Gazundering and gazumping: First
person
Published
in the Daily Telegraph, 25Nov2008
Gazundering and gazumping are crimes for which no punishment is too
severe, says James Trollope
Property rage,
at its most extreme, can make you swear like a BBC presenter. Other symptoms
of this particularly English disease include a sense of overwhelming powerlessness
and a tendency to indulge in elaborate revenge fantasies.
Unlike its close cousin, road rage, it doesn't usually result in sudden
violence but it is more inclined to fester. The condition is inextricably
linked to the ups and downs of the market.
When prices are rising, sellers are usually the cause: when they are
falling, it's often buyers who are to blame. Having been gazumped in the
boom and gazundered in the crash, I write from bitter experience.
How clearly I remember that early evening in the spring of 2002 when
we were pushing our baby across a park in Brighton towards what we thought
was our next home. As we approached, I felt a warm proprietorial glow.
Yes, we had stretched ourselves financially but here at last was that
extra space we so desperately needed. It was a nice house, too; a three-storey
Victorian terrace sympathetically restored by a charming property developer
who, according to our estate agent, had accepted our offer and promised
to take it off the market.
We peered through the window and were admiring the marble fireplace
and polished floorboards when we heard the sound of voices. "We have had
some interest," said the developer to a wealthy-looking couple, "but nothing
has been finalised."
Frozen to the spot, we watched until they moved out of sight to another
room. After a restless night, it was no great surprise when our estate
agent told us that the charmer had received a higher offer which he invited
us to match. My reply was unprintable; my desire for revenge, as yet, unrealised.
Fast forward to February 2008 and to the other end of the country. Following
my mother's death, we received several offers for her house outside Newcastle
despite disturbing headlines about falling prices. We settled on a couple
who had already sold. Although we thought they had agreed to exchange within
two weeks, a month passed with little progress. The flow of gloomy headlines
became a flood and we eventually received a call from our estate agent
saying they had lowered their offer.
Reluctantly, we agreed to a drop of £30,000. Then, on the day
we were supposed to exchange, a gut- wrenching silence. About 24 hours
later we learnt they had withdrawn.
Yet again property rage kicked in. The air went blue, my face went red
and my thoughts turned to revenge. Before long, the body count in my fevered
brain exceeded the grisliest Shakespearian tragedy with estate agents,
doom merchants, fickle buyers and solicitors all tossed on the pyre. Gradually,
though, it dawned on me that the English system of buying and selling was
largely to blame. Leaving everything up in the air until the last minute
is a recipe for property rage. If offers were cemented with non-refundable
deposits, as in France and elsewhere, the condition could be cured. And
why is it that solicitors and estate agents always seem to discourage contact
between buyers and sellers?
After some research on the internet, I found the email address of our
elusive couple and asked why they had pulled out at the moment of exchange.
They explained, apologetically, that they had been spooked by the grim
headlines. We eventually completed the sale at the end of May having accepted
a reduction of nearly 10 per cent.
Looking back, I was able to bring my feelings under some control because
we weren't involved in a chain – unlike a friend of mine who was put in
the position of having to accept a £50,000 drop on the day of exchange
or lose the house to which he was on the point of moving.
What made it all the more annoying was that the buyer, judging from
his fleet of extravagant cars, could have afforded to have bought the place
several times over. My friend's initial reaction was to tell him where
he could stuff his £50,000, but irreversible arrangements about jobs
and schools made that impossible.
With difficulty, we persuaded him against laying land-mines under the
lawn, so he came up with a subtler ploy that prompted a phone call some
weeks later. "I can't imagine why it won't open," he told the frustrated
gazunderer who, I like to think, might still be struggling with the altered
code to the garage door. |