Selling/buying - how often to "pester" people?

shar46y

Another question from me as I am in constant anxiety as a first time seller (and second time buyer). I hate the feeling of being in limbo due to having no real idea of when the sale of our flat will finally be complete and consequently when we will be completing on our purchase.

It is so stressful because we will be moving to a different city and so we have to make a lot of complicated arrangements like handing in notice on my job, on the DDs' nursery, arranging removals and storage...:(

Anyway I guess this is a question with no straightforward answer, but how often is reasonable to phone/email our agents, solicitor, mortgage provider etc? On the one hand I want to push things along (especially the sale) but on the other, I don't want to annoy these people and interrupt their work in case they end up pushing our case to the bottom of the pile???

Gwhiz

As many times as it takes to get answers.

If you are hearing nothing I'd be calling at least once a week to your solicitor and then the agent if the solicitor says he's hearing nothing from the other side.

sonastin

Try to frame your questions so you get a timescale for each activity. If you know that the thing the solicitor is working on won't be ready until next thursday, you know there is no point in mithering until next thursday and you can put it out of your head until then. If they are evasive or can't give you an idea when they'll have finished the thing they are doing, that's a green light to phone for an update as often as you feel necessary for your peace of mind.

dizziblonde

I would ring up our solicitor a couple of times a week toward the end of things and check what they were waiting for from us and the vendor, then ring the estate agent to tell them what we were waiting for (our delays generally originated from the fact the vendor's solicitors were prats) and ask them to push it along via the vendor that "this is what we're sticking on now, can you push your solicitor to return x y or z."

Once I started doing that - the purchase suddenly mysteriously started moving again...

The estate agent did a heck of a lot of moving things along - but like I say, our vendor's solicitors were chronic.

hazyjo

The EAs we're buying through have been more help than anyone. They're providing far more info than our solicitor, and are chasing people and getting things moving. If things had been left to our solicitor and the vendors' solicitor, I doubt we'd be as far ahead as we are now (she says after 5 long months!). We're chasing once or twice a week, depending on what they're waiting for. Was daily at one point. If we're told 'two weeks' for something, we'll wait two weeks before chasing. If they say 'should be here tomorrow', we'll call the next day to see if it's arrived. Unfortunately, in our case, two weeks seem to morph into two months.

Chase whoever's got their finger on the pulse. At least once a week towards the end, I agree. And also agree you need facts and dates, don't just let them fob you off, you should know exactly what's holding things up.

Jx

ruggedtoast

I have been wondering this. We are FTBs, desperate to move for various situational reasons. Apparently the only hold up was our sellers, sellers, waiting for their mortgage offer. They are moving into a vacant property.

Apparently all the conveyancing has been done and this was the final thing. They told the EA (who has the whole chain) on Monday their offer has come through.

This hadnt filtered through to our sellers solicitor by Tuesday and I am champing at the bit to get on the phone again.

My solicitor is not at all easy to contact either. 9 times out of 10 her phone goes to voicemail or a colleague who says shes busy. Callbacks are sporadic and emails take 24/48 hours to acknowledge. Their office is a 7 minute walk from our house otherwise I'd be really worried I couldnt get hold of them in an emergency.

shar46y

Thank you all, I decided to email (rather than phone) my solicitor yesterday as I reasoned that it would be less disruptive to him - it did turn out to be slightly useful as he is waiting for stuff from the freeholder's solicitor and so I was able to chase that up. Now I have to keep my fingers crossed that the freeholder's solicitor gets moving as I think it's the last batch of stuff needed before we can all at least sign contracts.

Not getting my hopes up about exchange yet