Re-negotiate price?

[Itsanofrommehun]

We are FTBs and had our offer (we are buying in cash due to inheritance) accepted on a house in November but it took the vendors ages to find somewhere. We are not getting to the final stages now but back in March when they found somewhere we did ask for a £15k discount due to the market changing and they agreed to meet us half way to keep the chain together.

we have just found out that the house in over two plots of land one the house and one the garden, and so our conveyancer wants us to pay £500 extra for the additional transfer. We think the sellers should pay this and we shouldn’t have to assume responsibility for it? AIBU?

If I’ve understood correctly, this isn’t a problem caused by the seller. It’s a conveyancing cost, being charged by your conveyancer.

Will you ask them to cover your removal lorry and your post redirection costs too?

This

Im actually amazed at your cheek for asking for 15k off because the market has changed!!! Madness. Pay the £500 and get on with it.

However this market was a buyers market or the vendors would not have agreed to the discount. Nobody owes anybody anything in these situations, it’s a commercial transaction.

Not this, actually.

Round here, it's very much a seller's market.

And being shitty is being shitty in any market.

You have enough cash to buy a property outright without a mortgage, you've knocked £7,500 off the price and now you're quibbling over £500?

Well, you're quite the classy ones, aren't you?

Pay up, get the transaction finished and accept the fact that sometimes the unexpected happens and you end up with a bill.

I'm a recent FTB and agree with the PP. I think it'd be mean and misguided to try and extract the 500.

And how is it classy to assume that someone is okay to sit in the never ending chain for months, because you have no cash, but want another house? It’s like for like, both sides are selfish in their own ways.

It is buyers market across London I’m afraid and, but you can keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

I actually get the £7.5k adjustment for the market changing, so whilst it might not be desperately ethical, ultimately buying a property is a business transaction and needs to be treated as such. As long as you were prepared to walk away if your reduced offer wasn't accepted...

I really don't get the logic that the sellers should pay your increased conveyancing cost however. That is your fee to pay entirely and it definitely isn't anyone's fault except your own for not doing your due diligence when engaging your conveyancer. As an aside, I process property transactions for a living and have never known a conveyancer charge extra for two sets of title being involved in one transaction.

A PP hit the nail on the head when they said that it really does help to have some goodwill between the parties at the conclusion of the transaction as there are lots of things that the sellers will be able to help you with that they may not choose to do if you piss them off at this point. The value of that goodwill far exceeds £500 in my book so you are just shooting yourselves in the foot really if you ask them to pay.

You don't have to be a buyer or seller to recognise bad behaviour.

I've never bought a home and I find OP's behaviour and attitude absolutely abhorrent.

OP didn’t say they were in London. You know there is a lot outside of London, right? There’s even other cities, shocking I know.

The market didn’t really change between November and March. It’s not that the sale has been going on for almost a year, which would maybe warrant a property reduction. OP waited until the sellers had put an offer in on their property to renegotiate price, so they likely wanted to offer that amount originally but knew it wouldn’t be accepted. They have waited until the sellers had sorted their onward purchase and were in less of a position to say no to OP knocking the price down for fear of losing their onward purchase. It’s shitty but there is no law about shitty behaviour.

I think it’s still more than OP wants to pay which is why they are looking for anything to knock them down on now. They’ve known about the two land parcels from the beginning. It is the conveyancer chancing their luck, not the sellers. The OP’s problem is with the conveyancer and that is who they should be querying why there is a significant extra charge for this processing when they’ve known about this from the beginning. I’d be asking the conveyancer for a breakdown of those costs exactly to see what that £500 is.

If the property is still more than OP wants to pay, it would suggest it’s not totally a buyer’s market where they are. OP is welcome to try it though. It’s a gamble as to whether the market really is in OP’s favour and how desperately the sellers want their onward purchase. They might get the £500 off because the sellers just want to get it over the line. They might end up losing the house because the sellers think it’s just not worth the hassle. You don’t know how far you can push the sellers/buyers until you’ve pushed them too far and then there is no coming back from that.

This.

Well if it's such a buyers' market in the OP's area, why have they hung around for months to get this house?

Not based on the threads last week about not being able to find anywhere at all in Wandsworth it isnt!

You are responsible for the conveyance fees. They have nothing to do with your seller. There is no reason having the property spread over two tittles would effect getting a mortgage or resale. It is not uncommon. Your post shows why so many people try to avoid selling to FTBers.

Why is it the sellers problem that your solicitor has missed off a fee from their quote? It’s no different to them missing off the extra they (usually) charge if it’s a right to buy or a new leasehold property. If you are unhappy you need to take it up with them.

Please explain to me how are you planning to start the chain without ftbs or second time cash buyers? Both hold same amount of power.

Quibbling over £500 when you've already had a reduction is not worth it. It's your conveyancer's problem for not telling you sooner, not the sellers'. Take it up with the conveyancer and tell THEM to reduce their fee. You don't actually need to combine the titles anyway, nothing wrong with having two.

It's a legal fee YOU are incurring because YOU are buying a house. On what basis is this anything to do with the seller?

This is why so many people choose to sell, move into rented and wait for a suitable property. Chains make an already stressful process much more stressful. You only need one person like the OP and the whole chain is at risk of collapse.

Is it wrong of me to hope there is an update which says "taken all the advice we received, we have not asked the vendor to pay for the £500, have asked our solicitor to pick up the cost and if not will pay it ourselves, as we want to exhange and complete as soon as possible so we can enjoy our new home"

Or will there be a new thread from the OP saying how annoyed they are as the vendors have pulled out and they cannot understand why?!

Finally, a new thread from the vendors needing to rant about cash FTB pushing their luck in demanding £500 after they had already received a £7.5k discount!

Not necessarily. They were already quite far down the process and needed to continue to secure their purchase so we're faced to going back to the start or take a commercial view to get this chain completed. They decided to take the hit but their decision may not have reflected local market conditions still.

They’ve already agreed a price drop of £7.5k. The £500 extra for the conveyancer should be taken up with them. I’m not a massively experienced buyer/seller, but after dropping the price by £7.5k, if you came sniffing for further discounts I’d tell you the sale was off, and put the house back on the market. It’s such a small amount of money in terms of houses, so to my mind you’d be a time waster and I’d question what little bill you’d want me to pay next, and whether we’d actually ever complete the sale.

Also, you don't have to combine titles, it's up to you if you want to. Our house sits on a plot which has two titles and we left it like that. If I was the vendor I wouldn't see why I should pay for the buyer's preference to combine titles.

Makes it easier for everyone! If only more people would take that approach.