Gazumped & Gazundered

As Monica says, the Scottish system, and the French have pitfalls, so certainly not perfect. Also as Sarahellen says, the best possible thing to do is to sell your house and rent in the area you are interested in, and with money in the bank, keep an eagle eye out for a good house to buy.

I had a flat where my buyer tried to knock £8k off the price the day before exchange of contracts. Even my estate agent was trying to pressure me into giving in. I was particularly mad since I'd had a higher offer just after accepting hers, and had turned it down so as not to mess her about.
I called her bluff and the sale went ahead anyway.

I agree about chasing solicitors. We had a horrendous experience with one not long ago - it would have taken sticks of dynamite up his a*se to get this particular one moving.
OTOH when DD bought her first house, I told her it would take at least 3 months from offer to completion - an expensive pain since she was in inconvenient and expensive short term accomm.
I was amazed when the whole thing was wrapped up in 6 weeks. She used the EA's in house solicitor, which I wouldn't have necessarily thought a good idea before, but of course it's in their interests to get a sale wrapped up quickly. She also used the in house mortgage advisor - but only after finding the exact same deal online that he had found - for £300 less in fees. When she told him, he said he'd match it.
Always worth a try!

Ha ha, what a mystery

Yum, they look nice Hattie, could just fancy one whilst still warm.

Not sure if you posted on wrong thread as I haven't read it all - perhaps the smell of fresh baked cakes will help the sale.

Gransnetters !!!! Totally ignore photo and post regarding cakes. I have no idea how it got posted as intended for DIL !!!! Story is DGS third birthday party on Saturday and I have been asked to make totally vegan muffins for a little boy with many allergies. As it has reached Gransnet mysteriously, anyone got foolproof recipe for began muffins ?

I sent a photo of trial batch - or thought I had !! They taste quite nice. I will put sunflower spread frosting on proper batch. Is cake Hulk ? If so will do a few with green icing.

The shenanigans of buyers, surveyors, solicitors, builders and estate agents are well know and it shouldn't be a surprise to learn that you've been on the of what can only be described as sharp practice. Keep a cool head and don't be impatient for quick results because that won't happen. Good luck

Antonia, even the French system has flexibility and uncertainty. We signed a contract to buy a house, but subject to certain conditions being met, and when the conditions were not met we were able to withdraw from the sale with all our money.

A lot of the delay with housing transactions lies squarely with solicitors. Unless you constantly chase them they just let proceedings drag on. When DD was selling her flat there were problems with one clause in the lease. Every one who viewed the property was told about this and given a copy of it. The solicitor had his attention drawn to it when the legal process started. Six weeks later, the day before exchange, the solicitor rang DD to say he had just read the lease and there was a problem with one clause.

This was not a ploy over the price, the buyer was tearing his hair out as well, he had an advantageous mortgage offer but had to exchange by a rapidly approaching date. it was sorted in the end with about 24 hours to spare. The delay was caused by the solicitor, and this is not the first time time solicitors have held up proceedings by just being dilatory.

If a survey clearly shows that expensive repairs have to be done- like waterproofing course, etc- then fair enough to ask for that to be taken into considerations and lower the offer. Very different to gazundering though.

We had several visits sent by agent who proceeded to say things like 'oh we will have to add a full width conservatory, and that will cost xyz - or we will have to build on to the side to enlarge kitchen and add 1 bedroom and bathroom, and that will cost £$£ ... and I quietly replied that they had the wrong house then and good bye! One of them turned round and said 'but it is a buyers' market' to which DH replied ' might well be, but that doesn't mean we have to sell to you'. So cheeky and rude- we just had to laugh.

Notanan it is the same in England, the whole chain has to complete on the same day unless there is someone with the cash in the chain

It's not the same in england because prior to exchange the chain can change as exchange is the contract, not the offer

So if someone's forward chain doesn't seem like it's happening any time soon, they can pull out and put an offer in on somewhere else with a fast completion condition, this those behind them in the chain aren't caught up in a never ending chain.

Where the offer is the contract, everyone is left static if one person's forward chain isn't moving forward.

So there are some advantages to offers not being a contract here

Notanan it is the same in England, the whole chain has to complete on the same day unless there is someone with the cash in the chain.

I would like to know why it takes so long these days when all parties are raring to go? Estate agent and solicitors have told DS & DiL 3 months. When it all had to be done by post it was usually quicker than that. The vendor is ready to go asap, DS & DiL are ready so why does it take so long?

