10% deposit on house query

M

Moneypit

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Hi, we've paid a booking deposit of €6k on a house and received a standard enough letter with proposed dates for closing/signing of contracts and a request for a further 10% (€52,500), what I'm wondering is ... obviously we can arrange for a bridging loan but would prefer not to as it's so costly, we're selling our house and have an offer in which more than likely we will accept next week, they're not selling a house so can move quick, can we use their 10% deposit to us as the 10% deposit to our vendor? Or is it acceptable to try and ask our vendor's solicitor to either reduce the % deposit or do away with altogether?
Thanks.
 
You can always ask the vendor if they will forego the deposit but I doubt you'll have much luck!! The money itself is a signal to the vendor that you are serious about the purchase, and will allay any fears they might have that you'll pull out of the deal. Having said that you could ask your solicitor to negotiate a lesser amount and they might agree to this.

You suggest using your purchasers' deposit to pay your vendor, but how would you feel if your purchaser asked if you'd forego the deposit?
 
We are closing the sale of our house next week. Our purchasers paid €5,000 at the 'sale agreed' stage and on signing contracts their solicitor asked our solicitor to see would we accept a further €20,000 as the contract deposit (it should have been over €40,000) and we accepted that as we know it is difficult (we had to borrow our own deposit for our new house from the credit union). Anyway basically I didn't care that it wasn't the full 10% once I knew it was a large enough figure to know they were committed, so my advice to you would be to try and do the same thing - ask your solicitor to negotiate a lower contract deposit.
 
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