Akademik

n.

As a house buyer, reducing a previously agreed-on price for a house just prior to signing the contract.

—gazunder v.

—gazunderer n.

Remember, if you complete your transaction on bad terms, or twist the vendors' arms with a bit of last-minute gazundering, you may find yourself moving into a house in which everything has been stripped out.

—Christopher Middleton, " Confessions of an estate agent: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyadvice/8611016/Confessions-of-an-estate-agent.html," The Telegraph, July 2, 2011

Estate agents are reporting a return of gazundering as falling house prices give buyers the upper hand.

Up to 25 per cent of purchasers are attempting to renegotiate the price downwards at the last minute.

—Eleanor Harding, " Gazundering is back as falling house prices give buyers the upper hand: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319381/Gazundering-falling-house-prices-buyers-upper-hand.html," The Daily Mail, October 11, 2010

"The deposit allows both sides to show their good intentions," says Caroline Lonsdale, Secretary to the Standing Committee. "It works both ways and will help reduce gazumping and gazundering (whereby the purchaser puts pressure on the vendor to accept a lower price)."

—" Investors Chronicle, Volume 79: http://books.google.com/books?id=O-odAQAAMAAJ&q=gazundering," Financial Times Business Publications, April 1, 1987 (approx)

Gazundering is in the Oxford English Dictionary, although with an earliest citation date of November 18, 1988, so this is an antedating. If you're scratching your head over gazumping, it refers to a house seller either raising a previously agreed-on price for a house just prior to signing the contract, or reneging on an offer in order to accept a higher price from another buyer. This sense of the word dates to 1971, but the more general sense of the verb gazump — to swindle — goes back to 1928.

Yet another gaz- neologism, this one fresh from the lexical mint, is gazanging, and it refers to the seller of a house backing out of the deal at the last minute:

After gazumping and gazundering, the property market has identified a new danger for would-be homeowners: gazanging. Volatile house prices and a lack of available property is driving the phenomenon of sellers pulling out at the last minute.

—Mark King, "Gazanging — the new menace facing potential homebuyers," The Guardian, September 19, 2011

Presumably whoever coined this was unfamiliar with the older (Victorian?) gazunder, or chamber pot (so called because it goes under the bed).