Should be How not PHow!! Sorry.

Last year, when we put our house on the market, the first buyer couldn't get a mortgage due to his personal circumstance. He strung us along for 2 months, post survey, with silly questions about the neighbours properties etc. we should have sussed something was wrong, when he suddenly changed his solicitor! We had had enough just before Christmas and dumped him!
We were just about to remove our house from the market and enjoy Christmas, when a new buyer offered. She completed the purchase, but did have a couple of attempts at getting the price lowered. We were very straight from the start and said no reductions, or the whole deal is off.

Had this tried on us, decided to walk away from it all. To cut a long story short the original agent came back asking for original accepted price but we decided to leave it alone. PHow pleased we are, as 800 houses have been built around that 'desirable property with country views'. It's such a hard, harsh and cruel market when buying and selling property.

We bought and sold a house in Sept last year, I had to do so much research into estate agents tricks, ended up changing estate agents every 3 months but it worked and we sold more quickly than others have in our area. The process was so stressful. With last minute offer changes feel for you.

Having sold abroad, the reality/practicalities are exactly the same when you have surveys before offers, and offers are contracts.

Because once someone is interested enough to survey you need to get a wiggle on and get your forward chain sorted or they won't offer.. and then they might offer lower than you need for a chain you're now already in (and tied to) so in practical terms the exact same things happen, only it can be a bit worse because its harder then to get out of your forward chain.

Also where offers are contracts it can DRAG ON a lot longer than an English sale because the chain all has to complete and nobody pulls out and finds an alternative if their part of the chain is dragging on.

Swings and roundabouts I guess.

I do find compaired to abroad that at least in England you either complete or it falls through in a relatively short period of time (even with a chain) so you can crack on with plan B, abroad it can take forever to complete

We are in the process of trying to sell and despite promising ourselves not to, found a house we want to buy. BUT there is no movement on our house, few viewing and little interest. I've done my homework, the price is good, the house has been refreshed neutrally top to bottom and we're keen to move.

But it's not going to happen we see now.

But we're going to sit tight and just see what happens, then we'll rent if we have to before buying again.

But it is soul destroying.

Reading through all of your posts here, it seems that the English way is to encourage gazumping - if not directly, but by dragging out the process to the Estate Agent or Lawyer's benefit.

It seems the Scots, Dutch and French have a more rational approach.

We've had similar experiences in England too - such a pity that the English process is not as straightforward as that in Scotland.

Well, here's a story to gladden the heart of all of us who have been through this nightmare:

A colleague was just through the other side of a difficult divorce ( her husband had left her for another woman) and she was in the family home, keeping it maintained and looked after, dealing with prospective buyers etc. Her Ex was forever bothering her about his share of the house.

Along came a buyer, all going well, he knew she was desperate to sell, knew her position thanks to indiscreet estate agent. The day before exchange, she came in in tears, the buyer had dropped his offer by £30K and her husband was insisting that she had to take the brunt of the loss. She gritted her teeth and went along with the sale, at the reduced price, moved out and moved on. About 2 years later, imagine my delight when I saw on my way to work a great big sign from a well known mass builder announcing a development about to be built, all around and behind this house........talk about karma

the people I brought from hid all the defects including the knotweed..Ive had a nightmare and lost £££'s off value of the place.

In countries where sale aggreed is more of a contract, surveying is done prior to the offer, so effectively the same thing happens - buyer interested, has a survey, potentially offers less as a result - THEN there's the offer contract…

but its essentially the exact same process and people do listen to their surveyors, why wouldn't they?

Our agent says i 30 years in the business, he has never known anything like it. We have bought and sold many properties, and neither have we.

I can't believe that!
We dropped our offer by 30k as a result of our survey, that's the whole point of paying for the survey - to take your surveyors advice!
It wasn't a "last minute ploy", we used the money to remedy what our surveyor told us needed doing (which turned out to be even more extensive than he thought actually, even if the buyers initially said that they didn't believe there was anything wrong and the place was good to go)

When my daughter and her family wanted to move I suggested they sold first and moved in with me whilst looking for another property. She, her husband, two sons and their cat were with me for a few months but it enabled them to get what they wanted and it all went through smoothly. I realise that it was fortunate I had the space to accommodate them, which not all parents could do.

In NL you have a short time to change your mind and after that you have to prove that you really couldn't raise the finance or you have to proceed.