help

sweetcake Estate Agents are working for the people selling houses, not for those buying them

I have never had a problem with an estate agent selling a house for me, and I have been involved in the selling of 10 or more houses. I have had problems when buying houses.

I assume you have intimate knowledge of how solicitors run their offices and what their costs are to make the comment about solicitors.

When I made my home move in 2019 I had the most wonderful lady in the Estate Agents office. Without her total help and support, I would never have made that move. I cannot praise her enough. She was just an employee there, not sure if she receives anything like commission on the sale, but all I know is that she was the one on whose shoulder I actually cried when the sale fell through just days before contract exchanging. She was the one who persuaded me to give her a chance to re-market - and then got a sale within four days at a higher price. She was the one, who in those final days spent nearly a whole day trying tor each one of those on-line conveyancing companies because it was them holding up our small chain of three. And it was she who kept me informed on moving day as to how the tranferrence of the monies were proceeding. A phone call from her telling me the keys to my new property were now ready to be collected came in two and half hours before the same one from my Solicitors.

The solicitors, on the other hand, were proficient at doing all the legal stuff, BUT did seem to spend an awful lot of time t trying to warn me off my wish to purchase this flat for various reasons, although he did frankly explain that he was very intent on covering his own back against any future complaints, etc.

It's clear that your solicitor foresaw problems with your flat Fran. They may not become clear to you until you try to sell. It's not untypical to find that a lease is defective, the length of time remaining on the lease is unacceptably short, or that the service charge accounts show problems; maybe work needed and no sinking fund. Leasehold purchases are notorious for throwing up problems that a cash buyer might decide to take a view on but a mortgage lender wouldn't accept. Solicitors obviously don't want negligence claims and he will have made careful record of the advice he gave you. I'm afraid sometimes this has to be done because clients are so emotionally bound up with the property they want to buy that their ears are deaf to practical problems that the solicitor points out. I'm not suggesting that your flat has fundamental problems or that you fall into this category of buyer, but people are very quick to try to blame someone if they find they've bought the proverbial pup.
Have you considered that the estate agent told you when your sellers had dropped the keys off, but the solicitor only contacted you when the money had gone through?

It sounds like more than you have been told. If the seller is reducing the price the bank also take this into account and don't just 'forget' the problem, this is because the damp problem in their eyes will affect the fabric of the building, and in turn this affects the price and scalability of the house. Therefore it can't just be a bit of damp as you may believe. Ask the person buying what is stopping her getting it fixed, maybe those in the chain could contribute to the cost? Or loan her tge money, of course with a legal document to cover you for this.

I don’t think she wants the disruption or else she would have had it done she can afford it and her husband’s a builder she’s always going away on holiday maybe every month it’s more than likely we will put it back for sale next week

GSmum - actually the reason my solicitor tried to warn me off is due to the fact that he (or whoever he had delegated to do so) had not read some paperwork correctly. Fortunately, one of my paralegal trained children DID read all this through and we were able to to point out to him that he was incorrect in what he was saying. Never did apologise - but did withdraw his request for a waiver letter from me.

No, there is nothing wrong with the lease, nor the service agreement, etc. etc. As I am now secretary to our self-managed management committee I am the person responsible for dealing with solicitors when flats are sold, so I do know that when the time comes for this flat to be sold, it will all go through without any problems.

As for the time I was contacted - the Estate Agent kept me informed as the monies were actually transferred - and informed me when that had happened for my flat so that keys could be collected. One of my AC children had authorisation to collect these and when she went into local EA, when I telephoned her, they had it all confirmed that monies had gone through.

My own Solicitor had - again - delegated this job to someone else in his office, so although the monies all cleared by 1.30 pm that person never got round to telephoning me until well after 4 pm.

I do not make these complaints lightly - I can only repeat that my Estate Agent was really great and my solicitor left a lot to be desired.

Sorry to hear the solicitor wasn’t great. This level of delegation is very unsatisfactory and results from fees being driven down. My firm charged proper (i.e. by no means competitive) fees so as to be able to give good personal service to those willing to pay for it.

Depending on where you live, some councils are buying affordable housing. Your council might have a department within housing called ' affordable housing team'. A friend of brothers wanted £485k for his property and the council came round to value (not concerned with condition at all) and gave him £505k. Quick completion as they don't do environment or local searches (they know all that). Admittedly this particular team was in greater London but councils can't build quick enough so are buying direct! Worth enquiring?

GR206

Depending on where you live, some councils are buying affordable housing. Your council might have a department within housing called ' affordable housing team'. A friend of brothers wanted £485k for his property and the council came round to value (not concerned with condition at all) and gave him £505k. Quick completion as they don't do environment or local searches (they know all that). Admittedly this particular team was in greater London but councils can't build quick enough so are buying direct! Worth enquiring?

