Delays in buyers survey / mortgage offer

bmunky7

Hello,

I would love to get some advice / thoughts from others on our dilemma while selling our house.

Our buyers had a valuation survey conducted on 25th April (i.e. over 2 weeks ago) through Santander / Countrywide and they claim via the estate agent that they haven't had the results yet. We believed them for 2 weeks but now feel that this is just not acceptable and if they haven't got the results yet they should be able to tell us why not. Obviously the results are their business but we want to know whether they are still progressing or not.

We had a homebuyer survey carried out on the house we hope to buy on 2nd May (also through Countrywide) and had results on 6th May.

Our mortgage advisor tells us he is getting valuation results and mortgage offers back within 48 hours via Santander.

We don't want to have to find new buyers but really feel that they are biding their time before pulling out or "gazundering" us so we're quite frustrated.

We're minded to set an ultimatum for buyers to get results / update so we can find new buyers if necessary and hopefully not lose house we want.

What would anyone else do in our position?

hazyjo

Countrywide lied to my mortgage adviser several times saying the survey (homebuyer's) had been done, would be posted that day, that when it still hadn't arrived it'd be emailed... THREE WEEKS we were fobbed off. Eventually my mortgage bod rang him on his mobile who said it'd be typed up that day and emailed and posted (it arrived within a couple of days).

The actual valuation however had actually been sent within days of the valuation/survey.

Try not to stress. It may honestly be delayed.

Jx

Jabberwk

You could suggest that your buyer chase it up directly with Countrywide. We had our valuation through very quickly, but heard nothing for a week about the homebuyers survey. When I phoned Countrywide they were really helpful. They told me their normal timeframes (5 to 7 working days for the report to go out) and checked on the status of our particular one while I was on the phone with them.

yoshiyella

If it helps, the buyer of our property had their survey of our property done 3 weeks ago - they are still awaiting their mortgage offer though! The bank definately has the survey results but because of this new regulations then mortgage offers are taking a few weeks longer if they are First Time Buyers.

Halle71

This time last week we were in the same position as you.
Our buyers were waiting on their valuation/mortgage decision before committing to their building survey. They cancelled the survey twice then pulled out of the sale.
They were totally in love with our house and had even pulled out of another they had offered on to offer on ours so it was a bit of a surprise although we had started to get suspicious as they are FTBs taking out a huge mortgage. I think they fell foul of the new regulations when all their outgoings were scrutinised.

A couple of days before they pulled out we told our EA that we needed a plan B and asked them to let the buyer know that they had until the end of the week to convince us (do their building survey) they were going ahead. Otherwise we would not withdraw but would remarket the property.

bmunky7

Thanks for the replies and information, it's useful to know your experiences. Our buyers are buying with Santander and I am told that they do the mortgage underwriting prior to the valuation being booked so the only reason for problems that I can think of is there is a problem with the survey / valuation or the buyers are lying to us with a view to dropping the price when they think it will be too late for us to pull out. But there could be an innocent explanation that will come to light!