House selling stress- have we done the right thing?

[Pusstachio]

We’re selling our house. I actually put a thread up here when someone tried to gazump our buyers and we opted to stick with the original people. I deleted as it went onto featured threads and I panicked!

Anyway, post survey our buyers have found a classic survey finding and have advised their dad says it will cost £15k to resolve. We have had numerous verbal quotes of 2-5k and offered a £5k reduction. They have refused to accept these as they are not written and when they called one contractor he couldn’t remember talking to us- fair enough but why are we expected to accept their dad’s best guess? They reiterated they need £15k

We offered £8k to move things on and they still won’t budge. I do think we will get written quotes arriving slowly over the next few weeks but I’m unsure if this is actually helpful if they’re after a £15k reduction no matter what.

The whole thing has been rumbling on for nearly three weeks now and is immensely stressful, I’ve been in tears about it this morning.

How much hassle is it to pull out and re list, has anyone done this and managed to sell without dropping the price? I’m really not convinced they’re being genuine and I’m worried if we get past this there will just be something else crop up.

Well we need to do the work anyway- we are going to see if we can get it done early next week to wrap this up

Once it is done perhaps you could give a deadline that suits you for the exchange of contracts? If they continue to piss about and delay the date I would put the house back on the market by the end of Match latest to catch the Easter holiday buyers. Best of luck!

Success! Clearly they know it’s a desirable property. And now they know you won’t be messed around. Well done 👍

I must admit I’m also bracing myself for the next issue but given they offered both a compromise on the price OR doing the work they do seem committed and we’d want to work sorted regardless so if we can get someone in sharpish it’s not much odds either way. I do feel they’ve changed their tone enormously and the terms of engagement are closer now to dialogue than demand

The estate agents are supposed to work for you, but they don't always have your interests in mind.
I found that once there's an offer on your property, they'll push you to accept this offer even if it's lower than you want. They just want a successful sale to go through rather than put more time into viewings etc.
10k off the sale price only means £100 less comission for them.

The other issue is having the agent sitting in between both parties. It is so easy for the buyer to lay down the law, and then the seller to lay down their own version of the law if they have an agent to go through. If the two parties were communicating directly, it would probably be much easier. People are far less brave when they are not communicating through a third party.