i have never heard of that i'll look into it thank you

Mrsgranny

We have experience of trying to sell our property with a house buying company. Please don’t touch them with a barge pole! They immediately gave us a lower offer than market value. This of course was to be expected we knew and as our property was difficult to sell we agreed. Then they surveyed our house and dropped the price by a further £12000. Because of the difficulties we decided to take the hit and again agreed. Next step was they kept saying that our solicitors were delaying things by not providing info they’d asked for. When we complained to our solicitors they told us they were providing the necessary info but the buyers solicitors just kept asking for the same thing. Our solicitor started to blind copy us into anything he sent them. Next time they said our solicitors were dragging their feet we were able to point out that we had been copied into all correspondence and what they were saying was untrue. Turns out this was their delaying tactics to induce stress and anxiety. When we tried to move things along because the vendors of the house we were buying needed to get things moving too. The house buying company asked us what date we wanted to complete, we choose a date and all parties agreed. The day before completion date the house buying company contacted us to say that as the process had now taken over 12 weeks (yes, because they caused the delays on purpose) and the market had changed, they would normally have to do another survey and they could no longer offer us the agreed price. It was all rubbish the market was in fact the most buoyant ever, houses in my area were flying out the door. They’re idea of being helpful was that they could still go ahead but would drop the price by £48000! I cannot tell you the stress and embarrassment we felt at the situation we had now found ourselves in, we would have to tell the vendors of the house we were buying, our friends, our family. I was in bits, I’d spent so long boxing everything up, making plans etc. I had the vendors of the house we were buying to consider and at the back of my mind was that my house was difficult to sell, this was my only chance. My husband and I spent all night going over everything and what we should do, arguing, crying. Realising that they were now trying to do us out of about £80000. My husband said he couldn’t live with himself if he let them steal our life savings, which was basically what they were doing (and finally we both came to our senses and realised what was happening. Now we class ourselves as educated, rational, sensible people these people were preying on our emotional and stressful situation. The next day when they rang my husband for a decision he told them in no uncertain terms what they could do with their offers and we felt a weight lifted. These people prey on people when at their most vulnerable - I dread to think of those in desperate situations or or their own that they have trampled along the way. Please don’t ever get sucked in by them. To end on a good note we decided to use some of our savings to improve rather than move and we have both fell in love with the home we once fell out of love with, we are now happy here and class ourselves as the lucky ones. Apologies for the long post but I felt it important to explain how easily it can happen and how these companies lure you in with an almost acceptable offer to start with that they never intend to honour.

i am so glad you had a happy ending we will avoid the house buying company but unfortunately we cannot stay where we are as illness is making us move closer to family so we cannot stay i know what you mean about the crying as i have cried everyday for months i just wish the bank would understand the misery it is causing for us and our family

Maddison

We sold our flat 7 months ago it's only a small chain everyone is ready to go except the bottom of the chain her bank will not release the mortgage because there is a very small damp problem with the flat she is buying but the sellers have said they will reduce the price to cover the work we are so fed up with this we ring everyday to try and get the chain moving but all they say is we can't do anything until the bank release the money we are thinking off pulling out of the chain has anyone had any experiance with the online companies that buy your house off you for cash? any advice would be welcome please

Yes, those firms are a rip off. Our previous home was on the market at 425,000, we were in a hurry so enquired. They offered us 223,000. When I pointed out the disparity, they said they needed to ensure a profit!!

update still no answers yet so the chain is still all waiting we have been all ready to go for 6 weeks now everything is just waiting for the bank to release the money just rang the agent again but they said they would ring me back i told them we want to know why this bank will not release the money it's only for a small flat not a palace don't know how longer we should wait should we just put it back on the market or wait but waiting is making me Anxious as i suffer from that

It makes no difference that the property holding everything up is only a small flat. No lender will advance money on any property that it doesn’t think it can resell quickly for at least the amount outstanding on the mortgage plus costs of sale. Personally I think you’re not being told the truth. The agents selling your property should find out exactly what’s really going on. I hope they’re not selling the property at the bottom of the chain too - not unheard of.

Well here's the latest was supposed to exchange this week and guess what the house we were buying she has taken it off the market she knew we were soon completing and she'a decided not to sell i am soooo angry with her and upset it has caused great grief to our family the laws in England regarding buying home need to change we have lost money on this house if i ever see her again she had better watch out shame on you you horrible woman

i would love to name and shame her i feel like giving in
i will never forgive her for this horrible woman 5 months we have spent on this purchase the excuse she gave was rental property had gone up she is nothing but a liar

no words of wisdom?

I would have thought your anger should be at those who held up the process from the beginning. Unfortunately in 7 /8 months so much has changed. The timing of your vendor pulling out is terrible but she too has been mucked about for many months.

You are right about the laws of selling and buying need changing. I would hate to be involved in the UK system. Our system in Australia are not perfect but at least one knows the timeline from the beginning and just has to meet it. Does not always work but does most of the time.

If you can then just sit tight. Do not go to a house buyer as you will lose out a lot of money. They are only in this business for themselves.

Maddison but she’s only done what you were considering doing. Perhaps she too was fed up and crying every day.
Better luck in the future.

My grandson and his fiancé have just moved after months of frustration over when the build was supposed to be ready. Plus a slow solicitor etc. At the end their mortgage agreement/ help to buy was coming to the end. They had a fixed 5 year mortgage agreement and having that renewed would involve losing that and having the cost of the house increased by thousands. His gf was so upset and had a melt down as she tried to sort it. She said once she was in their home she was never going to move again as she is going to be buried beneath the patio!!!All ended at the 11th hour and they were in with just the utilities to be connected which has now been sorted.