The all new buyers/sellers waiting room (continued x4) thread!

[TheEnglishSystemSucks]

As @fromtheshires is in their new abode, and we've almost filled up the last thread - hope people don't mind me starting a new one.

My situation: waiting on survey reports before enquires/searches can start - so expect i'll be here for all 40 pages.

Hope exchanges and completions come quickly for all and no-one has the christmas 'will we won't we'.

Old thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/property/5105250-the-all-new-buyerssellers-waiting-room-continued-x3-thread?page=40

Manager of EA branch now getting involved with our ongoing out purchase. The person we are buying from is nuts, demanding the reports from the surveys we have paid for because it's his house and threatening legal action against our surveyor because he doesn't agree with the findings. I think it's really unlikely we will be able to buy it now, both the surveyor and the mortgage valued have down valued the house significantly (30k and 40k) and it needs roof sorting etc. Vendor says everyone is out for themselves and trying to make a quick buck, i dont think he is going to enter sensible negotiations with us.

At this point I can't even remember why we want to move 😬....

Ugh @Cheeseandcrackers40 that sounds really stressful. I think if it were me I'd probably let him have a copy of the survey, because maybe he thinks you're lying? If he sees it's genuine even if he's pissed off he'll realise whatever came up on that survey will likely come up on the surveys of anyone else who might try and buy it in the future? Be more likely to agree to renegotiation then?
I'm a bit concerned about what the survey on our house is going to say about our roof tbh. It's never leaked or anything but it definitely looks pretty old. If it came back and said it needed urgent replacement (hopefully that won't happen!!) we'd definitely negotiate if our buyers still wanted to go ahead. Why would we not? The same would just come up again and again.

I'm sure I've read (perhaps on another property forum?) about older vendors calling into their estate agents so somebody can help them with the forms. Having just myself filled out all this paperwork and fossicked around for many hours to locate all the required details and enclosures I can see that it might really be a major stumbling block for some people. Couldn't the EA whose commission is at stake here be persuaded to make an appointment with the vendor to help them do it all?

We have let him see the initial survey... this is when he called the surveyor threatening legal action... We now have another survey being carried out for damp and timber. It's just all a bit mental. He's been really strange from the off and just really pissed off about it tbh! Husband phoned the EA today and told them that we are pissed off and will walk away if he doesn't enter sensible negotiations with us...

I'd try not to worry too much about your survey if you aren't aware of any particular issues, likely anything that does come up will be fairly easily rectified and sounds like you are reasonable and willing to negotiate. Our vendor has been a total nightmare from the off but we have still persisted because we want to buy the house... if your buyers want to buy and you are reasonable the survey is unlikely to put them off unless the house is a total money pit.

Can I join please. On the market 5 weeks, 3 viewings in the first week and nothing since. We reduced the price yesterday and today found out both the houses we had our eye on have accepted offers. Urghh, not enjoying this already and we're only just at the beginning

You'd think so wouldn't you! I think the EA have basically washed their hands of the vendor. It took them 10 week to realised they hadn't had any of their emails after they'd accepted the offer so I guess it's not their main priority (eye roll).

Their commission isn't a small sum either, you'd think they would take a little interest. I feel really sorry for the vendor but they didn't really help themselves when they chose an online only solicitor whilst being computer illiterate!

We are officially on the market. Managed to reduce the fee a bit too.

Hello all! I posted a little way back saying we'd lost our buyer. They decided they didn't want to buy a Victorian house anymore and we were a few weeks away from exchange...

For those who have lost their buyers and found a new one - how long did it take? I'm worried it's going to take a little while now as our Rightmove listing has now moved considerably down the list... and worried we'll lose out on those who search for houses listed in the last 24 hours.

Spoke to vendors EA today. She tells me that the vendors forgot their house was a leasehold and not a freehold. It is one of those peppercorn ground rent type leaseholds but I’m more just amazed at how they possibly could have forgotten the tenure of their house when listing it. They’re taking the piss surely?? It’s truly one thing after another with this house.

Vendor sounds nuts.
Would definitely walk without large reduction, as you will have the inconvenience of needing to have it done for health reasons as well.

@FujiWisteria Sorry you lost your buyer. I agree that houses that come back on the market get lost on rightmove - I only found out that a property I had liked was available again because I was bored and scrolled through all 70 properties in my preferred area. You could reduce the price by £100 to bring the listing back to the top.

