Buying & Selling Sanity-Saving Vent Thread

Grimbal

So, I've noticed that there are a few of us caught up in the frustration of the house buying & selling business.

I thought a thread might act as mutual support for us all, where we can vent away to each other


I'll start:

On my sale: purchasers offered on our place at the end of their AST. Rather than sign up for another term, which realistically could be what buying a house takes time wise, they decided to go to self catering/friends/hotels/B&Bs etc with 2 young children in tow. Since then they have been throwing arbitrary dates at us with ultimatums that they'll walk otherwise.

On my purchase : the most ignorant vendor I've yet to come across. A month to instruct his solicitors, a month to return enquiries. Did not realise his tenants had to be out before exchange. The co-vendor signs the contracts, then goes to Australia. We should have exchanged beginning of this week, and are trying desperately to contact her for approval. Who does that? Who signs a contract & then leaves the continent without providing contact details ?!!

Grimbal

well, I finally got the call this afternoon. We have exchanged, after months of grief, juggling & stress

Anyone else want to offload their troubles?

browneyedbazzi

Congrats on your exchange!

My troubles revolve around some work that was done to the house we are buying by the current owners. They removed a load bearing wall, put in an rsj and blocked up a door to make a lovely through lounge. Sadly they didn't get a building regs completion certificate for the work - apparently their builder (or if you believe what the EA said, the council) told them the work was exempt from building regs. When we queried this they offered an indemnity policy. We insisted they get a regularisation from building control because I didn't particularly trust what I was being told about the work and thought if the builder lied about them needing building regs approval it may well be because his work wasn't to standard and the inspection would have shown up the problems and made his job more difficult.

After a lot of going back and forth, the building control inspector recently went and looked at the work and it turns out I was right - it wasn't to standard and there's remedial work required for it to be signed off (I've never wished I was wrong before!!). So we were supposed to be exchanging this week and moving next week but it's all on hold as the house is currently being taken apart in order to be put back together in the right way.

Thankfully we're first time buyers, I don't think I could cope if we were selling somewhere at the same time as well!

Grimbal

Good for you for standing your ground & insisting that it was inspected. You could have been in for a lot of expense if you had realised after exchange.

What's happening with your vendor's onward purchase (if there is one) ? Do they realise yet everything has been put back until the work is done properly ?

browneyedbazzi

Grimbal wrote: »

Good for you for standing your ground & insisting that it was inspected. You could have been in for a lot of expense if you had realised after exchange.

What's happening with your vendor's onward purchase (if there is one) ? Do they realise yet everything has been put back until the work is done properly ?

Thanks - I definitely feel vindicated about insisting on the inspection (they didn't want to do it at first but I said we would withdraw our offer and walk away). The EA has made us feel like we were being unreasonable and difficult etc. Although I wish the work had been sound and signed off without a problem, in a way the fact that it isn't ok and we were right to insist makes me feel better.

The vendor isn't buying anywhere at the moment so thankfully this isn't messing up an entire chain!

electricdreams

I'm in the process of buying a property (Edwardian). I made the offer back at the end of September. After a lot of argy-bargy trying to push the survey through despite the lenders' companies quoting a long wait, the survey came back saying that - as well as various expected problems - there were high damp readings (as all surveys seem to say) and that a tree on the pavement (that has a tree preservation order) had caused damage to the drains and driveway. So tomorrow I've got a drain survey and an independent damp survey happening. Not necessarily for negotiation purposes (my offer price took into consideration expected remedial works and the valuation came back spot on), but to make sure these remedial works aren't going to bankrupt me. The survey also said that the render needs replacing, the roof/chimneys need work and it needs rewiring, so a lot depends on the cost of the damp/drains on top of those works.

Luckily the purchase doesn't rely on selling my current property (I'm not a first time buyer, but I've got a bit of breathing space and intend on selling my property in the new year to give me somewhere to live whilst I sort the damp etc) but if all the quotes come in as huge then I may not be able to afford the project.

Having said all of the above, we're currently hoping to complete w/c 9th December..!

browneyedbazzi

Quick update from me - against all odds the building regs certificate for the property we're buying was issued yesterday morning. We exchanged just before 4pm yesterday afternoon and should be picking up keys on Friday and moving over the weekend

I was really stressed over the weekend and had pretty much convinced myself that the timeline the EA was giving for getting the work done and certificate issued was not realistic so probably wouldn't happen etc. I was very pleasantly surprised when I got the call!

AndyGuil

What I find most frustrating is our seller is so impatient and has extremely unrealistic expectations of how quick things can be done. I am frequently called by the EA, who sounds like the world is about to end when talking to me. Then expects me to tell our solicitor how to do their job, and they have just phoned our solicitor 10 minutes earlier to do just that. Really makes me suspicious with the seller and probably is going to make our solicitor look at things more closely. Not entirely sure why the seller is so keen and i'm not up for forking out money for everything only for the seller to get impatient and try and sell the property to someone else.

D00gie72

Just thought I'd add my tale to this tread. I have posted a couple of times with issues I've had - but I've mostly been lurking on the forum for morale support.

Our Purchase: Our offer was accepted in June, Mortgage offer confirmed, valuations and survey done plus an extra engineers report as property is of non standard construction. Then in Aug our mortgage offer was withdrawn due to a planning application nearby the property (which we were already aware of). Finally got a replacment mortgage offer In Sept.

Our Sale: Offer accepted in May after our property had been on the market for just 6 weeks. Cash buyer - in constant contact with them regarding the issues we were having with our mortgage. Moving date agreed of 21st Oct - then on 18th Oct (date of exchange) they withdrew from purchase. Within 3 days she'd bought another property.
We're now back on the market looking for a new buyer - but this side of Chistmas we're not expecting much interest so we just hope the property we want does not get another buyer before us.