This house moving is driving us insane

elwistua

Apologies for the rant but here goes.....

We found a house not too far from where we live now, needed abit of work but nothing drastic so we put our house up on the market to test the water and to see what sort of interest we would get. 4 days later we received an asking price offer from a 1st time buyer, oh we thought, we had looked about and found nothing, then as you do, you look at things that you probably would not even consider. Anyway eventually we found a house in a nice quite road, again needs some work and so we put an offer in.
We instructed solicitors, one that was assigned by the legal department of our EA we sold through and instructed them to carry out the sale and purchase, thinking this would speed things up, yeah right. We knew that things probably would not go smoothly as you hear horror stories and this is our first 'sale'. Anyway our solicitor is not to put to finer word on it inept, they seem to make things up as they go along, our EA and our sellers EA can't understand how they work either.
I digress, all the searches etc eventually come back and things start moving again and our solicitors send out the contracts in the post which we have signed and sent back, I thought you had to be in the presence of a solicitor to do that, I maybe wrong? The purchase seems to be fine and going ok, so I tried to call the solicitor to get an update only to get the busy bit and they will ring me back. The sale there still seems to be 'issues' which I thought had been addressed and yesterday I hear they are still issues, so instead of losing my rag and 'f'ing and blinding down the phone I send the solicitor an email. The email was a little scathing but justified, as yet I have heard nothing from the solicitor and apparently our EA has phoned my partner but she could not take the call, I have since tried to get hold of him but he is out and/or busy. Naffed off, you bet, if it was not for the contacts having been signed I would pull the plug on it, I am that 'p'ed off with it all.

Any advice gratefully received, am I expecting too much from this all?

pawpurrs

What are the issues?

dougk_2

I would personally ask to speak to the senior partner at the solictors about your issues and ask them to sort it out promptly. Your solicitor works for you, nobodyelse and they should follow your instructions.

Your only other choice is to sack the solicitors (or at least threten too) and find a form that will act swiftly to move things on.

elwistua

Thanks guys,

The issues are the buyers solicitors are saying they have not had their original questions answered, I replied in writing to our solicitors the very next morning and made sure they were received.
Also we have a private car park to the side of our property which on the deeds it belongs to the property on the local authority plans it does not belong to the property?

There has been an exchange date banded about of 11 November, this is another bone on contention, the top of the chain are selling because of financial issues and are due to be repo'ed at the end of this month and the word was spread up and down the chain that if it all had not happened by this time it would not happen. The top of the chain all of a sudden a pulling the strings, personally I don't mind when it happens its just something else thats getting on our collective nerves!!

I sent the e-mail to the person in charge of the conveyancing department, should I assume they are on holiday or not interested? Maybe a phone call for tomorrow, that will be interesting!

mr.broderick

If the contracts haven't been exchanged you can still pull if you want.

elwistua

Not sure whats going on as far as that goes, depends whereabouts the sun is in the sky as to whether they have or not, the last I heard they hadn't so perhaps that is my first question to the cheif conveyancer tomorrow. Am I right in thinking that we should have signed the contracts in front of a solicitor though? If it is not is it legally binding we also have not paid a deposit, our solicitor was going for the exchange and completion on the same day but I have been told by our sellers EA that this simply can't and won't happen?

LittleTinker

You seem to be getting very worked up about "issues" but yet don't really seem to be in the know as to what is actually going on.

The best advice I can give you is to familiarise yourself with your sale, purchase, solicitor and law, then calm down a bit and then instruct your solicitor accordingly.

Good Luck

mrsS_2

contracts do not have to be signed in front of a solicitor any more. You just have to provide all the usual FSA stuff like passports and gas bills.

have you had to provide any money for a deposit on exchange?

mrsc_4

We have signed our sale contract and returned this by post, but we are still not in a postion to sign on purchase contract. As someone above said I don't think this needs to be witnessed any more (personally I am happy to never meet our Solicitor). We are also frustrated by our moving process, no one seems to update us.

Because contracts are signed this doens't mean they are legally binding, you can still pull out after exchange but you would liable for loss of deposits by other parties.

If we don't get satisfactory answers regarding our purchase then we are going to be pulling out in the next few weeks regardless of money spent and that contracts are signed on our sale.

Julysea

Sorry to hear all this, we've been ahving an equally annoying time of it, and ours has been going on since June! You definitely need to get some answers from both your EA and solicitor - if I were you, I'd go into each office and sort it out face to face. Things are defintiely easier with you, your EA and sol all singing from the same song sheet!