Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)
  • house buying – meeting the sellers!
  • petefromearth
    Full Member

    Hi

    In the process of buying & selling. We have just had an offer accepted on a house we like, and the vendors have invited us round.

    The reason given to us by the agent is there has recently been a leak in the kitchen. The chap wants to show me the damage and what work still needs doing that he’ll sort out before the sale. I guess he’s trying to be up front in case it comes up in the survey. Reassuring in some ways!

    I’m hoping it’ll be a chance to ask some other questions too. He’ll probably be trying to suss us out and vice versa!

    Anyone had a similar situation when buying a house before?

    alfabus
    Free Member

    Not exactly similar, but when we bought our first house, the viewing was done by the vendors. My missus had the presence of mind to get their phone number.

    Fast forward a bit to the searches/surveys and faffing around stage – the estate agents were lying through their teeth to everyone they spoke to; having that phone number to ring saved the deal more times than I can count, since we could cut through the crap and find out what they were actually concerned about and vice versa.

    Sounds like your seller wants a bit of actual communication, rather than relying on the estate agent tossers.

    Dave

    deadlydarcy
    Free Member

    Yes, we met potential vendors once. They were next door neighbours who had fallen in love over the garden fence and were now selling one of the houses so they wanted to meet their new neighbours. We had a cuppa, a chat, and all went well. They seemed nice. They accepted our offer and the process of searches, sorting out a mortgage etc started. The day we were due to exchange, they decided they’d like another £15k for the house. I instructed our solicitor to inform them that they could **** off. Greed really makes some people act like arseholes. It still rankles to this day when I think about it. 😡

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    cheers_drive
    Full Member

    Meeting the vendor is a definite positive as most will be much more trustworthy than an estate agent. Should you need to negiote due to any survey issues it also helps that they met you and can see you’re not the type to take the piss. Unless of course you come across as that type!

    dannyh
    Free Member

    It doesn’t matter, you’ll end up hating them all by the end of the whole miserable soul destroying process anyway.

    We are in the middle of an attempted house move at the moment. We have had the seemingly ‘pillar of the community’ people from two doors down lie to our faces about their intentions for a plot of land that was to be hived off of the house next to us (which is on the market due to the old lady who lived their dying last year). They thought they’d got the plot, knocked a hole in their garden wall and started to work it as an ‘allotment’ – or so they told us. Turns out they were actually going to build a bungalow on it.

    Anyhow, next door has now been sold to a property developer spiv type who has driven a hard bargain and got the plot of land added back to his garden. So two doors down were busy rebuilding their garden wall today, and happily it fell back down at one point. I was a wafer away from saying “that’s karma, mate”, but we are not supposed to know about their intentions.

    The new problem is I don’t trust this spiv as far as I can spit. At one point he offered on our house as well, so we could offer on the one we want. He’d ballsed his sums up, though, and actually couldn’t afford it. So he withdrew his offer, and we had to do likewise. Twunt.

    Our previous house move was a bit better. The one before was a nightmare again. I’m now resigned to the fact that no one tells the truth, everyone is trying to screw each other over, and you really have no alternative but to play hardball as well. I hate it. We started out this process trying to be honest, but now we are having to play the game – otherwise we are just going to get fisted financially.

    Sorry for thread hijack, but I feel better at least. 🙂

    scotroutes
    Full Member

    Weird thread. Meeting the sellers is pretty much standard practice in Scotland as it’s normally them that do the viewing.

    petefromearth
    Full Member

    I’m hoping it’ll be positive, the agent is a bit of a geezer so maybe we’re both growing tired of him! Actually having seen their house, I’m expecting we might get on and have something in common. Really it seems like the point of no return so a bit nervous.

    petefromearth
    Full Member

    Blimey, not a good situation danny, some people certainly are bell ends. Hope it gets sorted. Thankfully at least in Bristol every square inch of land has already been built on, so that is unlikely to be the case with this place!

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    Weird thread. Meeting the sellers is pretty much standard practice in Scotland as it’s normally them that do the viewing.

    ^this

    Although meeting the vendor can be interesting if they are weird….

    dannyh
    Free Member

    Petefromearth.

    Cheers mate! As it currently stands we have an offer accepted on the house we are after, and we have accepted an offer (slightly below what we wanted on ours). If this all pans out ok, then I’m pretty sure we will be happy with the end result.

    My major problem with spiv boy is that I know there is no way he can knock down the house next to us to create access for a new build on the back plot because the access would be too narrow for our borough council’s planning regs. The problem is he is a spiv property developer, so I suspect he might be able to make the regs mysteriously not applicable in this situation. Probably by knowing the right people at the council and being able to offer them a bung.