Absolutely taking the piss. Out ground rent is £2 a year. The solicitors who collect it only ask us to pay it when the balance is over £10 or it costs more in administration than they collect. This means we have only ever paid it twice. I still haven't managed to forget we are leasehold though.

Agree, they have lied to you. Which makes me wonder what else they’ll have lied about…

And @Cheeseandcrackers40 your vendor is a nutcase - honestly walk away from this one. We walked away from a house with a loopy vendor and honestly our next (successful) purchase was just a breeze in comparison, vendor was just lovely and all done and dusted in 10 weeks.

What a bunch of difficult people. Why can't everyone just treat others as they'd want to be treated?

I heard yesterday that my vendors have had their offer accepted so as long as everything goes as we would like, the house I have loved since the day I saw it, well tbh minutes after I went in, and after viewing three others afterwards as felt it was too small, will be mine.

@FujiWisteria our buyers pulled out in the middle of June and it took 3 price reductions over the entire period to get our current buyers at the end of July. The market has changed considerably where we live in the West Midlands and is definitely a buyers market now.

Joining as we are selling.
I've moved twice but that last time was horrendous so I've blocked it all out.
We are using a broker and looking at mortgage offers- I will ask them this- but can we get a mortgage deal before we put an offer in somewhere as dependant on what mortgage rate we can get depends how far we will push ourselves.

Also out of interest, what mortgage rates are people getting at the moment?

We just got 4.13%

We got 4.03% or something like that on ours.

My understanding was your mortgage offer can only be given once the valuation on the property is done. I think only agreement in principle can be done without the property info.

Sorry to hear this happened to you, it happened to us twice. The first time, we told the agents we needed it sold again to keep the chain together. The rest of the chain gave us 2 weeks to get under offer again so the agents arranged an open day and they got 12 buyers though the door by marketing to people who they knew were looking for a property like ours. We said we didn’t want time wasters. The open day generated 3 decent offers. If you’re with a decent agent with a large reach/group of branches, perhaps you could say that you need it under offer again asap and ask them what they can do to achieve that. Otherwise, if you’re out of your 12 week contract period with them, you could switch agents but that might look weird to people who stalk Right Move.

Our buyer pulled out on the 10th June (11 days before our agreed completion date), just as we were about to exchange.

We've 3 couples interested:

1. Has sold a business and put in an offer £200k lower than asking price, is still interested but won't up offer (tbh I think he's enjoying sitting in pub gardens spending his new found money).
2. Lives locally, initially put in offer £175k under asking price (as he was hoping to be able to not have to sell his house), came back with an offer £100k less, has now put his house on the market (it's lovely and I'm hoping it'll sell quickly - they had viewers this weekend).
3. Also selling a business, he likes our house, she preferred another - they are in debate, no offer, but our agent thinks they are window shopping a bit till they have money in the bank.

I just want to move!

@startingoveragainagain - did your buyer incur fees as you’d already exchanged? Sounds like that would have been a hefty loss so amazed they pulled out so late. I think you’ve mentioned this before but what was their reasoning?

That’s so frustrating for you @startingoveragainagain Can you ask your agents to filter out the people who are not immediately proceedable? The people who’ve made offers way below asking price… could the agent get back to them and let them know you won’t accept less than £x?

£200k under asking price? Unless your property is a £5mln one that's crazy!
What % off asking s that?

We hadn't exchanged, but we'd agreed a completion date. I think the reason they gave probably wasn't the reason, the man wanted to exchange on the Friday but my solicitor wasn't quite ready, she said the completion date was fine, but as she was a junior solicitor needed her senior to sign it off and couldn't get into their diary till the Monday, he said if we can't do it today I'm pulling out - and that's what he did. On the Tuesday he called my estate agent and said he'd viewed somewhere on the Monday and was proceeding with that.

@GoldieLookingBoots the two selling businesses are theoretically proceedable and the one up the road said that they were, as they have quite a few rentals etc that they could remortgage. The agent said we were taking asking price or very close to, we've already dropped £200k (@0hshutupshirley yes it's an expensive house (not £5m though!), as we want a quick sale as my husband and I are divorcing and H is fairly ill in health and will prob give up work when we sell, so I think the cheeky offers are because they think we are V desperate.

I've been following for a while and would love to join to vent my frustration! This week were were ready to discuss exchanging and completion dates and our vendor pulled the sale😡

Thankfully our buyers are willing to wait while we begin the house viewing search yet again. We have viewed 1 house that we aren't going for and have 2 more on Tuesday. I hope one of them wows us as the listings online are underwhelming.