Urgent - Exchange Of Contracts!!!

ARB78

I have sold my house and agreed to purchase another property. The chain is simple as my buyers are coming from rented accommodation and my seller is moving in with friends.

We are all ready to exchange but my seller's solicitor is acting silly at the last minute! My sellers are an old couple who are going their separate ways quite amicably. She has moved to America, he's staying in the UK. She flew over to sign contracts last month and instructed everyone to proceed to completion.

Now my seller's solicitors is insisting that she still needs at least an email from her from America to confirm exchange of contracts! Her husband has agreed no problem (he's the only one living in the property) and he tells me at the point of signing contracts her wife made it clear to their solicitor that she was happy for matters to proceed from here on. Her husband has been keeping her up to date so far but she's now gone on holiday.

It is apparently quite hard to get hold of her in the next few days as she's on holiday. WHAT CAN WE DO??? Can we not exchange without her consent, even if she signed contracts and told people to go ahead?

The whole chain is losing sleep as completion is less than a week away!
Advice much appreciated, many thanks.

Bargain_Annie

I'm not an expert, but I don't believe that the solicitor needs to check with her again - she's signed the contract, this is her confirmation that she's willing to proceed, particularly if she made that clear when she came over. It's so frustrating when you're this close to exhange - and it feels like they're deliberately making things more difficult. Hope it gets sorted really quickly.

Debras_Angel

I know when we exchanged contracts we didn't need to return to do anything and instructed the solicitor to complete for us. So it's sounds like this solicitor is being pig headed.

The hubby needs to put the pressure on me thinks.

Good Luck with it all!

Cheers

Debs

clairehi

ARB78 wrote:

I have sold my house and agreed to purchase another property. The chain is simple as my buyers are coming from rented accommodation and my seller is moving in with friends.

We are all ready to exchange but my seller's solicitor is acting silly at the last minute! My sellers are an old couple who are going their separate ways quite amicably. She has moved to America, he's staying in the UK. She flew over to sign contracts last month and instructed everyone to proceed to completion.

Now my seller's solicitors is insisting that she still needs at least an email from her from America to confirm exchange of contracts! Her husband has agreed no problem (he's the only one living in the property) and he tells me at the point of signing contracts her wife made it clear to their solicitor that she was happy for matters to proceed from here on. Her husband has been keeping her up to date so far but she's now gone on holiday.

It is apparently quite hard to get hold of her in the next few days as she's on holiday. WHAT CAN WE DO??? Can we not exchange without her consent, even if she signed contracts and told people to go ahead?

The whole chain is losing sleep as completion is less than a week away!
Advice much appreciated, many thanks.

what a nightmare!

what does your solicitor say - does he/she think the other solicitor is being reasonable?

if not, then the seller (hubby) needs to kick his solicitor into touch. as his client, he is the only one who can force the issue. tell him to put a rocket under him. if he wont, why's he stalling?

sometimes I wonder if these people actually want to get paid or not!