropping their offer just before exchange or completion, for the last couple of days I’ve worried that they will pull a stunt like that.

I’m so fed up with them I’m sorely tempted to tell them to exchange by X date or the deal is off. However, I know that is a bad idea as I’ll have to put the house back on the market. If it’s me who pulls out, will I still have to pay the estate agent? If not, I would remarket with a different agent.

Also, if I put the house back on the market, prices in this area have dropped and this buyer offered £15k less than my previous buyer (who pulled out after 2 months), so I’ll get even less money for the house if I look for a new buyer.

So I know it’s a bad idea to tell the buyer to off if he’s going to mess me around, but I’m not going to ask the County Council if I can buy (at what cost?) a couple of inches of land. I don’t think there’s any point asking my (frankly useless) conveyancer for his advice.

Any ideas?

I think it's the conveyencer. This sounds like exactly the sort of thing my conveyencer would insist on.

Talk to your own conveyencer and get them to help you to understand wtf is going on and how to get around this. Ask why the pedantry. Ask advice on how to handle it.

'They've had four months'

Yeah but I put a list of questions to my guy, it took days for him to draft a letter, he would never send without my approval, then he would send, and I guess the same thing happened the other end. All told, I would ask a question then get an answer in a bloody month.

Then the conveyencer would tell me he is not satisfied with the answer, arrange a call with me, suggest a solution, draft a new letter, ask for approval, send, and the whole bloody process would start again. I also found the vendors conveyencer would only answer what suited them so we had to chase, specifically, and pin down exact wording/confirmation on things they chose not to respond to, or respond to in a way that could be open to interpretation. Each of these letters took weeks.

Just because THEY have had months does NOT mean they have been sitting on their hands. There are two sets of conveyancers here who can slow things down drastically due to wanting to do things the right way and properly. They'll never just pick up the phone, have a chat, agree a solution between parties then put it in writing. I was in the process for three months and I still didn't have all my questions answered, and I would always respond on the same day.

Take a deeeeeeeeep breath and remind yourself of all that delicious money you do NOT WANT TO LOSE.

@KievLoverTwo My conveyancer is very very slow to respond to me, so is probably just as slow as “other side”. I’m disappointed/frustrated/annoyed that he just sent an email saying “this is what they said”, rather than phoning me and saying “this is what they said but I suggest we do XYZ”.

I’ll ring my conveyancer tomorrow. He will probably be “unavailable” - normally when I ring I end up speaking to someone else, and they are no help at all. I rang them yesterday as I hadn’t received a response to the email I’d sent a week earlier, and by the time I put the phone down I was no wiser than before the call.

@Milkkbottles they’ve already asked me to pay £30 for an indemnity for “lack of FENSA and other certificates”. I supplied the FENSA certificate , but as the wi does were installed 14 years ago, the 10 year guarantee has expired. I also supplied the installation certificate for the change of fuse box. The only thing I couldn’t provide was a certificate of installation for a gas fire…..but I did supply a certificate showing it was tested a couple of months ago.

They also want me to pay £80 for indemnity insurance for “potential breach of section 52 agreement”. I got the section 52 agreement from the local council, it’s dated 1973 and there haven’t been any breaches!

This house has been sold a number of times in the last 40 years with the same red line on the title plan, and it’s been fine.

I was in a similar situation about 20 years ago with a leasehold flat in London.

Endless, ridiculous questions and stupid demands. Turns out the buyers - who couldn't speak English - had no idea what was going on; it was their conveyancers just spinning the process out. My own conveyancers - like yours - were useless.

In the end, I rang the estate agent and said WTF is going on here making it clear that I would pull out if this carried on. The estate agents must've had a quiet word with the buyer to tell their conveyancers to wind their necks in and we completed shortly afterwards.

@ISeeARedDoorAndIWantToBreakIn

are they FTB?

Yeah you are dealing with a conveyancer just like mine. Trust me. It's not your buyers. Mine virtually insisted we could not proceed without things like this.

Fensa certificate doesn’t expire…the guarantee on the windows might but the fensa cert is a buildings regs certificate so no expiration (it means the windows passed buildings regs when fitted)

@THisbackwithavengeance Having been awake most of the night as my anger stopped me sleeping, I think I’m going to do as you did - speak to the EA and say if they don’t sort themselves out sharpish, I’m putting it back on the market.

