A progress diary from a FTB

Lunary

homehunter wrote: »

All parties exchanged this afternoon! What a relief! Not home and dry til the keys are in our mitts of course but this is a big step forward, 3rd Nov can't come fast enough!!:D:D:beer:

That's great news Congratulations At least you can breathe a bit easier now! Roll on the 3rd!

homehunter

Tell me about it! No plans this weekend so might start on some packing and sorting things out....how are you doing, Lunary?

intex

homehunter wrote: »

Our lives will be on hold if we can't purchase and we lose £17k!!! Wish me luck, I'm calling the solicitor first thing tomorrow, to see if we can strengthen this chain.....we need this exchange to happen....

Why do the solicitors need a deposit? It is not possible to just pay them the full amount of the house when required?

Also, was losing 17K a definite possibilty? What grounds would they have for keeping the deposit? (I am a first time buyer and the thought of losing 17K to a solicitor would seriously worry me!)

bbr92

Hi,
We are also FTB and had an over accepted on Sept 5th 09. Everything has been done, mortgage approved, surveys etc etc. However the sellers solicitor only sent the F&F document and the various other documents last week (6 weeks this took them). I have spoken to the seller who is in no chain and neither are we and both parties want to move asap.

Can anyone give any indication how much longer things could take, would you expect us to be in by Christmas?

Thanks and sorry for hi jacking this thread!!

homehunter

intex wrote: »

Why do the solicitors need a deposit? It is not possible to just pay them the full amount of the house when required?

Also, was losing 17K a definite possibilty? What grounds would they have for keeping the deposit? (I am a first time buyer and the thought of losing 17K to a solicitor would seriously worry me!)

I think that may have been me flapping a bit. :rolleyes: After that message, I called the solicitor and she said that the 10% deposit is in the solicitor's (her) deposit account and it is completely safe - we get it back should anything go wrong. If we pull out after exchange of contracts, then we risk losing it, because we've breached the contract.

I'm fairly sure it is standard practice to transfer 5 or 10% of the overall cost of the property for exchange to take place. Then on completion we have to transfer the rest of our deposit (just over 20% in total).

homehunter

bbr92 wrote: »

Hi,
We are also FTB and had an over accepted on Sept 5th 09. Everything has been done, mortgage approved, surveys etc etc. However the sellers solicitor only sent the F&F document and the various other documents last week (6 weeks this took them). I have spoken to the seller who is in no chain and neither are we and both parties want to move asap.

Can anyone give any indication how much longer things could take, would you expect us to be in by Christmas?

Thanks and sorry for hi jacking this thread!!

Hmm, it should not take that long, the F&F docs were done before we'd even got the surveys done! Our offer was accepted towards the end of August and TBH ours has taken a bit longer then we had hoped, but we exchanged last week and should complete on 3rd Nov. You ought to give your solicitors a bit of a rocket up the.... - oh, yes, you should be in by christmas, if there are no outstanding issues? We had/have a few but even with those getting ironed out, and more of a chain than you, we're nearly there...

Lunary

homehunter wrote: »

Tell me about it! No plans this weekend so might start on some packing and sorting things out....how are you doing, Lunary?

Hope you got a decent amount of packing done No real news on our end, although the vendor is looking at properties today and the EA has told us she is widening her search for a place. EA said that she is much more confident about the sale, and confessed that she had her doubts about the sale going through at first! So we have our fingers crossed on this end, but we will still wait until we hear that she has an offer accepted on a place/or has found a place to rent before we go ahead with the mortgage valuation survey. I just hope things start to move along quickly as we would still love to complete before the end of the year!

homehunter

Lunary wrote: »

Hope you got a decent amount of packing done No real news on our end, although the vendor is looking at properties today and the EA has told us she is widening her search for a place. EA said that she is much more confident about the sale, and confessed that she had her doubts about the sale going through at first! So we have our fingers crossed on this end, but we will still wait until we hear that she has an offer accepted on a place/or has found a place to rent before we go ahead with the mortgage valuation survey. I just hope things start to move along quickly as we would still love to complete before the end of the year!

Well, most of our stuff is still in boxes from the last time we moved (just over a year ago from a rented flat which got repo'd) - we never unpacked because there was nowhere to put anything, and it just all felt a bit temporary - it's never really felt like home! Are you thinking of giving your vendor a deadline for when you want to complete? I'm assuming you've got an expiry date on your mortgage, and you want to avoid stamp duty....I know we do

homehunter

Hey, wonder if the OP is still reading this thread...would love to know how things are going. Basically, because I'm nosey

Anyway, just posted this on the other forum I've kept up with (FTB Timeline Diary)...

"Well, yesterday I did a CHAPS transfer to our solicitor's account for the rest of the deposit plus their fees. That should have arrived by close of play yesterday! I am sitting in a half-packed house - it'll be a busy weekend .... BT have been called to transfer the phoneline and broadband to new property. Tip: get your seller to call first to transfer or stop their service, as it really speeds things up! Council tax sorted out, just a quick phonecall. Water bills being sorted. Changed a few addresses here and there.

We complete and move in on the 3rd, so -1 week to go! i can't believe it :T"

olbigead

hello all,

yes...still alive!!

I had a bit of a mare over the last month or so, but it seems to be sorted now. I'll fill you in...are you sitting comfortably!!

Mid August - my solicitor sends all the inquiries on the contract to their solicitor. I didn't hear anything for near on 4 weeks (despite constant bugging). When they did finally respond, they said they had lost all the inquiries so we had to submit them again...i was NOT happy!!

Mid/Late September- my solicitor then comes back to me to explain that they were concerned about a part of the deeds that said the house was subject to a Management Company (even though it's a freehold house). This resulted in me frantically spending 2 weeks researching, talking to neighbours etc to find out that the housing company that built the house went bust in 1984 (before the houses were complete). Every house in the street has been sold before and all gone through no problems. My solicitor understandably had to also protect the interest of the mortgage company and the money they were putting into it so didn't want any nasty surprises!! So with Dear Stalker on, pipe lit and violin in tow, I went on my Sherlock Holmes mission. Contacting companies house, the liquidators, London Gazette etc to gather evidence that they had gone bust.

During all this time, the vendors decided to put pressure on me to complete (even though the ball had only been in our court for a week compared to their 6!!). I was having none of it, politely but firmly telling them they were not going to pressure me into a quick sale without going through things thoroughly!

So - come early October, my solicitor was satisfied and things could proceed.

We exchanged contracts today and are completing on Friday!!! (fingers crossed).

It's been a harrowing 3 months. But the excitement is kicking in now...double glazing, ceiling skimming and decorating awaits!!