Gazumped & Gazundered

happened to a friend - he told prospective buyers to take a hike. It is a horrible last minute ploy and you need nerves of steel to stand up to these guys. Good luck.

I really feel for you- the English system of buying and selling is totally **!
We had a horrendous experience when we were selling our East Midlands home. A so called (!!!) cash buyer turned up the day it was put on the market and said he had been waiting for 20+ years for it to come on the market as it was his dream house. Also agreed to buy some of the furniture (at bargain price) - and our agent asked him to prove he had the money to proceed- which he did.

He said he had sold his land to a builder- but it turned out he had not and there were problems with pollution of soil. anyhow- he kept making promises, kept coming to shake our hand and re-assure us that all was well. We went to sign our part of the contract and we had a phone call from his solicitor- he was ready to proceed- but wanted 25% off the price !!!! He knew we had bought here already and that I was desperate to be there for Christmas with my very elderly parents. The b*****

We told him to 'go away' (if you know what I mean) - but it was November so slow market. We found another buyer immediately, a lovely young family who wanted to open a nursery and loved the garden- perfect. But they just couldn't seel their own home - sale falling through at last minute 3 x! So we just had to give up on them.

In the end, we sold with 23% off in the Spring- but quickly and without hassle- again for a nursery. Fortunately we bought here when the £ was much higher (now down 55%!) and we got a 25% reduction of the purchase of our flat in UK as 'compensation'.

Such frustrating times and so nerve racking- courage x

We have just bought a bungalow which is lovely and very saleable. We could not understand why it had been empty for 9 months - it turned out that the lady who owned it had a buyer who was taking an age to complete and at the last moment he wanted £20,000 of the agreed price! Luckily for us she told him to get on his bike and ride into the sunset and she put it back on the market, where it was snapped up by us (and wanted by several others) - luckily the agent advised her to favour our offer as we had cash buyers (DD and SIL) to buy ours and could complete speedily.

I am sorry to hear that you have had such a difficult time trueblue - it is an iniquitous system. I have a friend who is locked into a similar mess at the moment and she is getting quite depressed and stressed. Good luck with the move!

Off!

This happens all too frequently in the system that England (maybe Wales?) has. In Scotland the seller gets the independent survey done before the house is marketed. Offers are formal 'notes of interest' put to the Solicitor handling the sale and prospective buyers are informed of other offers. (Not the price, of course). Once a price has been agreed with a purchaser then the 'missives' take place, that is the searches etc. once they are completed, usually quite quickly, there is no going back and no gazumping. Everyone knows where they stand.

When buying in England we have always sold before buying, putting our belongings in storage and renting/ holidaying/ borrowing somewhere.

Yup, it happens, and we and DD have both had the problem at various times.

J52, you make the Scottish system sound very like the English. Express an interest (make an offer), do all the paper work 'missives' take place (exchange of contracts), both of which are legally binding.

However friends in the Scottish system complain about the expense of constantly doing all the paperwork again and again and never managing to secure the house as another person also doing all the paperwork pipped them to the post. I have heard horror stories of people spending £000s on up to 11 properties before they suceeded in buying one. No system of house purchase is perfect.

When we bought our house in Scotland we had written into the contract that we would only proceed if we sold our house in England. The buyer of our English house was a solicitor's clerk and thought she knew the Scottish system and at the last minute wanted money off our selling price thinking that we had to proceed. We had great delight in putting her right. She paid the original price!

Here if you can find a buyer you snap their hand off, it is very much a buyer's market at the moment. Might be different in south Scotland.

Yes J52- our recent experiences certainly make us determined to sell first, then go and find a house with cash in hand (for real - not like so many pretending to be) - but things in life sometimes happen without perfect planning. Our previous house was bought in a day over a cup of coffee, and sold immediately without a hitch.

Not selling our beloved house and garden I'd worked so hard to put together- was (almost) worth every penny (well... a bit more actually).

I would certainly sell before even looking for somewhere else to buy - did that last year, fell in love with a bungalow and was let down on the sale of my present house twice for different reasons.

Might try again in the Spring...you need nerves of steel! The process in England and Wales should certainly be made more straightforward.

We found estate agents were very unwilling to even show us properties until we had our own on the market.

Quite right too! Sorry, but there do seem to be a lot of time-wasters out there.

