Sold House Now Buyer Going Legal

[Sezbo88]

We sold our property a couple of months ago to a couple who have been pests ever since to put it mildly.
We knew it was coming when they asked for keys in advance of completion as they knew it was empty and wanted to store furniture.
Of course we refused this.

Since completion they have made the following demands:

Cost for replacing a missing recycle bin.
- we never had this bin and the council wanted to charge us for a new one which we refused to do on principal.
The buyer says that the council have a photo of the bin on the property. So ask for £12 from us for losing it!!

Cost for the loft key.
- again Barratts never gave us a key to the loft when we bought the house from new. We never chased for it as loft access wasn’t important to us. We informed the buyer when viewing that we did not have a key to the loft. The buyer now says we promised to get one for him. He wants to charge us for the new key.

Cost for electrician.
- when viewing the property we informed the buyer that we would be taking the light fitting from the living room.
He is unhappy that we didn’t fit a pendant for them and left wires loose from the ceiling. When they moved in they had to call an emergency electrician.
I have to say that when we moved into our new property, we knew that there wouldn’t be a light fitting so we arranged for an electrician in advance to fit our light on moving day!

Cost for missing towel rails.
- we hold our hands up to this one as we did say on fixtures and fittings list that we would leave him in the house.
In view of our error we have offered £35 to replace the rails.

The buyer is now going legal as he wants us to cover the cost of all the above.

It all feels very unjust to us as we’ve discovered many botched DIY jobs in our new house and have had to pay a fortune to sort it all out. We haven’t approached our seller to cover any costs at all.

Would welcome your thoughts. Thank you in advance.

[NotAllThere]

Not sure why you've chosen a contractor forum for your tale of woe, but here goes.

It all feels very unjust to us as we’ve discovered many botched DIY jobs in our new house and have had to pay a fortune to sort it all out. We haven’t approached our seller to cover any costs at all.

The relationship between you and your seller and you and your buyer are entirely unconnected. It's not "unjust" at all.

Why anyone would go legal over the sake of what, a couple of hundred quid max when you've just transacted hundreds of thousands is beyond me.

How much is the buyer asking? And what do you mean by "going legal"? Just a threat or do you have a court date?

[b0redom]

...also what does your contract say? IIRC my last few housing transactions have specified what will be left and what will be taken.

[DeludedKitten]

Cost for electrician.
- when viewing the property we informed the buyer that we would be taking the light fitting from the living room.
He is unhappy that we didn’t fit a pendant for them and left wires loose from the ceiling. When they moved in they had to call an emergency electrician.

You left live wires dangling from the ceiling? Sounds fair to be expected to pay for that to be fixed and be grateful that nobody got hurt from your negligence.

[northernladuk]

What's your gut feeling. Are you flush enough to bung them 100 quid with a carefully worded agreement that there will be no more communication? Or are the type of person that would be happy to see them in court out of principle?

I'm the latter. So personally I'd give them the 35 quid and then tell them to **** off.

God I hate people like this. They must have such a stressful sad life to spend so much time and effort on crap like this.

[Guesstimator]

Precedent set in cases like this is Arkell Vs Pressdram

[SimonMac]

Precedent set in cases like this is Arkell Vs Pressdram

[mudskipper]

Agree re: light fitting. You have to leave the house in a safe condition. I'd be livid if I moved into a house and couldn't use the lights. At minimum, there should be a pendant and bulb or it is uninhabitable.

[Lance]

Would welcome your thoughts. Thank you in advance.

You've already paid a solicitor to deal with this. Get them on the case.
As long as you've met the terms of the sale then the solicitor will tell them to piss off (politely and legally)

[Sezbo88]

Not sure why you've chosen a contractor forum for your tale of woe, but here goes.

The relationship between you and your seller and you and your buyer are entirely unconnected. It's not "unjust" at all.

Why anyone would go legal over the sake of what, a couple of hundred quid max when you've just transacted hundreds of thousands is beyond me.

How much is the buyer asking? And what do you mean by "going legal"? Just a threat or do you have a court date?

I chose this site as I saw a similar post from someone else that got great responses - not exactly the same however which is why I posted my story. And it feels unjust to us, this was a personal comment not a legal judgement...

He’s given us until 16 October to pay the tiny amount of £70 which we refuse to pay on principle. We have agreed to pay £35 as outlined above.
If we don’t pay up by 16th then he says he’s going to court and his solicitor is confident that he will win. Our solicitor on the other hand says he’s being ridiculous.