Buyer has cold feet

[FettleOfKish]

Handhold please, because I can’t talk about it in real life without crying. We’re due to move next Friday from the tiny one bedroom 3rd floor flat we’re currently in with our toddler to a two bedroom garden apartment and I had a call from the EA earlier to tell us our buyer has cold feet because our building has a 20 year maintenance plan in place.

I knew deep down that it wouldn’t all go smoothly but I’ve let myself get excited the last week or so when it’s been so close and I’m just absolutely heartbroken

Did you ask your EA to clarify what this means.

They can’t leave you wandering and stressing all weekend

Thinking about u all OP. Hope things get resolved.

Long story short our building has been under maintained for decades and back in February the new management company got a surveyor in to draw up a 20 year ideal plan to get everything up to scratch.

Now the buyer’s lawyers have got hold of the long term plan he’s freaked out at suggested maintenance figures of £150k / £200k per year for the building (they’ll never actually spend that much per year, none of the owners can afford it).

We’ve gone back to the EA explaining that it’s a suggestion, absolutely not a schedule (this years suggested figure for the building was £120k which has been brought down to £53k and of course we’re paying all of our apartment’s share of that).

We’ve also now offered to put a further £5k in a retainer for 3 years to go towards any maintenance listed on the plan that is completed in that timeframe.

I’m just in bits at the thought of being stuck here and future buyers having the same issue, not to mention losing the place we are buying which we love.

We were supposed to have moved before DS arrived but the cursed hellhole building suffered serious storm damage and we had to move out for a year while it was sorted.

Im so sorry, it’s really stressful, but I must say this would make me run a mile too and no assurances from the owners would make any difference because of course, they would say that.

I agree

This is a horrible situation to be in OP

Can you get clarification today from the EA whether they are actually going to pull out

How many flats is the suggested £200k maintenance fee per year meant to be split by? As stressful and as gutted as I am for you, no buyer in their right mind would touch this with a bargepole now. You and the other residents need to get the management company to draw up a firm plan with agreed costs so that future buyers know exactly what they are letting themselves in for and you can adjust the price accordingly.

Any way you can rent the flat out and move?

@WonderingWanda 33 apartments. All different sizes so percentage differs based on square footage. Ours is one of the smallest, about 3% liability.

The EA has called and the buyer is receptive to our offer but wants to speak to his lawyer again Monday. I don’t know how I’ll get through the weekend. I was fairly stoic through the storm damage and being technically homeless when I was pregnant and it feels like the floodgates that were holding all the stress back have been flung open and I’m absolutely in bits.

Honestly I’m sorry you are going through this but I wouldn’t buy either with the 20 yrs plan in place

Honestly I don’t blame the buyer at all but it feels like we’re stuck in a nightmare. After the storm we moved back into a completely renovated flat with high hopes that it would be easy to sell. Now this. We could completely bottom ourselves out and offer £10k towards future maintenance (or £10k off the asking price) which would mean they’re covered for almost £400k of maintenance work to be done before it costs them anything (we’ve already paid £2k towards it) Doesn’t mean they’ll agree though. Gutted.

A good point that your buyer hasn't run away already. :) Maybe speak to your EA and ask if they know what about your flat the buyer likes and find if there is a way of emphasising those points. I'm sure the EA will stress your need to get somewhere that suits your child is your big need, not that there is anything wrong with your flat.
I know it sounds odd from strangers but I really do hope you sell and move to your new place. Don't down-sell your flat totally, the buyer must like it! :)

Up to £200k of maintenance every year for the next 20 years, which the buyer could be liable to pay 3% of? So £6k per year, £120k in total? Sorry OP, but the buyer is right to be nervous.

No no no, some years have nothing slated at all, but some have big jobs (the lift will need replacing at some point for example). It’s a surveyors ‘ideal world, money no object’ suggestion. In the real world though it’s all to be moved around based on money and priority or scrapped if it’s not essential work (An estimated £120k for exterior decoration including scaffolding has already had a firm no from the owners, at least until everything essential is done first).

Moving house is so stressful - big handhold from me. I really hope you can resolve it. TBH I’d offer the £10k potentially because if they go for it then it’s a way out - posters above whilst not particularly helping you feel less stressed have at least shown you that running for the hills would be a good idea.

