Bit annoyed with our buyer

Willapp_2

Ok, this may seem trivial to most, but we were expecting to be able to complete on our house sale/purchase next week, and now we've found that our buyers only submitted searches last week and they've said it might be two more weeks before they get the purchase money transferred from Euro's into Pounds! :mad:

Here's the full situation:

We're buying a brand-new 3 bed terraced which is now complete and ready for occupation. Put our house on the market over xmas and got a buyer beginning of January - were told that they are ideal buyers as no chain, owing to the fact that they had a house in Spain that they'd already sold and would have the money from by mid-January. We pushed ahead at full speed, and assumed they were doing the same. About 10 days ago we had a letter from our solicitors stating that they'd sent out the contract to our buyer so we assumed everything was going well their side.

Last Friday we went to our solicitor to sign the contract on our new place, and provisionally agreed to try for completion 15/2 (next Thursday). We knew the buyers hadn't returned the contract at that time, but (again) assumed it would happen this week for exchange.

Yesterday we get a call from our so-called Estate Agents to "give us an update", and we find out that they submitted searches last week and it would be a couple more weeks before they get the money from their sale converted to £s.

Obviously this has annoyed us because we had no idea they were that far behind - our Estate Agents never told us last week that they'd only just submitted searches, nor did our solicitors seem to know. Luckily we hadn't made any firm arrangements for next week as we did know it was only a provisional date, but still it was a kick in the face really - we spent the whole weekend packing and tidying and really got into the "mood to move", only to find it could be 3 more weeks yet!

Questions: do you think we can exert any pressure to speed things up? Obviously the searches can't be hurried, but we don't really understand why it would take 2 weeks to convert Euro funds into Sterling??? My partner's parents regularly transfer large sums into Euros and say it only takes 3 working days - so why the delay? Are they holding off on purpose? We want to call the Estate Agents and tell them we're ready to complete ASAP and see if they'll push the buyers to move faster - is this a good idea? We don't want to annoy them, as until now we thought them perfect - they made a good offer and haven't been fussy or anything. We're just impatient to get things moving...

It's nice to vent though!

Richard_Webster

As a Conveyancing Solicitor can I make a comment?

Has your solicitor had any enquiries about your property from the buyer's solicitors? If not your solicitor should have pointed out to you that there could well be a delay while those were received and you were contacted to check/provide answers and your solicitor send replies.

Your solicitor wouldn't know whether or not searches had been submitted and there is no reason why he should know. The buyer's solicitor sends them out when he receives the contract papers from your solicitor.

Although not impossible, on average 10 days from sending out contracts to exchange is very short, so again your solicitor should have warned you that your proposed dates were unlikely.

Did you discuss the proposed completion dates with your solicitor and did you continue to review their feasibility? It might be OK to say at the beginninng of January that completion for mid February was feasible, but if contracts were not sent out until nearly the end of January (perhaps because the deeds were not available from your present lender until then) such an estimate clearly would need to be reviewed.

Doozergirl

It's the exception rather than the rule for people to be able to exchange that quickly.

People in general cannot really expect exchange to happen on the earliest date they want them to when it's the solicitors in control of things. You must always confirm with solicitors what they think will be possible. It is however, your buyers' solicitor doing the driving so it would be beneficial to you to ask your EA to ask them when they think exchange will take place.

Some solicitors submit searches straight away, others prefer to wait for survey results etc. before they submit them.

To be completely honest, you just need to try and relax in relative calm knowing that you managed to find a good buyer in good time and that things are going through! I'm afraid the only way to get through the process sometimes is just to accept that there's not much you can do and try and get on with life as it is. Not remotely easy, I know, but it's the only way I've learned to cope.

Ian_W

Richard,
I'm sure that as a practising solicitor your advice is welcomed by the OP and extremely helpful to them and to a wider audience. However, the inclusion of a link to your company might be seen as touting for business or even spamming.

The site doesn't accept paid advertising and trying to get freebie ads in replies is very much against the rules of MSE. I'm not trying to make a big issue of it - just mention it as a "word to the wise".

Richard_Webster

Sorry! I've removed the direct link to my site.

Doozergirl's post is balanced and sensible.

I don't think it is really spam though. There is one property site that is regularly bombarded by a US mobile phone vendors with long adverts with lists of mobiles available (with prices in dollars) on a subject heading like "Selling UK Property".

Mrs_Optimist

We too have been misled by our Estate Agent about our buyer. We accepted a reduced offer because he had nothing to sell, had mortgage "in place" and wanted to exchange and complete asap. Our Vendor has already vacated the property we are buying. It has been one month now, our final searches have come back and we are ready to exchange up the chain, but our buyer has not even had the survey doen on our house yet. Our EA inform us all is well, but I am still continually chasing them for progress reports,and they are getting annoyed with me. As far as we are concerned a quick sale means just that, not taking a whole month to instruct Solicitors etc. We proceeded on the basis of a quick sale and have done all we can at our end. And his mortgage was not in place - a blatant lie by our EA - we know it isnt our buyers fault, he has been guided by our EA. Luckily he had good sense to change his mind and instruct someone else to do his mortgage and conveyancing (he was using our EA for both these things). I am annoyed that our EA willl be sticking in a big bill at the end of the sale but I am the one having to do THEIR job and continually chase them and remind them what needs to be done. I will be glad when this process is completed. And I will seriously think twice before moving again, the stress is pulsating.

Willapp_2

Thanks for the replies.

It's no so much the delay thats bothering us, just the fact that the estate agents hadn't bothered to tell us where our buyers were at. I suppose this is par for the course for EAs though!!!

Also we wonder why they reckon another 2 weeks to transfer the cash - surely they could do it in days if they wanted to??

Doozergirl

If you use a proper fx broker you will save hundreds of pounds on the exchange rate compared to the high street banks. You have to set up an account with proof of IDs for money laundering which takes time to send etc. then you have to transfer the money to them, then it gets transferred again to the relevant account.

Willapp_2

Well, I just had a call from our solicitors who've been chasing this up for us, and it turns out that the Estate Agents basically told us a load of rubbish!!

The searches came back yesterday, and they've got one query from the Environmental Search about Radon gas in our area. Aside from that, they're ready to exchange too. They've also had completion 15 or 16/2 suggested to them, and are currently considering it so all may still turn out good!

Bloody Estate Agents!!!