In Scotland it cost us £50 each time we put in a note of interest in a house, which certainly cut out time wasters! The vendor has a survey done before the house is put on the market, which saves the purchaser money. ( in our case we had a specialist one done, as well )
Houses are generally only sold through Solicitors offices and one would hope they are bound by their professional code of conduct. ( there is no such thing for EAs).
We signed a contract with our Solicitor and they acted completely, for us. Which took away a lot of the stress. The Missives are conducted very quickly and it would seem much earlier than an exchange of contract. Yes, there is danger of losing a house at the very early 'offers over' stage, and thus losing your £50! But at least the price cannot change thereafter.

I put my house in Dover on the market at the beginning of the year, my daughter had asked a friend's husband (who is a builder) to do the necessary work to fix a damp issue and, because we trusted him, we paid as and when he said he had done the work. Our first buyer dropped out when her survey came back saying the damp problem was still there. We contacted the builder and he told us he had done all the necessary work. A second buyer then put an offer in for almost the asking price, again the survey came back saying an issue with the damp and reducing price by £8000. Need a sale so we can buy here as renting and it is dead money - have had to agree to reduction but asked for early completion so fingers, toes and everything crossed it goes through. Have found Estate Agents we used not very helpful at all and expensive but having moved to the Midlands we had to use them as could not do the viewings. So stressful - can't wait for that magic moment when the contract is signed and exchanged - there must be a simpler, less stressful way to sell a house! Looking at pursuing the Builder for the loss of money, he has been asked several times to provide a detailed invoice so we can counter the claim that the damp work hasn't been done but he just keeps sending a final invoice with no information on it!

Isn't it disgusting the way purchasing and selling of property is handled in England!

We are in a similar situation. Having seen a new build flat we liked, we put our house on the market mid-April and it sold in a fortnight. We had been told by the estate agent of our new home that the anticipated completion date was August which our vendor was happy with. However we were then advised that completion would be October and our purchaser was less than happy as he wanted to move in and renovate. However he advised us that if we could give him a definite date he was prepared to wait.

Unfortunately the vendor's solicitors advised that they weren't prepared to give a date nor to even give us a 'long-stop' date, to which the purchaser said that he wasn't prepared to hang on forever and would pull out and find another property.

Since we had already paid a holding deposit for our flat and it's ideal for our purposes, we decided to stick with it. My husband's brother agreed that we could stay with him short-term if we had to move out of the house before our flat was ready, so that's what we did. Moved out of the house 15th August, everything in storage and living with family - although he's a widower so it's just him it's still not the best situation to be in.

Now the vendor's solicitors have advised the flat won't be ready until the end of November! This is becoming farcical - we NEED to move into our home but the project appears to be so badly handled and there appears to be no legal requirement for them to provide us with a completion date!

We moved from London 10 years ago and had terrible trouble selling our house, not because there was anything much wrong with it but because people messed us about. We only made offers on houses once ours was under offer but we still lost several houses that we wanted due to having to start again. It was complicated by the fact that we were helping two of our children to buy a house as they were also moving from home.

The third time around we did manage to sell (for much less) but our buyer's buyer tried the same trick as detailed by OP, trying to knock them down on the day of exchange. Our buyer told them where to go and they backed down. They tried to get their revenge on the day of completion by not making the transfer in time for the other transactions to be completed, to screw things up. Our own buyer (a banker) had to arrange a last minute bridging loan to enable him to complete that day. The delay meant that we did not get the keys in time to move into either house that day and had to pay the removal firm for an extra day for both removals, pay our seller's extra mortgage costs and extra legal fees. Our additional costs were around £15,000 and I'm guessing that our buyer's were much more. These were passed back down the line to his buyer who had no choice but to pay up.

Many people complete on a Friday, presumably because the weekend gives them time to sort themselves out - but I always expect things to go wrong and fortunately had decided to complete on a Thursday, so we were able to move in on the next day.

Ten years on we are very happy in our new house, having managed to buy a house we originally liked when it came back on the market due to divorce, in less than a year, and in exactly the same week that our house was "sold" for the third time.

