Race to be in before easter

MJMum

We're moving 30 Mar, just in time for Easter when it's time to start the building work!

Naetha

We were hoping to be in by the middle of Feb, then the end of Feb and now its looking to be the end of March. Purchase of the house is reliant on probate being granted for my great aunt's estate (bless her :A ) which was meant to happen end of Jan, but is expected to come through middle-to end of March. Haven't decided whether we're going to exchange next week and set a completion date asap for the 30th March, or if we're going to leave exchange until the money has come through and complete say 2 days later.

Great thing is our current house has had loads of offers on it (on at offers in excess of 90k, latest offer is 105k) and may even complete at the same time as our current house purchase :rolleyes:

Still, it's all good, just a matter of time

RufusFrog_2

We put our house on the market in June last year!
In three weeks we only had three viewings but fortunately one of them offered an acceptable amount. We were sold! And they were in rented accommodation which was fantastic.

Finding a property we liked and could afford in our town of choice was much harder than we thought but eventually (after a month) one came up whose sale had just fallen through and we were able to secure it (for a bit more than we thought it was really worth but still £10k under the asking price and there was some competition.)

The usual stupid questions trickled back and forth and all seemed fine. Then our vendor's vendor started playing up - he had originally sold to our vendors back in January and his agent had told him that if he put the property back on the market he could get more money. There was a lot of 'Exchange right now or I withdraw!' posturing - before we'd even seen the contracts - and our stress levels went through the roof. When the contractual information came through we discovered the vendors had told a huge lie on the sellers' information form - they had no legal right of access to the property from the road. To cut a long story short, at the end of September we withdrew.

Our buyers seemed OK to hang on so we went back to the websites and the agents to find something else to buy. There was hardly anything coming on to the market and nothing suitable for us. We found one house we quite liked but the seller didn't seem too bothered about moving and the area was a bit suspect. Then we looked at another house outside of our preferred area, and loved it. It had been on the market a few months, the vendors were very keen to sell and there was no chain. But it was seriously overpriced. But we made a low offer, upped it a bit, then refused to offer more and told the agent we would offer on our 2nd choice property instead and played the waiting game. A week later they accepted.

By then it was late November. Our vendor's solicitors were rubbish (couldn't find the land registry entry, sent paperwork to the wrong country etc.) and the process dragged on. But by the end of January we thought everything was ready, we can exchange!

Then our buyers, who'd been pretty quiet (except for asking us to exchange 'immediately' a couple of times as their mortgage offer was about to expire, which we refused) seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. They didn't return any calls (although colleagues in the office said they were 'in') and after 10 days our vendors decided to put their house back on the market.

As you can imagine my stress levels are once again through the roof as it looks like we are about to have to go back to Square one and start all over again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

tim_n

RufusFrog wrote:

As you can imagine my stress levels are once again through the roof as it looks like we are about to have to go back to Square one and start all over again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

:eek:

That's all I'm going to say!

Mixed_Berries

We have so far:

Agreed with landlord to sell us his flat end of Jan.
Agreed on price.
Met with FA - found good mortgage. Begining of Feb.
Got mortgage AIP.
Valuation completed.
Last week Full mortgage offer received.
Instructed solicitors on Friday via Abode.
Sent them all the paperwork Monday this week.

And now waiting :rolleyes: ....and waiting ....and waiting ....hoping to exchange by the end of March.
:j

dnrc

tim_n wrote:

she can always move her stuff into a storage place temporarily - much easier to do that and have either a hotel or crash at yours dnrc! = )

Mind you moving once is a pain, moving twice (once into storage once into the new place) will be a pain too!

Always ask the place she's leaving from whether they'd mind staying another week - worked well during my last renting spree...

Cheers mate. We have options as to what she can do, what we really need right now though is some dates for things to happen so we can work it out though.

Her stuff can go to my mums, and so could she for a while. She could also move in with her current housemate who is buying a place too. That's the reason she has to get out on the 12th, it's when her housemate completes.

It isn't a problem as such it's just going to be hassle and not having any real idea on timescales doesn't help.

Currently we have been waiting for documentation from the other solicitor for about 2 weeks and our solicitor says they can't do anything at all (like searches etc) till they get this!

tim_n

I had that - give your agent a ring and make sure the documentation has been received from the other side and posted to both. It's quite likely that it's the vender holding you up not the solicitors the other end. Either which way they can and will put pressure on them as it's their commission!

dnrc

Is that right, i didn't realise the agent would have much more to do with the process now. As far as i'm aware both sets of solicitors are in contact now and that's the stage it's at and we are waiting on them.

As we're FTB we are for the most part unaware of the ins and out of the process and are relying on what we hear from various parties which at the moment isn't much.

RufusFrog_2

Solicitors sometimes seem to operate on a different plane to the rest of us and can be very poor at communication and pushing the sale through.

The estate agent is the professional most motivated to have the sale go through - often to the tune of several thousand pounds - whereas the solicitor will only make a few hundred whether it succeeds or fails. If there appears to be a holdup, get straight on to the agent to find out why. (They should earn their high fees!)

Also information gets filtered through two solicitors but only one estate agent and is thus less likely to get distorted in transmission. (Some people advocate swapping phone numbers with the seller/buyer but I couldn't recommend this: last time I sold my apparently perfectly nice buyer rang me up at work to shout at me when the sale didn't proceed as he'd hoped and it was very unpleasant and stressful.)

tim_n

I concur - I'm an FTB too but harassing the agent on a bi-weekly basis seems to be the right approach. I'm yet to receive a call back from a question I ask, so I just keep ringing and ringing = )