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

It’s frustrating, but I would definitely take it. You need a cash buyer in a difficult market… if you reject the offer then it could very probably take a long time to sell and end up reduced anyway! They also didn’t do a survey, another purchaser might do and could well find issues that would reduce the price anyway.

I moved house last week, and going through the house sale in this market was bumpy. Sorry!

You can put it back on the market and wait for a new buyer or you could have £500k in the bank in a few weeks generating interest which could recover you loss quickly depending on where you invest it.

Invested properly you’ll
make that £8k back easily

Would advise you to take it. The lease is short and the price of flats is dropping fast in some parts of London.

The lease extension will cost 35K plus 6K in surveor and legal costs - But this was all priced in on the sticker price of 575K - Other flats in street selling for 675 in better condition and with long lease

I just dont have the funds to extend the lease myself nor the headspace

The buyer will pay
500K to buy
42K on lease
20K to improve flat

Totalling 562 and its worth 675 - So more than 100K in profit - And they still want another 8K

I’d take this and run!

you could probably make up the difference in interest relatively quickly.

Yes, take the money.

We had this with my MIL’s house. Big house, needed a lot of work as there hadn’t been much done since the 1950’s. We had a very quick offer from a developer known to the estate agent. The family sold for £775k. Developed in 8 months and put back in the market for £1.2 million. Unfortunately none of us were in a position to buy it at the original price and develop it ourselves.

Not necessarily - the EA will get their commission. However EAs build up long term relationships with developers and why not? It supports the seller.

I would take it definitely. It will take you at least another 6 months to find another buyer and complete, if you even do, so you have lost at least that in interest if you don't accept.

I would expect the EA is complicit in some way. Not nice behaviour. Perhaps try going back and offer 4K off but I expect the purchaser will face you off. How much would it cost you to extend the lease and where is the flat?

I think you may have to accept the offer, bear in mind if you don’t sell within a certain time after probate the local authorities will be after full council tax, then double and in Scotland perhaps triple if they class it as a second or unoccupied home.

Like I took 75K off the price because of the lease

List price means nothing! Property is not fixed price drcided by you or ea...it is what buyer is prepared to pay.
You found a buyer
Take them or you have empty flat more expenses for another six months

That type of cheeky fuckery should be against the law.

That is ridiculous. It will take them months to find another buyer and they would easily lose more than that in bank interest.

So why don’t you extend the lease and do up the flat yourself?

sorry you said no funds or headspace

dont mean to be patronising but if you don’t want to or can’t do the work and need someone else to, you will get less for it. You’re not fighting off buyers so I think you’d be cutting your nose ofd to spite your face if you hold out.

It’s not agreed an offer was made and accepted.

The other way of looking at this is your family are going to be making a substantial profit out of this, because your dad evidently owned it a long time thus bought when it was much cheaper, and yet you still want another 8k.

As a pp said, by all means seethe over it, but it's better to be dispassionate about these things. If you have genuine, evidence based reasons why you think this is a bad deal then maybe it'd be worth hanging on, notwithstanding what you've posted doesn't make it sound that way. But the putative buyers don't have any reason to think you're more deserving of unearned cash than they are, and why would they? It's business, so try your best to approach it that way.

It’s not worth £675k.

It would be worth that, if it was in better condition and the lease was longer. It’s not worth anywhere near that much because it doesn’t have that.

But you didn't get any offers at the sticker price, so that is irrelevant.

its a bit cheeky, but to get it done and closure on your parents estate I’d probably accept

A private sale to a developer is always going to end up with a lower price. The estate agent probably is getting a cut too for making sure his mate got the deal. It's all so fucking dodgy. What is the explanation for wanting an £8k drop? If something new has come to light then consider it but if it's just negotiating tactics then say no. They will have spent money on the property already too and won't want to lose such a good deal either.

I think we need more info about the flat.
I live in a house divided into 2 flats and we share the freehold.
We extended the lease for a couple of thousand.

It's presumably also costing you something to maintain the property - cleaning, council tax etc? We are currently paying about £400 a month for MILs property including a gardener which I appreciate is an expense you don't have, and a weekly cleaner for one hour a week as the insurance is invalid if we don't have someone go and check on the property weekly - we are too far away to do it ourselves.

Just take the offer and be grateful that you'll have a substantial windfall to invest or spend.

I wouldn’t because I’m stubborn and fucking hate dishonesty like this. I’m really pissed off for you

OP, having recently gone through the stress of selling a flat in the current market (not London but in a similarly priced area and also with an aspect that made it less attractive to buyers, a very lengthy large building project about to start next door) I would honestly snap their hand off, with condition that they complete same day.

Who knows how long it would take to find another buyer, and when you do that may not be straightforward either. We ultimately sold for slightly less than I’d paid for it 6 years earlier but were just so grateful to be shot of it.