House sale agreed - buyers using address..

E

emeralds

Registered User
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Not sure what to think of this one.
Situation is that a house has gone sale agreed. Family relative of seller called in last week to pick up some family photographs and a rocking chair that had been left behind in the clearout some weeks back. Found several letters addressed to the prospective buyers when she opened the front door..These letters included correspondance from bank, insurance company and also a personal letter.
Is this a bit odd? Contracts have not been signed yet...
 
It's very odd, indeed.

Have they access to the house? They are obviously using their own name so it's not a question of identity theft.

It could be a sting on some institution, but if they don't have access to the house, they wouldn't be able to respond to the correspondence.

Have they been seeking access to the house?
 
If the buyer's solicitor has drawn down the mortgage then it would be normal for the lender to write to the buyer at their new address and possibly the house insurance company. But I don't understand why that would have happened if contracts haven't been exchanged yet.
 
I just purchased in the last few weeks and there was correspondence sent to my new home before I had signed the contract & moved in also. I was advised by the solicitor to set up the house insurance so that it wouldn't delay the process. I set it up but since I was insuring the new home, they sent all the relevant details out to that house instead of where I was living at the time so there are circumstances where it wouldn't be strange. However, personal letters does sound a little weird.
 
The innocent explanation is that someone sent them a "Welcome to your new home" card and didn't realise that the sale had not gone through yet.
 
I have done this, usually it was because I knew/hoped/expected I would be at the new address by the time the letter arrived,or when I rented a house in between buying.
 
It has been mentioned to the solicitor who is handling the sale. He will take in the post and forward it to them.. He thinks it is cheeky but has heard of it happening before...
 
What is strange though is that contracts have not yet been signed, so either party can walk away at this stage. From the envelopes the letters are from a bank, the Dept of Transport in Shannon (am guessing a tax disc for a car) and car insurance...
 
Is it an area with residential disc parking? You need to have the tax and insurance in place at the address in order to apply for it, which can be challenging. Maybe they are trying to get ahead of themselves on that in order to minimize the time they don't have parking?
 
Bottom line is that they have no right to use the address until contracts and cash have exchanged.
 
This happened to us when we were buyers who were Sale Agreed. The sale didn't go through in the end.

We arranged our insurance through the mortgage lender (NIB at the time). As the 'Property to be insured' is the 'new' house, the stupid bank sent the documentation there.

ALSO, I had to arrange to get a Valuation done using a local estate agent myself. They also stupidly sent the Valuation to the house we had agreed to buy instead of to our home address. This could explain the personal looking letter, it's possibly a Valuation.

So I would imagine the poor buyers know absolutely nothing about it. They are sitting at home fretting about why the insurance and valuation documents haven't shown up....
 

No. No disc parking. Grand big driveway with room for 3 cars!!
 
When we bought our house last year, some friends of ours asked us for the address so they could take a look at it on Daft.

After agreeing a price with the EA and vendor, but before it had officially gone "sale agreed" we went over with a builder to get some refurbishment work priced up.

The vendor was renting the house out and didn't want to tell the tenants until contacts exchanged.

Anyway, the friends of ours had misunderstood the timing of everything and had sent us a Congratulations On Your New Home card to the new address, which we found in the hallway (unopened).

I also think some insurance info got sent to the address by the bank before the contracts had exchanged and the tenants knew the full story.

Embarrassing for us - and possibly the vendor - but down mainly to misunderstandings.
 
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