Conditions for withdrawal: how to invoke them in time

An ontbindende voorwaarde, a condition for withdrawal, is your way out if something falls through, your mortgage for instance. You have to invoke it yourself, and on time: you notify the seller before the date set in your purchase agreement and include the documents it asks for. Miss that, or do it too late, and you are still bound by the purchase.

Find the two dates in your purchase agreement

Get out your purchase agreement and find two things: when the condition expires, and when the seller has to have received your notice and the documents that go with it. Those dates can be different, so put both in your calendar.

With a financing condition, a later deadline for submitting your rejection letter does not automatically buy you more time to arrange the mortgage.

Work back from the earlier of the two. Your mortgage adviser needs your income documents, the lender needs time to decide, and the valuation means a valuer has to have visited the property. Ask your adviser which step takes longest and when your documents need to be with him.

What you need to supply when you invoke it

With a financing condition, the national model agreement usually calls for a written rejection and evidence that you made a genuine effort to arrange the financing. Your own contract can go further and ask for extra documents, or for more than one rejection. So read your own clause rather than assuming the standard applies.

Ask your mortgage adviser how the lender issues a written rejection and how many days that takes. Your adviser telling you it is not going to work out is not the same as the written rejection your contract requires.

Keep your application, the documents and your notice to the seller together. Check your purchase agreement for who the notice has to go to and how you can prove it arrived. Then you have it all to hand if anyone queries it later.

Not every condition is automatically included

Financing, NHG and a structural survey are separate conditions, each with its own requirements. With a survey condition, a repair figure and specialist follow-up investigation can come into it.

A condition covering the sale of your own home, or a permit, has to be agreed separately. Check your purchase agreement: if it is not in there, it does not apply, however much it came up in negotiations.

Running late? Ask for more time before the deadline

If you can see you are not going to make the date, ask the seller for more time before the current deadline. He does not have to agree to a new one, so ask for a specific date rather than vaguely for more time.

Get the new date confirmed in writing, and make sure it says the seller has agreed to it. A general assurance that it will all be fine does not change the date in your contract.

A missed deadline can cost money

If you miss the date and then fail to complete the purchase, the penalty clauses in your contract can apply. Under the model agreement you first get a formal notice of default and a period to put things right. After that the seller chooses between enforcing the purchase and dissolving it.

Those figures show the possible scale. They do not mean a penalty follows automatically every time a date is missed. What applies in your case is in your own purchase agreement, so ask your estate agent or a lawyer to read the penalty clause and tell you how long you would get to put things right.

How this differs from the cooling-off period

As a private buyer you can withdraw within the statutory cooling-off period without giving a reason. After that you need a condition you agreed on, valid grounds, and the evidence your contract asks for. The two periods run alongside each other and each has its own end date, so track them in the same calendar.

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