You signed an agreement to sell, paid part of the price, and the seller has now stopped answering — because prices have risen, because a better offer arrived, or because a family member has objected.

The law does provide a remedy. The agreement to sell does not by itself transfer ownership, but it creates an enforceable right to have the sale completed, and the courts will order it in appropriate cases.

Whether you get that order depends on a small number of things you can control, and on how quickly you move.

Two remedies, and they are different

Specific performance — an order compelling the seller to complete the sale and execute the conveyance. This is what you want if the property matters to you.

Damages, or recovery of what you paid, with compensation. The fallback where performance is no longer possible, or where the court considers it inappropriate.

Specific performance is a discretionary remedy under the Specific Relief Act 1877. The court is not obliged to grant it, and how the buyer has conducted themselves matters a great deal.

Readiness and willingness decides most cases

This is the heart of it, and where most buyers lose.

You must show that you were, and have remained, ready and willing to perform your side of the bargain. In practice that means being able to show you had the money and were prepared to pay it, at the times the contract required.

What builds that record:

  • Payment through banking channels, not cash, so payments are evidenced
  • Written demands to the seller to complete, sent at the contractual time
  • Evidence of funds — bank statements showing you held the balance
  • Attending to complete where the contract fixed a date and place, and recording that you did
  • Prompt action when the seller went quiet

What destroys it: cash payments nobody can trace, silence for a year after the completion date, and having spent the purchase money on something else.

Move quickly, for three reasons

Limitation. Suits for specific performance are subject to a limitation period that runs from the date fixed for performance, or from when the buyer had notice of refusal. It is shorter than people assume and it is applied strictly.

Onward sale. A seller who is refusing to complete with you is frequently negotiating with someone else. Once the property is transferred to a purchaser without notice, your position weakens considerably.

Evidence. Witnesses to the agreement and the payments become harder to produce as time passes.

Stop the property moving

Filing the suit is not enough on its own. Two protective steps matter:

An injunction restraining the seller from alienating, transferring or creating third-party rights in the property pending the suit. Apply at the outset, not later.

Registration of the pending litigation so that the world has notice of your claim. A purchaser who buys property that is the subject of a pending suit takes it subject to the result — the doctrine of lis pendens — and recording the proceedings makes that real rather than theoretical.

Buyers who file a suit and take neither step routinely find the property sold and registered to a third party months later.

What the seller will argue

Expect some combination of:

  • The agreement was not concluded — only negotiations, or subject to conditions
  • You were not ready and willing — the most common and most effective defence
  • You breached first, by failing to pay an instalment on time
  • The agreement was a loan security, not a genuine sale
  • The signatory lacked authority, particularly where a power of attorney was used. See giving a power of attorney from abroad
  • Other co-owners did not consent, where the property is jointly held
  • Delay and limitation

Most of these are answered by the documentary record — which is why how you behaved before the dispute matters more than how forcefully you argue afterwards.

If you are the seller

There are legitimate reasons a sale does not complete: the buyer never paid, the buyer wants to renegotiate after a fall in prices, or the "agreement" was subject to conditions never satisfied.

Do not simply stop responding. Put your position in writing, state why you say the buyer is in default, and — if you intend to treat the agreement as at an end — say so clearly and deal with any money received. Silence is read as refusal, and refusal starts the buyer's clock in a way that helps them.

Practical advice

Pay through the bank, always. Record every payment against the agreement. Write to the seller at the contractual completion date, even if you expect no reply. Act within weeks of a refusal, not months. And apply for an injunction when you file, not after the property has moved.

Before you enter into an agreement at all, investigate title — a seller who cannot convey clean title cannot be ordered to. See checking title before buying property in Karachi.

How the firm can help

We act for buyers and sellers in specific performance matters: suits to compel completion, injunctions restraining alienation, registration of pending proceedings, and claims for recovery of consideration and damages where performance is no longer possible.

We also draft agreements to sell that make the position clear — payment schedule, completion date, consequences of default — which is the intervention that avoids the litigation altogether.

If a seller has gone quiet, contact the firm promptly. Every week of delay makes the case harder.