What happens when you accept the sellers threats?

[Tupster]

My "dream house" purchase has been steadily turning into a nightmare. The vendors are awful and I don't trust them at all. They want my money, but they don't want me to get a say on anything during the process. There's really crucial things that they literally won't give me answers to and we've reached a point where they have threatened to put the house back on the market rather than give me answers. I've been steadily reaching the end of my tether with them, and while I really, really want the house, the more they lie to me, the more I am expecting some major double-crossing to be planned for later down the line and even before their threat I was weighing up whether I should drop out of the whole thing. I'm sure they think they are just throwing their weight around and think I'll cave under an ultimatum, but actually when I saw the threat I just started looking for another property.

What is one actually supposed to do in these circumstances? Do I have to tell them "I'll take option B - you remarket the property" or do I just not do what they want and they have to follow through on their threat? I assume that they have to deal with the agent and not me. I'm not technically the one dropping out, so do I wait for their solicitor to contact us to say they've pulled out? I've already told my solicitor to do nothing more on the purchase until these issues were resolved, which clearly they won't be now, so she's not busy spending any more of my money at this stage.

You tell your solicitor you are pulling out of the purchase and to send you a final bill.

Are you asking this question because you have buyers insurance? I tried to get a mad vendor to cancel the purchase so I could claim on that insurance.

I can't think why else you're asking. Pull out.

A busy week is a good excuse to step right back and be aloof, that'll get them worrying!
Good luck

@Tupster cross posted.

You are dropping out.

Don't wait for them to do it...they'll take ages to do it and you might get a higher bill if your solicitor is still doing stuff.

OP is it still your dream house or have you fallen out of love with it?

If you still want it, I agree with PP that speaking to the estate agent (who is invested in the sale going through), might help you. In the example you have given, the EA and your solicitor are the ones responsible for checking that the sellers have the legal right to sell and for checking any probate / POA. If they are happy, you can be assured by that.

OTOH if it's no longer for you, you can withdraw. Email the EA and your solicitor and pay your solicitor's invoice.

What I would add is to remember that some of the standard questions asked of sellers can turn out to be anything but ordinary and to keep Jan mind that it might not be the vendors being tricky. I sold DM's 800 year old house as POA. Questions such as "has the house ever had any alterations" were umm, challenging, seeing as I didn't even know which century half the changes had been made.

I’m going to go offside and stick up for FTB’s.
Not denying that their understandable anxiety in the light of their inexperience can be irritating to handle, but the blame does not entirely rest with them!
We last sold 4 years ago, our 4th move in almost as many decades. No one in
the chain was an FTB, but the amount of indemnities for fensa certificates that had expired was ridiculous- our buyer did not agree with the hold up, but it still happened.
Often it is Solicitors hold up the sale for missing pieces of paper. The selling of indemnity certificates must be a lovely little side hustle for them, it got worse each time we moved. As others have alluded to, if you had to rely on one in court, would it hold up for you?
No wonder people get so worried, they are being encouraged to be!
Also people tend to have a convenient memories when thinking back to how anxious they were as FTB’s.

@Fifiesta When you say, solicitors are holding up the sale, what do you mean? Because they take their instructions from their client, though I suppose they can refuse yo go ahead in case they get in trouble.

I know a few situations where people have insisted on certificates from the days where certificates didn't actually exist - and then said the indemnity certificates weren't good enough. But no paper is good enough if we're moving to a suing culture.

But I've never been clear whether it's the client or the solicitor who is causing the problem.

You can literally say to your solicitor ok stop spending money on conveyancing as they're out and I can't proceed without this info. You can ask your solicitor to say that the client is disappointed to hear the information they understand and won't taken any further action in the sale. Or just not respond. Then call the same agent thats selling and say oh it's such a shame the vendor is pulling out do you have anything like this for us to view? If you like anything through them book the viewing in. It's only your dream house if it's for sale otherwise it's just a random waste of money. I had this on a house once the vendor was flakey, kind of smelly in that the house was untidy and smelt of bo as he had left minging clothes around and it was pretty unclean. No sense of the real world and hard to deal with. He told us he was chain free then randomly put a deposit a new build that wouldn't be available for six months. When that call came in the agent was surprised I was relieved as I'd been looking a while and keen to move to the area. I said it was because he was such a nightmare that I couldn't bare dealing with him for another 8-12 weeks and then they explained how flakey he'd been to deal with and that they wouldn't be dealing with him again and apologised for what a time waster he'd been. Then they found me another lovely house where the sale had fallen through at the same time as mine. Loved there for seven years

@EmmaE
Your first paragraph. Our buyer and us used the same group of solicitors- our buyer did not agree with their Solicitors nit picking, our solicitor said off record, that she was being ridiculous. The sale took a year to go through, (the solicitors for our sellers were even slower), we lost our first buyer five months in, as the sale was proceeding too slowly.
Eventually after complaining that as we had paid for an indemnity to cover a missing letter in the deeds (from 1800’s!) when we bought, it was hardly fair that we also had to pay for another one as a seller! Our Buyer wavered the out of date fensa certs for a few double glazed windows. We paid for a further indemnity for some other tiny matter, so small I can’t even recall what it was about. Eventually sorted…very stressful…
Glad I wasn’t an ftb trying to get the sale agreed.