You are right the system makes moving home really hard and it is so sad to hear these experiences. I work for a company helping people move home and we have found we need to be really tough in order to protect our clients. Basically this means if a purchaser is dragging their heels - investigate and then put the house back on the market immediately. Trueblue22 - sounds like your agent is ok but for anyone else - tell your Estate agent to be clear about your expectations. Agents should be qualifying buyers and providing evidence of buyers ability to pay and move.
Good luck and courage to all of you in difficult situations.

You're right charmian, agents should be checking finances more than they apparently do. I know that agents we have dealt with have always asked for details of where the money is coming from, including proof of "cash" from those who claim that they are cash buyers. It should be simple enough to check how much the proceeds of a sale will be, after the original mortgage has been repaid, but I suspect that not everybody bothers to do this and there are some real "chancers" out there.

I have yet to meet anyone who has bought and sold in England who had not had this kind of experience. The whole system stinks. I nearly had a breakdown when I recently went through this - the lowest point of which had me screaming tearfully down the phone "You can all f... off"!

I was very, very anxious - the process went on for 18 months in our case. It got to the stage that I had to go to the GP as I could actually feel the acid squirting into my stomach when I thought about it!

Nvella. ..I am the person you "have yet to meet" !! Sorry if it upsets people who are in dire straights with their selling and buying.
When moving to our present lovely detached home in a quiet semi-rural area everything went very smoothly.
We sold within 2 weeks....We'd already found this house.....which ticked 9 out of 10 boxes....offered the asking price which our survey agreed was correct.

The smallish chain was a "logical one" with everyone moving upwards for logical needs. We were very fortunate I know and I do sympathise with people who have problems selling and buying. I can well imagine the stress it must cause.

Topical as I have just had a heated exchange with an estate agent this morning which upset me greatly. We had 4 valuations as there was a massive difference of £45,000 between them (for a 2 up 2 down!) and decided to use one of the middle options, as 2 of the other 3 were pursuing me for the business I got him to agree a four week period only with no tie-in. That 4 weeks was up yesterday and I have now been told I have to give him a weeks notice, some of the things he said were not at all fair or pleasant.

I have just received an email apology but I will not be using/recommending him ever again I am afraid

In a way I have been luckier with my last 2 moves, we sold our house for reduced price, we had marketed at top valuation & knew how much we could reduce, buyers had 1st time buyers for their's, sold & moved in 6 weeks. Bought Park Home (no Solicitors needed) & had furniture in storage for 1 week & rented a holiday flat in our new area.

When I sold Park Home (following DH's death) I had a proposed buyer at £5000 under asking price but they were struggling to sell their property after several months I had new viewing, cash buyers, full asking price, wanted to be in within 3 weeks as their buyer needed to move quickly. So Removal firm organised, Storage Company organised, stayed with my DD for 2 weeks & then Holiday Flat until my Purchase was complete. Another Park Home but complicated by Solicitors dealing with Estate & Park Owners death (total lack of paperwork). I found my new home on my 2nd day in Devon but took 6/7 weeks before it was legally mine. Love my new home, new area & being near to DD & DGS. This is my forever home.

Grrrr- so so so frustrating hey! But it goes both ways too- I wonder how many here perhaps read this, and quietly chuckle, because they managed to get a large % at the last minute???

Bez - we sold our previous house just as you said- and it was wonderful. The house before that was a nightmare as the sellors, not the buyers, messed us around terrible, using health issues (fake) to string us along. But then went it all fell through at very last minute- we bought another house in 1 day - visited the owners who lived on our way home 70 miles away- shook hands and he gave us the keys- our solicitor then did the paperwork in 3 weeks- and we moved in just in time for me to give birth to numero due- with next door neighbour taking in numero uno whilst I was in hospital and was the best neighbour ever.

For our last UK house, we went to see it but realised we just couldn't afford it - and didn't want to barter with the elderly owners who were so lovely. By chance I bumbped into one of their daughters in Waitrose 2 weeks later and she was very friendly and said her parents were so so disappointed we were not interested in the house as they would love to sell to us and know it would remain a fabulous family home. I explained the situation- and that evening the parents phoned and said 'we want to sell to you- how much can you afford?' - we stretched the budget as high as we could and gave them a figure significantly below the price but fair and honest- and they said 'come over for a drink and we will shake on it' - done - and it was the best family home ever for the next 30+ years. So yes, it can happen- but rare.