Buyers pulled out just before exchange… upset and stressed!

[CurlyC12]

We were due to exchange this week… our buyers pulled out Tuesday, I’m so upset. The owners of the house we were buying have said they will wait for us for now but obviously they won’t wait forever. We viewed 13 houses before this one, it’s the only one me and my husband agreed on and we loved it.

Weve got two young children, 3 and 9 months, I’m back at work full time (mostly financial reasons for the move) and I just feel so overwhelmed. My husband has told me to try and take the emotion out of it and take things step by step but I’m finding it hard. The thought of getting the house ready for viewings again is making me feel so anxious and stressed.

Part of me wants to just pull out of our purchase because if in a few weeks they say they won’t wait any more it will be like a double blow.

Our house is back on the market and it did sell quickly last time but I just keep worrying it won’t sell this time and we are going to lose our purchase and be back at square one. Sorry don’t know really want I’m expecting from this post, maybe just a vent! Any advice welcome!

I don’t know much about the American system, but that wouldn’t surprise me. Just about every country does it better than we do. I have friends from several countries in mainland Europe and all of them were aghast at the process of buying property in England.

It's mad isn't it!

In the US this rarely happens because we require substantial deposit when an offer is made. Offers get made on a conditional basis, however if the buyer pulls out for other than one of conditions not being met, the seller gets to keep this money.

Unfortunately this happens, one house we went for the seller pulled out...twice! Ot sounds like your house will be self easily so you could just take a deep breath and go for it. How about the viewings to be all in one day? This idea has worked well for many people. Xx

We were first-time buyers a few years ago and knew nothing about the purchase of a house. We were not in a chain, yet it took six months to complete, but we did not complain.

Then, it was time for us to move on and get a bigger house for our then-bigger family. We had three buyers pulling out at different stages with our solicitor's fee loss, and when we had the fourth offer, we made ours for a house in the area we had not considered before with oversubscribed schools.

It worked out so well after all the stress, and we completed it in just under four months. The DC got the place in the nearest good school. We are so happy in our house now. I hope you will get rewarded in the same way as I also still remember the stress we went through

Yes but buyers wouldn’t bother if the seller left their house on the market and was willing to pull out at a moments notice if someone else places a higher bid!

You do realise that it's normal for a property to remain on RightMove after offer anyway, and that every potential sensible Buyer knows exactly what "under offer"/SSTC means and doesn't mean? - until Exchange these are meaningless terms. Most Buyers wouldn't even realise that a property was still being marketed.

Everything is on trust in the English conveyancing system. As I also explained in another reply, I would back off to give reasonable time for survey and solicitor to be instructed. The issue for the Vendor is that the Buyer can delay and prevaricate whilst continuing to look at other properties and potentially make other offers. You lose potential fallback Buyers if the first Buyer is just messing about.

100%.. I wouldn’t be spending a penny in surveys until it was taken off market.
I thought the law changed anyway and once an offer was accepted none others could be placed

Being left on a website as SSTC is very different to still saying for sale and excepting viewings / offers..

It’s probably the most stressful thing someone can do…
I’ve bought 2 houses and have been fortunate to not have a chain or any issues in both cases… but I can imagine the stress of people pulling out and chains collapsing…
I agree with DH.. one day at a time!
hope it sells again soon and it’s a cash buyer or something easy

My daughter lost a flat she wanted when the agent recommended someone else's offer. Both offers were the same, both were cash buyers.
After 6 weeks the seller found that the buyers were not cash buyers at all as they had not even received an offer on their flat let alone exchanged contracts. The seller pulled out and approached me, we bought the flat in record time (without involving the Agent) as she needed to move to get her son into a school at her new address.
My daughter lived there for six months with the flat still appearing on RightMove as SSTC.

This isn't the case. In fact an Estate Agent is obliged to pass on offers, often from people who had viewed the property before it went under offer. Obviously unless something was going very wrong a considerate seller shouldn't consider an offer - though many do, particularly if the price was not what they wanted.

I've just checked online and apparently 35% of house sales fell through before exchange in 2023, so if a buyer is dragging their feet in any way you can understand a seller considering their other options.

We had buyers pull out on the day we were due to exchange! We then found out through the Estate Agent that they actually moved into a new house two weeks later!

How on earth did that happen, they must have been planning to buy this other house while still progressing with the legal side of buying our house.

If it "sold" quickly the first time then it should do so again.

It's not like you were covering up some issue and hoping that it would not be revealed in the survey.

This happened to my daughter & son in law. They had to re-market their house but it re-sold very quickly and at a higher price. The people who they were buying from did wait so they got their house in the end. Uber stressful time though.

We were the awful potential buyers who pulled out of a sale about a week before completion because our relationship was in crisis (long story!)

When the house was offered on again a week or so later, our surveys and searches were actually given to the new purchasers. Not sure how, I think we had the same completely independent (!) mortgage broker or something like that. But the purchase process was expedited for the next buyers. This was about 10yrs ago, maybe more, but it could be worth exploring that now…?

The very best of luck with your open day, hope you can get everything back on track. Have a lovely day out with your children and remember that worrying about it won't make things any better.

It's madness of sellers to play stupid games like keeping the house on the market after accepting an offer. Most buyers absolutely would refuse to accept it and would not proceed until the house is removed. And the buyer has far more costs and commitment in the process anyway. Buyers pay survey fees, mortgage arrangement fees, the conveyancing costs more upfront because of the searches etc. The big costs for the seller (estate agent fees) don't come until completion. It is completely unreasonable for a seller to expect buyers to commit to all those costs while not even committing to taking the property off the market and most people simply wouldn't take the risk of doing business with someone like that.

It happened to us, it all worked out really well in the end. Sold for more money to dream buyers who were cash buyers and ready to proceed. It went through in 5 weeks in the end. The sweetest bit of all was the original buyers ended up regretting their decision to pull out and came back to ask if there was any chance... I got considerable satisfaction in saying no chance whatsoever.

I work on the basis that Estate agents don't exist for anyone's benefit than their own. There are some good ones, but in general the standard of service is very poor for the average property. The last time I sold a property I dealt with the Buyer direct. They asked me on the second viewing how to go about making the offer (they were a mature first time buyer) so I suggested we cut out the toing and froing and they just put it to me there and then. I think it was £5k shy of the asking price (which tbh was slightly ott), and in 2 minutes we agreed to split the difference. I think we even forgot to tell the EA for a few days and just let the solicitors get on with it.

TBH I was so annoyed with this agent that I would have refused to have anything to do with them anyway after I discovered that they'd lied to the seller. Fortunately I'd known the seller before her property came on the market and had already said that we were happy to step in if anything went wrong - she was desperate to move before the school place deadline.
I agree that most agents are simply useless for both their sellers and buyers, though we did use an independent one for our last sale who was really great, chasing everything up all the time and we felt he'd earned every penny of his fee. Not often that you meet one who give you the feeling that you can trust them though!