Buyer wants £8k off parents' London flat just before exchange

[LondonSeller]

Parents flat for sale as they passed away in london - Took 18 months to get probate sorted out but finally got it - Property listed with agents and it is in dated ocndition and needs work - Also has a 70 year lease. EA told us not an easy market

After five weeks advertising price agreed at 500K which was a bit lower then we had hope for but EA told us buyer is known to them and this would be very quick sale

Was meant to exchange on Friday and EA has come back and said buyer is ready to exchange, has sent deposit monies to his solicitors but wants a reduction of 8K. EA has said this is less than a 2% drop so not massive and believes we wont get better if we reject the offer

Buyer is cash purchaser investor so quite rare and I worry that if I dont accept property will be stuck for months for anothr cash buyer who might offer lower.

I live in Scotland and the flat is in London so I am miles away - Paid to have the place emptied and solicitor fees so am already down. By contrast buyer has not paid anything other than a few hundred for solicitor fees - No mortgage, no survey fees nothing

Whats the best angle here - Call buyers bluff and risk losing the sale or take the money and run. Feel quite cross as this money was going to be used for real stuff and to clear debts

How do you know this exactly - Stuff still selling just people are being very picky and lease problems ex council busy roads and buyers have other options

Funnily enough a large house lived in by an elderly person came on the market recently where I live. Although it said in need of refurbishment, there didn’t seem to be to be much serious wrong with it. The roof and windows looked fine. The price was ridiculously cheap and within 48 hours, there was a sign up saying g SOLD with subject to con in teeny letters. There seems something fishy to me about that. Houses just don’t go that quickly where we live and the price seemed far too cheap.
So, I get where you coming from on that.

I’d say and find a new estate agent to be honest. Sounds like the Estate Agent is working in the interests of their investor ‘friend’ & the repeat business over your property. Did you get valuations from other agents

Dirty trick and this is where you need an experienced property manager who can negotiate for you. We had similar buyers demanded a 15% discount on a commercial property we had been trying to get rid of for ages. The guy we used told us not to react and he eventually negotiated 7% reduction plus exchange and complete on the same day and monies to be deposited in account. It was literally at the 11th hour and this guy was fantastic. Good luck

Others have already suggested this but I’d say no and add the £8k on top of what you want. Yes it’s stressful, but if they really do have an offer on the full freehold they need you to agree to sell to get that. And with the sums involved they’d be daft to split hairs over a few thousand. Others are saying for you to take the hit, but it’s equally on them to take it.

The worse they can say is no. The best is they’ll agree. Hold your nerve.

Wow, I commented a day or so ago and returned to a few more hundred messages…trying to catch up on what I missed!

Long story short - OP decided to take the hit as long as exchange takes place tomorrow. Subsequent posters who haven’t RTFT continue to urge her not to.

Well, no, the biggest twist was that OP revealed that (a) the cheeky buyer was the freeholder who loved upstairs and (b) someone posted a link which showed that the entire house was already on the market, using the same photos as for OP’s listing.

Little studio here with separate kitchen, nice long lease and service charges not too bad.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/167615969#/?channel=RES_BUY

Please take the money and then when the sale goes through revel in the relief of not having to go through the agony of finding another buyer in a falling market.

This is common when you know that the seller doesn’t have many alternatives immediately. So up to you if you are willing to missed a buyer. We did the same and got £10k reduction just before buying 🥳

By the time the lease issue is resolved enough time will have elapsed. Leases can take several months and the longest agent contract I am aware of is 24 weeks.

It may be common but it’s still a dirty trick.

Nothing dirty about it! It’s part of a negotiation process and both sides are aware that this can happen

WHat percentage was this of the sale - 10K off a 300K property is different to 10K of a 1Million house - And what year was this - Market is bad

You agree a price and the sale proceeds. Any further reduction would be negotiated on the basis of the survey report. Jeopardising the whole transaction all the way down the chain, at the eleventh hour because you think the seller has little option but to accommodate you, is unconscionable.

Immoral is the word I’d use. I hope karma bites people doing this and getting away with it on the arse.

@abbynabby23 you’re doing a celebratory emoji at the fact you ripped someone off for £10k? It’s not part of the ‘negotiation process’ to decide you have someone over a barrel so you can screw them out of money at the last minute. I hope the same is done to you when you sell.

I was in your position OP with my father's flat. Probate, a shortish time on the lease and we were 100+ miles away.

I grabbed the first offer I could get.

Short lease flats in London are not that easy to sell.

Take it, it's a probate house so it's not like it's yours that you are selling to move on. You just really want rid

Of course! I guess you’ve never bought or sold a house before. The seller always tries to maximise their profit, while the buyer tries to minimise the price they pay. I’m not sure what you find so strange about that.

I’ve bought and sold several houses in the last ten years. I’ve had this done to me once, said no and meant it. The buyer kept reducing their demand bit by bit until I told the EA that if the contracts weren’t exchanged on time with no further reduction I would pull out of the sale myself. The buyer backed off and the sale proceeded. The normal negotiating process takes place at the start when the sale is agreed. Any further reductions are negotiated as a result of issues flagged up on the survey. It’s not part of the normal negotiating process to wait until exchange and then threaten to derail every sale in the chain if you don’t get what you want. And doing it because you know you’re putting the seller is in a difficult position if they refuse isn’t something to be proud of. The sooner we reform property sales in England and Wales to something similar to that in Scotland, the better.

They’re selling it to repay debt and have already reduced by £75k.

The short lease point is interesting here, surely, if the buyer is the freeholder? If they're buying OP's flat and then selling the whole property, the lease surely vanishes and it's a moot point how long it has left anyway.

And therefore, maybe OP shouldn't have dropped more money from the list price for that fact that it's a short lease (I think I remember that from early on, no?), as the freeholder doesn't benefit from the lease being long or short.

Things happen. We once made an offer on a property, completed the surveys, and were progressing with the purchase when, at the last minute, we found another property we preferred and pulled out. The seller even offered to reduce the price, but it didn’t matter because we liked the other property more.

On the flip side, we were selling our own property and were close to exchanging contracts when we decided to keep it for personal reasons.

Until contracts are exchanged, neither side is committed. Life happens, circumstances change, and sometimes people simply make different decisions.