Is this reasonable?

Snods

We are selling our first home. We have a first time buyer for it. We had our offer to purchase another property accepted 3 weeks ago. We have not met our purchaser or the sellers of the property we want to buy. Rang the estate agents acting for the sellers for an update today to be told they are negotiating a purchase of a property with tenants in it who will not be moving out until September!!! Am I being unreasonable in thinking this is taking the mickey? We have had a formal offer of mortgage today but have held off with survey and searches as buyer not got anything lined up. Tempted to put a note through their door to try and establish a direct dialogue? Is this a reasonable thing to do? More than anything I am concerned we will lose our purchaser waiting that length of time. Does anyone have any thoughts/ideas on how to deal with this?

eddddy

Snods wrote: »

We are selling our first home. We have a first time buyer for it. We had our offer to purchase another property accepted 3 weeks ago. We have not met our purchaser or the sellers of the property we want to buy. Rang the estate agents acting for the sellers for an update today to be told they are negotiating a purchase of a property with tenants in it who will not be moving out until September!!! Am I being unreasonable in thinking this is taking the mickey? We have had a formal offer of mortgage today but have held off with survey and searches as buyer not got anything lined up. Tempted to put a note through their door to try and establish a direct dialogue? Is this a reasonable thing to do? More than anything I am concerned we will lose our purchaser waiting that length of time. Does anyone have any thoughts/ideas on how to deal with this?

Hi Snods

All you can do is threaten to pull out if they don't complete earlier. It's then a matter of who backs down first... or who walks away first.

Bear in mind that the EA will be on your side in this. He/she wants to close the sale and get the commission asap. So I guess the EA will be happy to put pressure on the vendor on your behalf.

If you think that you can do a better job of persuading/negotiating than the EA, then go ahead and contact the vendor directly. I would still be tempted to establish contact with the vendor through the EA (i.e. let the EA check with the vendor that they are happy to talk to you.) But knocking on their door or putting a note through their letter box may also work.

Snods

Thanks for your response edddy.

I think what has thrown us is the EA is positively stand-offish with us. If we thought our EA had behaved in this way with our purchaser we would be very unimpressed. Will sleep on it before deciding whether to contact sellers direct.

Riggster

I'd keep looking for an alternative property to buy.

If your buyer put their offer in in April, they'll get !!!!ed off waiting until September to complete.

You could sell your house and then move into rented accommodation in the mean time?

hazyjo

Will take around 12 weeks anyway - that's mid/late August. If the worst comes to the worst, you could sell yours and sofa-surf or go on an extended holiday (wouldn't have a mortgage to pay for that time...).

Was a thread on here about someone who was 'homeless' for several weeks. Made interesting reading!

Of course, if it's tenanted, there is no guarantee they'll go and you might find there's another 6 months added to that! But you could always consider a short 6 month (or so) rental if that were the case...

Depends how much you love the house.

Jx

Snods

Thanks for the replies Riggster & Hazyjo.

The problem is we want to port our mortgage so need simultaneous sale and purchase.

I think I will start looking elsewhere :0(

Hazyjo - I think I am probably being naive here but why would it take around 12 weeks anyway? Or is that based on a seller finding another property and a chain forming? Our mortgage application was approved yesterday and we have conveyancers on hand to carry out the searches.

andy.m_2

Put the idea to the agent that your seller needs to go into rented, and quickly.

topbargainhunter

Snods wrote: »

Hazyjo - I think I am probably being naive here but why would it take around 12 weeks anyway? Or is that based on a seller finding another property and a chain forming? Our mortgage application was approved yesterday and we have conveyancers on hand to carry out the searches.

That's the average time it takes from offer to completion. I accepted an offer on 14 February, and only exchanged last week, completing 31 May. This is with no chain at all too.

hazyjo

Snods wrote: »

Thanks for the replies Riggster & Hazyjo.

The problem is we want to port our mortgage so need simultaneous sale and purchase.

I think I will start looking elsewhere :0(

Hazyjo - I think I am probably being naive here but why would it take around 12 weeks anyway? Or is that based on a seller finding another property and a chain forming? Our mortgage application was approved yesterday and we have conveyancers on hand to carry out the searches.

As above, it just tends to take that long! That's from the offer being accepted to completion. Everything adds time. Questions go backwards and forwards, sellers have to dig out paperwork/decide what they're even leaving, certain things can't be started until they receive other things, took over 3 weeks for my survey to even reach me, solicitors tend to use snail mail for a lot of things, forms/letters are sent from the vendor's solicitor to the vendor, then the vendor sends it back, then it's sent to the buyer's solicitor, then it gets sent to the buyer, then the buyer has to send that back sometimes, searches can take days or weeks to come in, more queries are raised, indemnity policies or further inspections might need arranging, cheques have to be sent and cleared before things like searches can often even be applied for, honestly, it just goes ON AND ON!

My last sale took over 16 weeks, my purchase took 11 (tied both in together as received an offer 5 weeks before I had an offer accepted on the house I was buying). That was with me emailing at least one person (EAs, solicitor, mortgage adviser, etc) DAILY!

There will be 'breathing space' with porting your mortgage. You should check how long that will be. Could be a weeks, could be months. Can't remember how long they said now when I had to consider it (before the chain collapsed!). (ie you can sell, then have a gap before buying, still on the same 'ported' mortgage rate.)

Jx