Having a buyer pull out of your property deal at the last minute is the kind of nightmare scenario that would keep anybody awake at night.
Concluding a property sale can be stressful enough, even if the process runs smoothly. So having a deal collapse shortly before it was due to conclude can be anywhere between deeply frustrating and downright heartbreaking, depending on what the eventual ramifications are for you as the seller in the scenario.
Dealing with disaster
Such a situation can be so difficult to cope with from a seller’s point of view, partly because it has the potential to collapse or significantly delay an acquisition deal you’ve agreed in relation to a different property that you’ve had your heart set on moving in to.
There are circumstances wherein such a delay or diversion might not be particularly impactful. On the other hand, those delays can also be hugely disappointing and feel disastrous to the affected parties, especially if a house move is central to plans you’ve made around your children’s schooling, for example, or in relation to a new job with a fast-approaching start date.
It is also the case that a buyer pulling out of a particular purchase can lead to a lengthy chain of transactions being broken in a way that then impacts a whole sequence of other buyers and sellers.
Financial implications
There can also be significant financial implications for the selling party in a property deal that falls through at the last minute, or—in literal terms—within a matter of days or a few weeks before contracts of ownership were due to be exchanged.
Unfortunately, while it can be enormously frustrating if it happens to you, it is neither uncommon nor illegal for a prospective buyer to pull out of a property deal any time in advance of the contract exchange point in the transaction process.
Precisely how much you might stand to lose out on financially if your buyer pulls out depends on the details of your circumstances. However, you will typically need to pay again for conveyancing services and to cover the costs of other associated processes undertaken on your behalf to advance the transaction that you’d assumed would reach completion.
Considering your options
It could be that the individual or the couple who were intending to buy your property have found themselves struggling to have their mortgage arrangements approved on the basis of the price they’d offered to pay.
If that is the case, then it might be worth renegotiating a deal based on a lower price. You may not wish to drop your asking price, of course, but if you are willing and able to do so then you might then be able to salvage or revive the deal that you’d thought was dead and buried.
On the other hand, you might decide instead that the best route forward is to move on from your collapsed deal entirely, to re-list your property for sale and to restart negotiations with new potential buyers in due course.
Getting the right guidance Regardless of what options you take and how you decide to proceed, if you’re faced with a situation in which your buyer is no longer intending to honour the deal you’d agreed in principle, then it is always wise to seek out reliable advice from relevant experts.
In practice, the relevant parties are likely to be your estate agent, and your conveyancer or conveyancing solicitor. As service providers operating routinely in these environments, they will be well-used to seeing deals fall through and best-placed to address whatever concerns or queries you might have.
Ultimately, it will be up to you as a homeowner do decide what action represents the best way forward for you and your family. Nevertheless, experienced estate agents and conveyancers should always be able to offer you sound advice and clear guidance on what your most viable options are and what the potential implications of each choice you make might be.
Those same experts can also help you in coordinating your next steps in terms of reissuing paperwork, revisiting offers, and potentially rearranging your house moving plans.
Attracting the right buyers next time
Very often, when a property deal falls through at the last minute, there is no blame to be laid at the door of the sellers. It will generally, and rightly, from a seller’s perspective, be considered simply a case of bad luck. However, if you do find yourself in the position of needing to put your property back on the market, after the collapse of a sale, then it will perhaps be worth considering what you might do differently next time around.
Points to consider could include:
- Did we price the property at the right level? (to the best of your knowledge and understanding at least, given the variable factors involved)
- Did we market the property in the right way and in the most appropriate places? Or should we be considering the option of using other avenues to market the property next time?
- Should we have vetted our potential buyers more thoroughly? And can we find ways to do that next time?
It won’t always be possible to determine whether or not someone making a bid to acquire your property is a ‘serious buyer’. In fact, they might appear to be precisely that until such time as they pull out of your agreement and leave you dealing with the unwelcome consequences.
However, it makes sense—even if it’s only for your own peace of mind—to consider carefully before you accept any offer to buy your property if you’ve done all that you possibly can to give that deal the best chance of moving ahead and concluding unhindered.
Getting back on track
There is no escaping the fact having a property deal fall through at the last minute is likely to be a major source of stress and frustration.
However, it doesn’t need to be a total disaster and there’s every reason to believe that—once you’ve been able to absorb the initial disappointment—you can get your property move back on track and start looking to the future again with renewed positivity.
In that context though it’s crucial to find service providers (conveyancers and estate agents particularly) that you can trust and whose guidance supports your interests every step of the way. That sentiment is always true but perhaps even more so if you do suffer the disappointment of seeing a sale fall through close to what you thought would be its conclusion.
Home Legal Direct
If you need impartial advice on any issues associated with conveyancing or with property transactions more broadly then Home Legel Direct’s in-house team of experts will always be happy to hear from you and to help in any way they can.