I have had an idea that is a complete wildcard, but if it does fall through we’ll ask the owners of the place we’re buying if we can rent it from them until we find another buyer. It already was rented, they’re moving out this weekend. It would absolutely cripple us paying both rent and our existing mortgage but if they went for it and they’re fair with rent we could just about scrape it. It would at least mean they don’t have to re-list it or risk it being sat empty. Hopefully once we could get our managing agency to get their shit together (and we’d re-list ours with them to sharpen their minds, they’re also an estate agency) and it’s vacant possession we’d find another buyer.

Sorry if this sounds like the deranged ramblings of a desperate Woman but that’s how I feel at the moment 😞

I know how you feel. It took us almost 12 months of back and forth with solicitors and our buyer before we eventually exchanged on our flat and we could then move into our house. We had problems with the leasehold that we had to pay to sort out, our buyer threatened to pull out multiple times, I did not sleep properly for about 6 months and honestly came very close to totally loosing the plot multiple times. If we had been in a house we would have pulled out of the sale ourselves but we had to move as we had totally outgrown the flat. No advice but I have everything crossed for you

Can you challenge the poor management prior? It’s such a hard position to be in but if you rent your new home and then can’t sell your old one it will be more difficult for you. I’m sorry you’re in this position, do you think you’d be better off staying and sorting the issue before selling and then buy somewhere when you’re in less of a tricky chain? It’s so hard when you’ve found a dream home but another one really will come up and it might be even better. We’ve bought and moved a few times and each time we’ve put an offer in somewhere and it’s not gone through and we’ve gone on to find homes we’ve loved even more. That’s happened twice now and I’ve been so glad as it’s worked out better for us. I hope you get sorted soon x

@TheThreeStingrays I would love to challenge the prior management but she was a one-woman band and if not passed away already she was seriously ill when we moved to the new company. The longer-term older residents in the building are up in arms that ‘the service charges never went up with Yvonne’. Well we might not be in this position if they bloody had!! Before the storm damage we joked that the predicted storm could save us £250k for a new roof, wasn’t so funny after it actually happened (but the insurance did pay out in full, thank god).

As it stands 16 month DS is in a travel cot at the end of our bed because we don’t have space for a full size one. If we have to stay here we’ll need to convert the lounge to a bedroom for us so he can have his own, which will leave no room at all for him to move around and play 😞

Hi @FettleOfKish we had a buyer pull out at last minute when selling our one bedroom apartment (due to service charges that they'd known about since before they offered BELOW market value on it), we lost our house we were buying (cost us £2K).

Then we could not find another buyer (our area was saturated with lovely new apartments), we had a baby, and were desperate to move, so we ended up letting out our apartment. Originally for 5 years, but then we ended up keeping it and it'll help us in retirement. It's grown a lot in value, so I'm glad we held onto it. We've also paid it off!

Please look into the option of letting out your existing flat, even for a short-term plan of say 5 years. I know a really good mortgage broker, if you want to PM me for their details. This is what I'd do in your shoes, so you don't lose the home you're buying.

Thanks @ReadingSoManyThreads. An option for us may be converting our mortgage to a BTL but we wouldn’t be able to buy ourselves without selling it, so it’s an option to remain on the ladder but we’d still have to rent in the meantime.

This would put me off more than £6k a year of maintenance cost. I would not move into a building that didn’t have a funded maintenance plan, and where there isn’t sufficient sinking reserves (or leaseholder wealth) to cover inevitable maintenance.

Plus the pain of living in a building site for however long. Once scaffolding goes up on the outside you have no control over when it comes down and , if it blocks the light for 6 months, we'll thats just tough. If the lift is replaced it'll be out of action for weeks and that's only if they don't find that the shaft is collapsing and then there's no lift for months and months. I'd run a mile I'm afraid. Flats are tricky at the best of times. Your building isn't enjoying the best of times

So stressful for you @FettleOfKishTry and look into Let to buy mortgage. We sold our flat last year and our buyer used Let to buy mortgage as their buyer pulled out at the last minute. I didn’t even know such mortgage existed. I have put a link below to some info on it.

Also, we lived in a 1 bedroom flat with our LG until she was 3. It was a squeeze but we managed. She was with us in the bedroom until we moved.

good luck with everything, hope it works out

https://hoa.org.uk/advice/guides-for-homeowners/i-am-selling/let-buy-mortgages-explained/