Need to exchange by Thursday to make Scottish offer - help!

farnishk

Hello everyone, I know I may not get a silver bullet answer here, but need to get at least a crumb of comfort because of something that is driving me towards depression.

We accepted an offer on our property a couple of months ago - the buyers are really nice, really want to move in and we have even had them round for coffee. No problems there. They are selling to a first time buyer who doesn't want to communicate with them directly, and their solicitor seems unwilling to communicate with anyone either.

Our buyers accepted an offer on their property back in November 2009, so we were happy to enter this short chain due to the advanced state of their sale (or so we thought).

We went to Scotland to look at a few properties and fell in love with one. The sellers really liked us, but received two other Notes of Interest (in Scotland this is a formal process) so had to go to a closing date and sealed bids offer. They set the closing date for this Friday, 19th March, which was unusually far off (3 weeks) so that we would have a good chance of making a formal, unconditional offer. Without exchange of contracts then we can only make a conditional offer, which will probably not be accepted for good reason. It is usually only a week after an offer is accepted in Scotland that the Missives are completed and the offer is binding.

We notified our solicitors about this date as soon as we knew of it, and requested a completion date of 18th March at the latest. Our solicitors, and our buyers' solicitors said this should not be a problem as all paperwork apart from the contracts themselves had been filed and all mortgages offered (we don't have a mortgage).

We have signed our contract, our buyer has signed our Sellers contract and (as far as I know) our buyer has signed their Sellers contract. I am almost certain that the first time buyer has not signed a contract.

Two days before we have to complete, the first time buyers' solicitors are still not talking to anyone - our own solicitors are even going to try and break protocol to speak to the first time buyers' solicitors, which I am still waiting on. Our estate agent is trying to get information through our buyers' agents and getting nowhere, and my tinnitus is driving me mad (it gets worse with stress). I am close to depression, and my children are very upset as they love the house we want to buy and know there is nothing I can do.

Has anyone else had this experience, and is there anything more I can do to ensure an exchange, bearing in mind that everything rests on exchange happening by Thursday.

Many thanks

Keith

googler

I can't help with forcing an exchange down the chain from you, but even if there's other notes of interest on the Scottish property, the others may not offer at the closing date, so even if you have to make it a conditional offer, make it anyway. The others may have lost interest with the long closing date.

If closing is at mid-day on 19th, you have until around 11.00am that day to decide - your solicitor should be capable of putting an offer letter together and faxing it to the seller's solicitor within half an hour.

It's perfectly possible for exchange of missives to take longer than a week. As long as the seller's solicitor and your solicitor (who hopefully is a Scottish solicitor, and knows what format the offer should be in?) are in contact with each other and know where each other stand, you should be able to make it work.

farnishk

Thank you, googler, that's really helpful. The number of Notes went down by one between us seeing it and the closing date being set, so you never know. Yes, we have a Scottish solicitor who is very good and will write a letter on our behalf if we have to make a conditional offer, but I still don't hold out much hope.

Cissi

farnishk wrote: »

Has anyone else had this experience, and is there anything more I can do to ensure an exchange, bearing in mind that everything rests on exchange happening by Thursday.

I really feel for you - this is all incredibly stressful! Never bought in Scotland and ours was a different scenario, but still, we were in a somewhat similar position last June. Very short chain, just us (in a rented house at the time) and the vendors who were moving to an empty house. For various reasons exchange had to happen by a certain day, just 3 weeks after our offer was accepted. Initially it was to do with the vendors not losing the house that they were buying as they had already lost a buyer and were putting a lot of pressure on us. We literally jumped through hoops to get everything done in time, including specialist surveys etc that became necessary after the full structural survey. We were ready at midday of the planned exchange date - and at this point the vendors suddenly started to stall. Their solicitor told ours that there was suddenly no way that he could exchange before the following week.

We suspected (correctly as it turned out) that the vendors had had a higher last-minute offer and wanted time to consider this over the weekend. Even though we loved the house, we decided to play hardball. Waiting until the following week would have meant that we missed the deadline for giving notice on our rented house that month. We told the vendors that if we didn't exchange that day as agreed, completion would have to be delayed by a month (which would have meant them losing their purchase, so basically the whole deal would have been off). This was a calculated risk and it worked out - at 4 pm I got a call from our solicitor, saying that we'd miraculously exchanged :T

I guess all of this is a long-winded way of saying that if everything truly rests on exchanging by Thursday, then you have nothing to lose by making this clear, both to your buyers and to their buyer (if you can get hold of them) - threaten to pull out, loud and clear. If they're serious, that should get things going!

farnishk

Incredible turnaround in just a couple of hours: it turns out that the people at the bottom of the chain had already signed, and everyone was just sitting on their a*ses doing nothing. Thanks to my solicitor going to the bottom of the chain (M Reynolds and Partners in Grays, Essex, in case anyone wants a recommendation) everything suddenly happened, and we have exchanged!

:-)

(Cissi, looks like solicitors can do things really quickly, they just have to be switched on - glad to hear everything went well for you)

Cissi

Woohoo! And while I was typing my long-winded reply too :rotfl:

Congratulations! Good luck with the house in Scotland, and I hope you'll be as happy with it as we are in ours :T:T:T

googler

Good News. Best of luck at the closing date, let us know how you get on.

farnishk

Thanks, will do. Might need to prepare the crying smiley, but who knows...