@VinEtFromage I’m not sure. I was told they are cash buyers but the name on the memorandum of sale is a business name not a person’s name. I’m going to have a look at what the name is, and if it’s a ltd company I’m going to look up the names of the owners.

@ISeeARedDoorAndIWantToBreakIn

I'd do both those things too. Often when buyers are being utterly ridiculous it's because they're FTB being pushed by family to check every daft thing they can think of. Especially if the giving/lending them money.

Just looked on companies house for info on my buyers. It’s a property company formed 2 years ago with 2 directors, so clearly not a FTB.

Surely if the buyer wants that teeny parcel of land they can approach the owners once they have bought your property and offer for it.

That's what we did with an almost identical sounding situation.

I was going to mention indemnity insurance ,but see you are already having other issues about that. We had a similar situation wen we sold; we had solar panels as did about 75% of our neighbours.There was a restrictive covenant about not having structures on the roof and back and forth it went about the panels, it seemed to be weeks. In the end we paid about a fiver for indemnity insurance, and it went ahead. Again, first time buyer,useless conveyancer, and nitpicking. I wanted to ask my former neighbours how they had sold so quickly in exactly the same circumstances.

I can't offer more advice than that, sorry!

In the end, I rang the estate agent and said WTF is going on here making it clear that I would pull out if this carried on. The estate agents must've had a quiet word with the buyer to tell their conveyancers to wind their necks in and we completed shortly afterwards

This is the approach I would go for.

I’ve rung my conveyancer and my EA this morning and them both that either we exchange by this time next week or it’s going back on the market.

Good for you. They’re being petty.

If it weren’t for the fact that I’d have to pay the EA’s fees, I’d go to another EA to remarket it. Not only to incentivise the EA to persuade the buyers to make a decision but also I’ve been quite disappointed with the EA. They were really good when the first offer was accepted, but that buyer pulled out two months later. The EA seemed to do a half hearted job of marketing it the second time round. They pressured me to drop the price significantly then pressured me to accept a lower offer (from the current buyer)

@ISeeARedDoorAndIWantToBreakIn

well done!!

what did they say??

Just tell them that the boundaries are not precise to that degree and that you are not going ahead with their suggestion. Say that time is of the essence and you need to exchange within X days or will have to remarket the house. They've spent money on surveys and solicitors. They'd be stupid to pull out over something like this.

@ISeeARedDoorAndIWantToBreakIn my buyer was ridiculous. Cash buyer chain free both of us. but they wanted to buy to rent it out. No survey either.

couldn’t make a decision via email or letter. Had to make an appointment to get conveyor and discuss in person. Took ages

wanted me to pay for all the electric and gas checks for her renters insurance. A new boiler and windows as j voiding provide proof of age - I inherited them.

I ended up with indemnity insurance fur lots just to keep her happy. After I no longer owned the house, she is renting house via estate agent I sold it through, estate agent kept phoning up about where things where in my house and why no survey as there was damp, kitchen and bathroom needed replaced. I didn’t hide the damp or anything it was there to be seen and priced accordingly.

my buyer decided she didn’t want the house anymore as too much hassle and thought she could get the estate agent to persuade me to undo the legal stuff.

no was the answer

I told the conveyancer that the Land Registry title plans even said they were not exact, and that the house had been there 40 years without this being an issue. I said I was most certainly not going to contact the county council and ask about buying a few inches of land and that I was not going to entertain any more of the buyer’s nonsense. That’s when I told my conveyancer to tell the buyer’s conveyancer that if we don’t exchange by this time next week, I’m putting the house back on the market. My conveyancer typed an email to the buyer’s conveyancer whilst I was on the phone to him.

Then I rang the EA and said the same. They said the idea of asking me to try and buy the extra strip of land was silly and would take months. The EA said they would speak to the buyer and tell them my ultimatum.

That was this morning and I’ve not heard anything from the conveyancer or the EA since then. I suspect the buyer will punish me by not communicating until Friday. I have no idea which option they will choose. Part of me thinks they will have wasted money on the survey, but they might be in MN and been told to forget the sunk costs fallacy!

@ISeeARedDoorAndIWantToBreakIn

bit of luck they'll find this thread & see what utter utter tears everyone thinks they're being & will shit or get off the pot!!