Buying a house, having problems with sketchy real estate agent, need advice!

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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My wife was told that a lot of other people were interested in the house, and was pressured to sign a document without me or or a lawyer present. We found out later that no one else was actually interested in the house. What she signed meant that if we backed out we would be responsible for 11% of the total house value (about 1.2mil). Another thing we discovered was that the house needed work, and the repair work that was supposed to have been done was not. All in all, I believe we were deliberately mislead by the real estate agent.

The only way we can get our money back is if we don’t qualify for the loan. However, we were already approved for an 85% loan. We paid 10% but still owe 5%. Our plan was to take out an additional loan for this money, but now it looks like we might not be able to do this because we already have one loan and because I’m a foreigner. The real estate agent told us initially that we would have no trouble getting this other loan (another lie), and if we knew we would have any troubles we would never have gone forward in the first place.

So now we’re in a situation where if we back out we lose a lot of money, but we don’t have enough to go forward. I spoke to a lawyer today, and while he said it looks like the agent mislead us, we don’t have any proof. He suggested contacting a few local consumer protection agencies who can act as mediators on our behalf. They don’t have any legal authority but might be able to help us.

The only other thing I can think of is to get disqualified for the loan by claiming I am no longer working. While we were approved for the loan we didn’t sign the papers yet, and I could simply tell them that I don’t have a job anymore and the loan will hopefully fall through. However, how to do this without actually leaving my job? Take a temporary leave of absence? Obtain a letter saying that my contract might not be renewed, in which case I can still work but there will be some kind of proof that I won’t be working in the future?

I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize my actual job, and worse comes to worst I can beg family and friends for the money. But just wanted to see what you guys thought.

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Have you, at this point, handed over any money?
EDIT: It appears that you have. How much?

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10% of total house value

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If you’re 100% you’ll get that 10% back e.g. it’s actually in escrow and not with the realtor then try to talk to both your boss and the bank to find a way to get the loan turned down. Is it a loan or a mortgage? In the unlikely event mortgages here work the same way as the west then the bank would usually refuse if the house is seen to be overvalued and requiring work otherwise you would be putting yourself into negative equity.

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It’s a mortgage. The bank looked at the house and I guess decided it was okay. And they approved us for a loan. The only way to get our money back is if our loan application is rejected. If I suddenly lost my job, I’m pretty sure (not 100% but fairly certain) that they would have to deny the loan. It’s a tricky situation because I can’t tell the bank I don’t want the loan; I need to make it look like I still want the loan and the house, but I simply can’t go forward because I no longer have a job. I want to talk to my company about it but I don’t want to do anything that would actually jeopardize my job or be construed as me trying to do something illegal.

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Not legal advice but from experience. It’s fairly normal here to expect someone to put money down when they are serious about buying, 11% sounds high, but if that was what was in the contract, that’s what it is, being unfair would need to be contended in a court.

which means what is in the contract your wife signed is all important, hard to say without knowing what was agreed to and what was not, but these things need to be looked at again and again until you clearly understand what you are signing. If you verbally agreed to some maintenance to the house, and it wasn’t in the contract, sorry, it doesn’t count.

Again, details are important, like where exactly did the 10% you paid go. But if the deal breaks down because you can’t pay, it will be considered your fault.

Options are. 1. Explain to real estate and home owner the situation and hope they don’t roast you. Downside to this is even in a best case scenario they will want to be compensated some, and you give them a heads up to try and put a hold on whatever money you already put down (if you even have control of that now).

Option 2. Go the legal route, some judges are sympathetic, but i doubt in even a best case scenario they would not agree to levy some penalty.

Option 3. The one you seem to be going for is to try and get all cash back and pretend like it never happened. It’s not like you are the first people to be in this spot, this one might backfire the worst of all because this is the reason people put all these safeguards in place, to avoid selling to someone who reneges on a deal.

Option 4. Go though with the deal. IMO, probably the best option if you can do it. You are halfway there and have exposed your cash and it’s backed up with a signed contract. Banks will loan you, even if one rejected you, businesses usually open at a certain bank, Im sure its the same for you, see if you cant talk to the boss and ask him to put a word in at the bank, where you are a customer, explain the situation, I think you might find they will be on board with the idea.

edit/ just to add things change, what was ok 6 months ago for a bank, is not ok today, at the time of speaking the estate agent may have been telling the truth, not so long ago banks were bending over backwards to lend money, it tightened up recently. As did lending rules for houses.

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Do you have a realtor helping you with the buying process, i.e. your realtor not the sellers realtor? If not it may be worthwhile to find one and explain the situation, offer him a reasonable sum if he can get you out of the predicament. I’m sure there are numerous ways to get out of the contract for someone in the know.

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I faced something similar years ago. I would sit down with your wife and first establish if this purchase is really what you want. If so, I would find a way to make it happen. You mentioned you could borrow from family if you had to. Just go ahead and do this. It’s not the most unusual thing to need help purchasing your first home. Then go about paying them back after the purchase.

If you really don’t want the house (I mean don’t want it and not a buyer’s remorse thing) then start looking into ways to get out of it. But go through step 1 above first before freaking out about step 2.

We really did want our apartment. Now, I’m so happy we made it happen. It’s appreciated quite a bit. More recently, we bought a very small apartment in Hualien. This time we made sure that the contract included various clauses that would have helped your situation. Live and learn.

Definitely don’t let this ruin the relationship.

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Our realtor is also the seller’s realtor. However they seem to be much more on the side of seller. We spoke to a lawyer and he said we were pretty much stuck.