One of the enduring legacies of la Thatcher is our obsession with home ownership. TOWT’s children have been buying property this year – successfully, I am pleased to report. They say buying a house, along with getting married and writing a blog, is one of the most stressful things you can do. What is apparent is that you need to exhibit the speed of decision-making that would put a Lloyd’s underwriter operating at the box to shame and it is your money you are playing with, to boot.
Where demand outstrips supply, as is the case with housing, particularly in the South East, some nefarious tactics are bound to emerge. Two have come to my attention recently.
The first is what is known as ghost gazumping. Most of us are painfully familiar with the concept of gazumping. After diligent research and viewing a number of properties, none of which are quite what they seem from the estate agent’s blurb – you know the story, photos shot from the only angle that misses the enormous gas holder looming over the property – you settle on a property and make your offer which the vendor accepts. You then start incurring costs – solicitor’s fees etc – when you are told that someone else has come in and despite you thinking you had reached a deal with a vendor has made a higher offer. In those circumstances, you either have to up your bid or risk losing the purchase.
Ghost gazumping is similar but there is no other bidder, hence the use of the word ghost. The vendor, seeing that prices in their vicinity are rising at a rate of knots, have second thoughts about the price they have agreed with you for their property. They cheerfully inform you that someone else is sniffing around prepared to pay significantly more. In a funk you up your offer, fearing you are going to lose the house you have set your heart on. Of course, there is no other bidder – it is just a ruse to get you to shell out more than you would have done otherwise.
Another tactic that seems to be emerging is called gazundering. This is where the purchaser, having agreed a price with the vendor, then comes back at the point of exchange with a lower offer because of some alleged defect in the property that has emerged during the search process. The timing of the gazunder is all important – it needs to be done at the point when it is difficult for the vendor to resist and risk the collapse of the convoluted chain of purchases and sales that have built up around the transaction.
One thought strikes me. If you are faced with ghost gazumping, why don’t you call their bluff by gazundering. Theoretically, at least, the two should cancel each other out and you will get the property for what you were originally prepared to pay for it.
Not for the first time, I’m glad I’m not starting out on life’s great adventure.
windowthroughtime 