Just pull out, end of. Go look at other houses and pay your solicitor's bill. Simples.

I agree. What are your questions for the vendor?

I was asked some ridiculous questions in my recent house sale. I thought the solicitor acting for the buyers was failing to understand the basics of land law so told my solicitor that I would not be answering such basic questions but to tell the other sides solicitor to read the deeds and find the answers to his questions there. I got so annoyed I too threatened to pull the sale. Perhaps it's the same situation here?

OP if they won't answer your question then I would walk away now. I lost a lot of money and tears when I tried to buy a new build that didn't have a building guarantee. We couldn't get a mortgage on it, we couldn't get an indemnity policy until the house had been there for 3 years.

Just advise your solicitor and the estate agent that you no longer wish to proceed due to their lack of co-operation. Put your energy into something new.

We had to walk away from it. The estate agent had no idea that it could only be purchased by a cash buyer who didn't need a mortgage until we told them.

While I was devastated at the time, we ended up with something that was far more suitable for DC, so it all ended well.

@Tupster
You tell your solicitor to return papers

Or, if you want to call their bluff, tell the estate agent this will happen by X date if vendor does not make progress with their ability to proceed

Then follow through. Don't wait for them. Move on

No, before exchange of contracts

Sorry, didn't read properly 🫣

The problem we are having is that they won't answer as to whether there is a dealbreaker. The nature of the issue is that I could find out that the answer invalidates my mortgage agreement, or that the house is unavailable until 2025. The buyers have said they won't answer until I have completed the entire conveyancing process at my cost and am ready to exchange, and if I don't agree to do that, they want to remarket

Something like a sitting tenant and they don't want to give notice until they've actually sold? Anyway, they do sound rather unhelpful to say the least, and I would definitely look at House B in your position.

@EmmaEmerald conveyancer basically couldn't be bothered to ring our solicitor and exchange contracts despite explicit instructions from seller- I actually had a conversation with seller that day

I think the point for the seller is that if they are saying they will remarket unless you comply then they are saying they don't want to sell to you specifically. So the process ends there. That's what happens.

Any agent would be advising them against this but it's not clear who is talking to who in relation to these questions, or whether this questions will fundamental be answered through the nature of the conveyancing process itself in time.

My first ever thread on Mumsnet had even more irrational replies. I posted looking for help finding a better mortgage rate.

I didn't lay out all our finances in great detail; the truth of the matter is we would have been left with about £3.5k in the bank per month to cover everything that's not a mortgage, with a little bit of debt (10k being paid back @ 250pm), no kids, no dependents, no expensive car, no desire for five star cruises twice yearly, no work travel expenses, etc.

'You can't afford to buy this house' was said, iirc, by at least four people on that thread.

eye roll

Sorry for derailing your thread again OP. Hopefully I'm sticking up for you by illustrating how absolutely bonkers this place is sometimes. It's a wonder I stuck around, really. I just like to help people I suppose.

If you hope that you might nudge them into answering, I'd speak to my solicitor and send them a short deadline - not prepared to go ahead with conveyancing without info on x, please send info by deadline or will withdraw offer.

Meanwhile you can look around for alternatives. As far as I know it makes no difference to costs or redress which of you withdraws before contacts are exchanged, so I would take control back rather than wait for them to follow through (or not).

I've only read the first page but to be honest you sound way too sensitive to be buying a house at the moment, OP.

You and these sellers are obviously not compatible and that's all there is to it.

No, you were right - my post wasn't clear so am very pleased you've flagged it!😬

"what arrangements have you made to ensure you are in a legal position to be able sell this house?"

Firstly, you don't need to ask this. Their solicitor and your solicitor will verify this.

And with respect, if this is the type of question you're asking I'm not surprised they are threatening to put the house back on the market.

Whether you pull out, or they pull out, it's exactly the same unfortunately. It doesn't matter in terns of costs etc.

Your solicitor will forward a bill for costs incurred and then you'll just continue to search...

It sounds like they're withholding information so let them follow through with their threats.

Red flags are threats and withholding info unreasonably!

Sod them.