    The other real problem is that we are looking to move less than thirty yards, to one down from the house directly opposite! If this all ends in rancour it will not be a happy collection of neighbours. I am also not very good at pretending to like people if they have tried to do me over! I don’t really give a shit, but my missus does!

    tinribz
    Free Member

    We’ve recently been showing a queue of what seem to be just nosey old ladies round our house. I’ve never known an estate agent offer to do the viewing unless it was an unlived in total wreck. Is it a south of Watford thing? Or just for Millionaire Row?

    drlex
    Free Member

    May just depend on the agents; ours don’t do Sundays/public holidays, so MrsLex got to show a couple around today whilst I watched cricket and supped an ale or two.
    (I did text to show moral support)

    TheFlyingOx
    Full Member

    Meeting the sellers got us our house, I think. They were (still are) the most delightfully harmless breed of pseudo-upper class yahs (imagine Toad of Toad Hall, split between man and wife) who were desperate to sell their house despite their estate agent suggesting otherwise. When they moved into their new pad they invited us over for wine, mainly to see who we were. It seems they’d forgotten who they’d sold to and were “frightfully pleased” we were the young couple and baby boy. They even gave us the dishwasher and washer/dryer out of their new place.

    globalti
    Free Member

    I’ve viewed dozens and dozens of houses (around 30 for one house move alone) and can only remember being shown around twice by agents.

    woffle
    Free Member

    met our sellers. Made a difference in getting things through smoothly – gave them our contact details from the off and at various points in the grim process of buying and selling it was good to be able to pick up the phone or pop round to discuss what’s being left / measure up rooms or windows etc. We had issues with our chain at completion and exchange and again meant we could chat and then collectively apply pressure on agents and further down the chain safe in the knowledge things weren’t going through the ‘filter’ of agents or solicitors.

    would do it again should we move again.

    breadcrumb
    Full Member

    It’s only ever been empty houses that an EA has shown us round, otherwise it’s always been the vendors.

    Met some “interesting” people viewing houses, some more honest than others. We were told on one viewing “this is the kind of place where you can keep yourself to yourself or have a beer in the front [garden] with next door, they’re always out there drinking.”

    towzer
    Full Member

    much prefer meeting sellers and buyers(*I internet sold so did all my own viewing etc I got a very clear feel for the gobsh*tes), from a selling perspective it gives you a chance to ask questions and look em in the eye when they respond, also ask the same question (you ask hubby/wife ask wife but separately/later/slightly differently put), that way gaps can be seen to appear.

    Stoner
    Free Member

    When I last sold my flat I met the purchaser there to show them around it (the agency had already done so, and we’d accepted their offer) but she wanted to know more about how things worked in the flat, like the boiler, thermostat, window locks latches etc, where the utility isolation valves were. It helped smooth the process having a dialogue and we could talk the sale through to completion.

    She was a young Russian lady. Which was nice. 😀

    tomkerton
    Free Member

    However a note of caution. Whilst some real communication can be useful when it comes to house buying if it ant written down it means nothing. So for the OP if the guy says yeah I’m going to sort the leak, re-plaster etc etc you must get him to then write it down and send it to you!

    Chatting between yourselves can be awkward if things start to go wrong to.

    But if your seller is decent then it can work great to be able to speak directly to each other. Just tread carefully as I’ve been promised something and then it didn’t happen several times doing it this way.

    wrightyson
    Free Member

    Selling a few houses we’ve developed on a plot. A couple came up with the frankly useless agent for a look round. I saidy hellos etc.
    They came back later that day without the agent. I took them around properly answered all questions they wanted to know and face them my number. They dealt with me right up until the completion as the agents are useless.

    simmy
    Free Member

    My mate has just moved and dealt with the estate agents initially who turned out to be useless lying cheats, at one point they said the seller was going to pull out of the deal, luckily my mate had already met them by that time and he went round and spoke to them.

    Turns out they had said nothing of the kind. Spent the night with them supping tea and whiskey.

    Earlier in the deal process before they had met the seller, my mates missus was stressed about it all and went into the local chemist to get some Kalms or simular. She got talking to the lady serving and explained about the nightmare estate agents and the problems and the chemist lady was having the same issues. Guess who opened the door when they first met the sellers 😆 think that broke the ice…..

    mudshark
    Free Member

    Greed really makes some people act like arseholes. It still rankles to this day when I think about it.

    It’s interesting that they were willing to do this to people that’ll be their neighbours. Any idea if the house sold for what they tried to get from you in the end?

    dannyh
    Free Member

    Greed it is, I’m afraid, no other explanation.

    The problem is you can never tell who is going to be an arsehole. Quite often the church-going pillar of the community types are the very worst when it comes to the snide stuff. I guess they can justify it to themselves by saying a token ‘sorry’ in church on a Sunday, then get on with a land grab that would make Hitler proud(!)

    It’s the same as every other facet of life. There are some straight shooters, and some snide buggers. The added dimension of ‘loadsamoney’ tends to make a proportion of people slide over the boundary (pun intended) and join the snide bugger camp.

    And yes, I am getting pissed off with the whole house move thing now 👿

    There’s only so many times I can console myself with ‘the end justifies the means’ .

Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)

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