Very Long Timescales of buying a house

luklik

I am a first time buyer. The property has already got a probate. No chain at all. It supposed to be very fast sales progress. However, there are 2 sellers (or maybe 2 executors as far as I understand) who will have to agree for every process.


Our offer has been accepted 7 weeks ago + !!.
Until now, seller's solicitor has not even started to send a first draft contract pack to my solicitor!


-According to the agent, a seller's solicitor has already finished drafting the contract. However, this solicitor cannot send the contract to my solicitor unless both sellers approve the draft first. One seller has approved, but they are still waiting for another seller to approve too. Is this normal process?


- Waiting for a draft contract pack for 7 weeks plus, is this long?


- My solicitor will not order any searches unless we get this draft contract. The solicitor just said we need information from the draft contract pack first before starting to order searches. Can't we just order searches before to avoid delay?


Once we receive the draft contract pack, I can imagine how slow it will be to answer queries by both sellers. The agent told me that one of the seller is quite old and is using another person to act on behalf.


Apologies for many questions. I lack of experiences in buying a house. Any advice will be much appreciate.
Thank you so much in advance.

tykesi

Sounds like your solicitor is trying to do the best by you by not ordering searches. If they are ordered and carried out you will have to pay for them, by holding off until the draft contract comes in they're potentially saving you a chunk of money. Of course they can go ahead without waiting, that's up to you to take that risk.

I'm completing today and have four vendors, thankfully it's gone smoothly but knowing from the start it could be difficult I was prepared for it to take as long as it took.