Just how binding are conclusion of missives?

[KievLoverTwo]

Hi folks. We are buying an English house and the English sellers are buying a Scottish one.

Alarm bells are ringing for various reasons and they have already broken my trust in them. Ofc I can google this but it’s far better to come to those with real life experience.

Seller tells me missives have concluded and they are now financially committed. Date of entry is three or four weeks away.

The internet tells me two things:

A) It is very serious to pull out after missives and a court can force you to buy it anyway; OR

B) in practise, it is almost unheard of for a buyer to pull out at this stage, but if you did, the seller would expect you to pay for the cost of re-marketing the property, any difference between your offer and the offer they subsequently accept and the costs of any alternative finance the seller has to take out to fund a purchase they committed to on the strength of the sale of their house to you.

(source of 2nd one: https://hastingslegal.co.uk/renege-on-purchase/)

Having to pay for a rightmove or similar advert is far less binding than having to buy it even if you get cold feet. So what are your experiences, please?

What's your worry specifically? That the people you are buying from decide not to move?

Ask yourself what's the worst case scenario you need to find something else to move into instead? How likely is that to happen? As most people have said here nobody really ever pulls out after missives are concluded, it's incredibly rare.

This is all a bit confusing but maybe I just don't understand. Do you know these people, it sounds like you have a lot of opinions about them if it was only a transactional relationship?

Moving from England to Scotland is incredibly complex. We were in a similar position to your sellers, we didn't need the sale in England to proceed with the purchase in Scotland, but we were trying to align the the two as closely as possible to ensure we didn't need a rental property to bridge any gap and if necessary, an airbnb would cover us for a couple of weeks.

Our English buyers were inexperienced first time buyers and made the process 100 times worse by messing up bits of their mortgage paperwork, slowing progress by asking loads of questions and not really being very educated on how to buy a house/how chains worked. It got to the point where just to streamline everything that was going on we considered ditching them, renting out the English property for a bit and selling in slower time.

I get it is stressful, but the best thing you can do right now, is your homework about the nexts steps in the process, be 100% on it with your paperwork and responsive to requests from your solicitor. The sellers will appreciate it, especially if missives are complete as the next stage for them will be booking movers. This is much more complicated if you are going from England to Scotland as usually can't be done in a day, so needs to be booked in advance. (Same could apply for you in going a distance too!) If movers aren't available you can't complete.

Our solicitor concluded the missives on the house we were selling quickly. The buyers didn't get a mortgage and had to pay a penalty that ended up nearly £1000 as the only told us the day we moved out. They eventually got one and it was a relief to finally hand the house over.

We had buyers who paid 4 days late. We were fortunate in that we had already moved but were bridging in a big way. The buyers had to pay interest on the whole sum they were due for those 4 days at a pre agreed rate which would have added up very quickly if they had been more than 4 days. Even if the house in question here was remarketed in a popular area it would likely take months before the new buyer paid and there would be interest accruing for the buyer who pulled out.

It’s almost unheard of now to conclude missives until everyone has their mortgage offer
The system here has become much more like the English system

It does seem astonishing.

In our case the delay was in our buyer moving funds from overseas.