Buying a home - legal advice

This is kind of a messy situation, last June we got our loan offer from the building society, agreed a price on a house, made or offer and signed contracts etc.

The property was to be completed by the builder by the end of November, and was to include a fitted kitchen.

Work didn't start on the property until the end of November.

At the start of the year we were told we'd have to arrange to buy our own kitchen and that would be taken off the price of the house (the original fitters told me that this was because the builder never pays him and that they won't work with him anymore). So we went off and bought a kitchen at a cost of €5k.

The property is now pretty much ready, we had the engineer out and most of the items are completed.

The kitchen was delivered last week and was ready to in when the bank called me to say that they had re-valued the house at 15K less than original value and that we'd only get 90% of that valuation. Leaving us 13.5k short.

Now this is where the **** hits the fan. The builders won't accept the banks valuation and we don't have 13.5k to bridge the gap. So we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. The contract has a clause that says we can walk away with the deposit if we don't get the loan. How easy or hard that will be remains to be seen.

Now today, the bank informs me that the loan offer actually expired in January and I'd have to re-apply (for a variable rate at that as they are no longer offering fixed). So we don't even have a loan offer.

We told the auctioneer that we'd have to walk away and take the deposit back, and he basically disappeared So he's not agreeing to the reduced offer (which has actually expired anyway) and he's not giving the deposit back or even agreeing to our withdrawal.

So, the way I see it, we can't buy, can't walk away, have lost the chance of a fixed rate mortgage (we applied for a 5yr fixed), spent 5k on a kitchen and now have to move out of our rented accomodation and find somewhere else to rent with the potential cost (if the deal finally goes through) of reneging on that rental agreement.

We're not too happy with our solicitor either so we'll probably be looking to change solicitors soon.

This whole situation has been pretty much a nightmare, we've been unable to sleep properly and are incredibly stressed out by the whole thing.

Can anyone please advise?

until contracts are signed you are entitled to your money back. You nedd to be forceful with the auctioneer. They are trying to bully you into the purchase.
Why did you buy the kitchen with no contracts signed

The contracts were signed long ago, but the builder has passed the finish date, did not supply a kitchen and now it doesn't look like we will be returned the deposit either.

They can try as much as they like to bully us into the purchase, we just don't have the money.

If the clause about not being able to secure a loan is in your contract then I reckon you should be able to pull out.

The loss of €5k for the kitchen is yours.

Stick it on donedeal and sell it second hand.