Roy

Following a long search and after our offer of the full asking price was accepted on a property my wife and I expected to get the compromis to sign fairly quickly. But after a delay of two months the agent told us the French vendor was in serious debt and his bank had to agree to the sale of the property. Three more months later and the agent has just informed us "Le propriétaire à 2 logements identiques dont 1 que nous avons visité ensemble, les logements viennent d'être rachetés par la banque la BNP au prix de 220 000 € chacun." 220,000 is 50,000 higher than the full asking price that we offered and which was accepted by the vendor's agent. We don't understand why the asking price was not agreed by the bank before the property was put on sale. We are also aggrieved that we were not even asked if we wanted to increase our offer. Our lawyer says sorry but there is nothing that can be done. Has anyone come.across this situation? We are still interested in buying the property, having so far found nothing else that suits us. How would we go about contacting BNP to see if we could buy the property from them?

After a long search for the right property my wife and I made an offer at the start of June that was accepted. Almost four months later we are still waiting to receive the compromis and all the usual documents. The agent says the vendor has financial difficulties and the compromis can't be prepared until a mainlevee has been obtained from the vendor's bank (or apparently the bank could decide to repossess the property and sell it itself). Our lawyer chases the agent regularly but the agent says the case is an queue at the bank and also that the vendor's case is complicated. We wrote to the French vendor whom we have never met to ask him to try to speed things up. He replied to tell us that he was in hospital indefinitely, was unable to help and his lawyer was handling all his affairs. We don't understand why the bank's agreement to the sale was not obtained before the agent started marketing the property. We feel we have been misled. Is the best thing we can do now to walk away and buy another property? Roy