At what stage is the draft contract drawn up?

vet8

Doozergirl wrote: »

It's arrogant when you expect other people not to "faff" and to treat house buying as flippantly as you do. Why on earth should house buying be a 'risk' for people to take? Accusing peope of faffing in the first place is arrogant and being unable to appreciate the protection people want when it's 'caveat emptor' is also arrogant. Presumably you're not offering the house at a knock down price and they are well within their rights to check that everything is fine before they move in... it is ultimately a MSE thing to do because if they find anything wrong with your perfect house it makes it your problem, not theirs.

And yes of course the EA will nod their head and agree with you when you're having a whinge to them. Why would they bother arguing? In fact, quite seriously, why would I?

You are the one who is arrogant here. I have never said our house is perfect, far from it, it needs work doing to it, but it has revealed no problems in all these extra surveys.

I have never whinged at the EA, why should you be so arrogant as to think I have.

And the buyers are getting the house at a real bargain price, why do you arrogantly assume they are not? They are paying WAY under the asking price, which is why I do not understand why they are faffing about and why I am so hacked off with that.

Briefly, Buyer A made a good offer, but his house was not sold. Buyer B made a derisory offer which we turned down flat, they then increased it slightly twice and in the end we accepted Buyer B's offer on the sole proviso that everything went through quickly. If I had known they would fanny around like this we could have waited for Buyer A's much much better offer. We have made it very clear that we have no intention of lowering the price any further so I can see no point in them going through this unneccessary process. They are spending a lot of money on these tests. We will not lower the price if they find problems, so all they can do is drop out, in which case all their money will have been wasted.

As an example of the stupidity of all this, the surveyor recommended they have a wall-ties inspection. The man turned up, I told him we have cavity wall insulation, which the surveyor somehow missed in his 3 hour survey. The man was therefore unable to stick his camera in the wall, so he just walked around and looked at the house for about 15 minutes. He said everything looked in very good condition, the bricks were fine and there was no sign of any wall tie damage at all. Could not the original surveyor have done that?

vet8

GDB2222 wrote: »

Every survey I have had has recommended further tests, eg drain and electricity tests. It's just put in to limit the surveyor's liability, and my impression is that normally people don't bother.

Exactly, normal people do not bother with all this money wasting stuff. It is just the surveyor trying to cover his back and maybe drum up extra work for his friends.;)

GDB2222

I would certainly be interested in whether buyer A is in a position to proceed. I'll be howled down for saying that. "You've accepted an offer, etc.." However, what you said was that you acepted their offer subject to them exchanging within 4 weeks. They haven't, so you're under no moral obligation to continue with them.

dubsey

I get loads of files with 'exchange deadline 28 days' on them and very rarely do they achieve that. Average normal freehold sales with FTBs or someone with nothing to sell are taking approx 6-8 weeks. Doozergirl is spot on with the leasehold, management companies are a law unto themselves. Once draft contracts go out (this can take two weeks as your solicitor will have needed all your ID and initial payment on account to send them)the buyers solicitor will go through them and raise their enquiries, if they have any.

It's majorly frustrating how vendors all scream (sometimes literally) that their buyer is dragging their heels. The first thing I will always check, is if they have a mortgage involved, because if they do, the solicitor will also have to adhere to any conditions within the mortgage offer and satisfy the lender, not your buyer. So even if your buyer said I don't want searches/enquiries/specialists etc tough, the lender will do, they can only bypass this if they are buying cash. Vendors also wrongly assume that the buyers have asked for things like timber and damp or electrical reports, it's often that the lender has said they won't go to offer until the solicitor has had sight of them and confirmed it's all ok.

As for staying on the market, I have some vendors who insist they will remain on the market and often the buyers will withdraw (had one yesterday and stupidly the property has been on the market over two years, this is the first offer they have had and are concerned about it falling through, it has now, the condition of offer was off the market and they refused). Going back on the market once the process has started is also a risk, you could lose your buyer and not sell, or get another buyer who takes the same amount of time to get to exchange simply because, unfortunately there is a process and that's just how it is.

I would keep in constant contact with your agent and solicitor for progress updates and just keep stating that you would like an exchange as quickly as possible.

By constant I mean every few days not every few hours!

vet8

dubsey wrote: »

The first thing I will always check, is if they have a mortgage involved, because if they do, the solicitor will also have to adhere to any conditions within the mortgage offer and satisfy the lender, not your buyer. So even if your buyer said I don't want searches/enquiries/specialists etc tough, the lender will do, they can only bypass this if they are buying cash. Vendors also wrongly assume that the buyers have asked for things like timber and damp or electrical reports, it's often that the lender has said they won't go to offer until the solicitor has had sight of them and confirmed it's all ok.

In our case I know it is the buyer who has asked for all these extra surveys. The mortgage surveyor came around a week later, he was only there for 15 minutes max. and seemed very happy. In fact, since they are lending loads of money, I was surprised how cursory his inspection was.

They had their mortgage offer two days later. It was the surveyor who was paid by the buyers who suggested all these extra surveys. I am just surprised that the buyers have fallen for it.