Vendors dragging their heels - some advice to push them along??

privatepeanut

Any advice? We have sold our house to first time buyers who are keen to move ASAP. We have bought a house whose owners told us they will be moving into a rental. Lovely, nice and straightforward so we thought.

However, myself and our buyer are now ready to go. Last Friday our solicitor proposed an exchange date for this week which was agreed with our buyers, with a delayed completion date of 23 July. This was put to our vendor's solicitor but so far....silence.

All we have heard through the vendors agent is that they haven't seen a property they like enough to rent and by the look of the market, there isn't a huge amount on.

Obviously we are frustrated. We bought the house on the condition it was pretty much chain-free. The vendors are not really communicating to anyone at all about what they are looking for, or even if they still want to go. Who knows, they may have their eye on something to buy!

So, what can we do? Who do we call and nag? What leverage do we have to push this along (other than threatening to pull out)?

Any tips?

Thankyou Moneysavers! :money:

hazyjo

Use your EA to chase their EAs too. They will not want to think their commission is at risk this far into the purchase. Exaggerate if you have to.

Jx

privatepeanut

Thanks. Unfortunately we used an agent that you pay upfront with only a small fee on completion so they're not that interested. Still, it's worth a shot.

Thanks

Alexei

We had a similar situation a month ago, where our sellers' solicitor went completely silent for two weeks just as we were supposed to exchange.

It turned out it was because they had outstanding queries on their purchase - which was news to us because they had sold the house to us as chain free and were supposed to be moving into rented (which was the only reason we had offered on this particular house)!

Luckily everything resolved itself and we completed last week, but I was REALLY annoyed they a) didn't bother to tell us there was now a chain and b) kept us in the dark for two weeks, not even answering calls from our solicitor!

I think your only option here is to try to get in touch with the seller direct (ask their EA to pass on your phone number) so you can ask them what's happening. Our chain would definitely have fallen through several times if we hadn't had direct contact with our buyers and eventually with our sellers too.

Good luck!

privatepeanut

Thanks Alexei

Will give that a try next week. It is the uncertainty thats the most frustrating part. How can we negotiate or attempt to move forward if we have no contact and no starting point for negotiating??

Grrrr