Probate/vendor issue 6 months on! Help please!

mp86

Hi everyone,
I really hope someone can give me some advice as I really need somehelp.

My husband and I are first time buyers. We put an offer in on a 2bedroom house at the end of Jan 2013 (after months of searching). It wasaccepted!

We then advised our bank and appointed our solicitor. We were told thevendors of the house were in a chain but had found a property too, which wethought was fantastic and would only be a few months before we had our keys.

We did the survey.. which did point out some worrying aspects of thehouse such as the really bad state and badly maintained roof. The boiler wasvery old too. However, we really liked the property so this didn’t put us off. Insteadwe did ask for a small reduction in price, the vendors declined. We then askedfor a boiler check (approx £70), they declined to do this for us too.

All the while, our solicitor is speaking to their solicitor andarranging the paperwork from both sides. All that is left at this point was theindemnity policy as they couldn’t find their certificates for windows. Still okfor us and we were being patient, being accommodating and just waiting for thekeys to our home.

In March, after about 4 weeks of chasing, we had heard nothing. At theend of April after more chasing, we heard that the house our vendors werebuying, was a probate property and had yet to be granted a probate.

I was furious as the estate agent is the same for both properties andthey were aware of this when the vendors found their property in Feb 2013! Theydidn’t tell us why the delay till 2 months later because we kept chasing them.God knows when we would have found out if we didn’t chase them.

Anyway, we were told the probate had been applied for in April andwould be granted v soon. The estate agent had lied to us. The probate has onlynow been granted to the vendors vendor but there is still delays and our estateagent is telling me a different story every time. First he said the probateshould have been granted to our vendor but the executor had a issue so it hadto be granted to the vendors vendor then the house would be sold to our vendor.

Now the vendors vendor needs to discuss with her probate solicitorwhat else she needs to do before selling to our vendor.

Im really fed up and confused about the lies and lack ofcommunication.

It has been 6 months and we have been drip fed very littleinformation, which half the time is unbelievable.

I even suggested that our vendor go into renting so we can buy theproperty, which was again a no.

Not once have the estate agent/vendor been accommodating to even oneof our requests. I don’t see what the hold up is now either for our vendor tobuy their property so we can buy theirs!!

I’ve done so much research on this but cant find a situation likethis.

We have decided to look at other properties but none are coming upthat are as nice as this one and prices have shot up so much. We can affordmore but they don’t look as nice as this one and our heart is set on thisproperty too. But we need to move out by August and the way its going, the factwe have no date or real communication from the vendors or estate agent, we arenot sure that will happen.

What should we do? Any advice would be sooooooooo good right now!

A very confused and unhappy lady..

M

pimento

Wait until they're ready to exchange and lower your offer.

mp86

pimento wrote: »

Wait until they're ready to exchange and lower your offer.

Considering they will not even do a £70 boiler check, they definitely won't take a lower offer, esp as in 6 months I think their house has increased in value on the property market.

Also... any other suggestions on speeding it up?

Like i said, we can't wait much longer than august!

mp86

Can anyone help me please?

Thrugelmir

Potentially all sorts of issues with a probate sale. Unlikely that the EA knows the whole story either.

Keep your options open by pursuing the property while continuing to look around for alternatives.

bebewoo

Probate sales can take a long time.
There's not much you can really do apart from make threats to pull out, but it sounds like your vendors don't care.
There are quite a lot of threads on this site about similar situations, not all about probate, but about vendors who mess their buyer about for months and months.
It's how the UK system works unfortunately.
If you need to move by August it's too late even for buying another property by now. It's a terrible system.
Are you renting at the moment?

DRP

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Potentially all sorts of issues with a probate sale. Unlikely that the EA knows the whole story either.

Keep your options open by pursuing the property while continuing to look around for alternatives.

yeah , do this and make sure their EA knows you are doing it. You never know you may find something better.

After 6 months they should be made aware you are not walk-overs.

mp86

Thanks everyone for the advice.

We have our mortgage agreement till august but as we have even more saving now, we can afford to get a bigger mortgage and look at other properties.

I spoke to the EA just now who said it will take another 3 months at least because of probate 'admin issues' but he apparently doesn't know what these are.

I think we will just look around now. There is no point for us to hold on when we have no committment!
Didn't realise how ruthless the property market is

Thrugelmir

mp86 wrote: »

Didn't realise how ruthless the property market is

Just unfortunate you picked a probate one with issues.

mp86

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Just unfortunate you picked a probate one with issues.

We didn't. The vendors of the house we wanted did.

pinkshoes

I'd hang in there but look for other properties continually, as you could have a long wait.

I'd particularly look for other properties with another EA, and make sure your current EA knows this!