The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

amandacat

Natbag said:

Week 17 I think here @amandacat - although ours is a double chain of three, and a purchase in the chain has had a difficult outstanding issue that has taken forever to resolve. You can see my timeline in my signature.

Just had some positive news; my boyfriend's buyers have taken out house insurance on the house from 7th May - they won't be in by then, but the fact they've been told to do that is encouraging. Although we only know because the letter arrived here and the buyer's name is very close to my boyfriend's name and he opened it by mistake, ooops!

That's great news, looks like you're so close now. Hopefully not too much longer for you now :-)  

sassypurple

amandacat said:

Hi just interested to know how long everyone has taken to get to exchange point?
I’m currently 10 weeks since offer agreed on a no chain property and I think it’ll be at least 3 more weeks before we agree an exchange date. Maybe longer at this rate.

The house I sold recently was 9 weeks from offer accepted to exchange date and we had the exchange date agreed at week 7 so I (stupidly) thought we’d be looking at a similar timescale this time! We bought a no chain property on purpose due to staying with family and wanting to get in quickly but it seems to have made little difference. 

It depends on what comes up during the process we had our offer accepted on the house we are buying in Nov, signed the contracts at the start of Jan still waiting as there is an issue with a charge on the land registry. Had to complete on our sale last Friday otherwise we would of lost our buyers. Should of been a easy chain our buyers were FTB and the lady we are buying off moved into rented accommodation in Jan. Just hoping our problem gets resolved soon as our mortgage offer expires in a month but although I've chased a number of times this week still no news from anyone. 

Hope everyone on here gets some positive news before the long weekend. 

ohdarn

We've taken the decision to put our house back on the market.

It's been over seven months since our buyer put an offer in on our house and our six month mortgage offer runs out in a couple of weeks.

Not only did our buyer wait until all the conveyancing work had been done before applying for a mortgage but they also appear to be remortgaging all of their other properties at the same time.

And their lender has appointed their own solicitor who's submitted a bunch of enquiries to their conveyancer.

We initially thought these enquiries were just for our property but after two weeks the buyer sent us a message to say they were a third of the way through the enquiries.

So I'm guessing they've submitted enquiries for all of the properties that the buyer is remortgaging with them.
And who knows how long all that could take and we've just completely had enough of holding on, week after week.

So we've relisted in the hope that we can entice a quick cash buyer.

We've said that we won't take it off the market for anyone, it'll simply go to the first person that exchanges.

We've said to our buyer that if they're in a position to exchange and the house is still available then they're welcome to it.

But I'm terrified we've made a bad decision, I guess only time will tell.

Natbag

@ohdarn - that's a tricky one, I can understand why you'd want to find a better quality of buyer, as they do seem to be messing you about and maybe weren't transparent at the start. But any new buyer might not be too keen to enter a race against another buyer who could already be closer to the finish line and potentially waste thousands of pounds in the process and lose a house they love. 

@amandacat - thank you, but who knows. I'm not sure how quick it will take to sort out the paperwork from this final outstanding enquiry, and won't find out until at least Tuesday when our solicitor is back from annual leave. It's still a 'how long is a piece of string' question at the moment. We could be ready to exchange in days, or it could be weeks if we have a long wait on the lender doing their bit. Sigh.

ohdarn

Natbag said:

@ohdarn - that's a tricky one, I can understand why you'd want to find a better quality of buyer, as they do seem to be messing you about and maybe weren't transparent at the start. But any new buyer might not be too keen to enter a race against another buyer who could already be closer to the finish line and potentially waste thousands of pounds in the process and lose a house they love.

Thanks, I've rang the buyer this afternoon and they're very apologetic and say it could be next week.

But then they've said that a lot.
We wouldn't normally say we'd leave the house available until completion if we were attracting regular buyers. The houses in this area only seem to attract BTL investors at the moment.
Our house will be the second cheapest three bedroom property within the local area (and the cheapest one with a garden and driveway) so might generate interest.

It would be perhaps for the best if it simply motivated our buyer into pressuring their lender as much as possible.

BountyBlink

ohdarn said:

Natbag said:

@ohdarn - that's a tricky one, I can understand why you'd want to find a better quality of buyer, as they do seem to be messing you about and maybe weren't transparent at the start. But any new buyer might not be too keen to enter a race against another buyer who could already be closer to the finish line and potentially waste thousands of pounds in the process and lose a house they love.

Thanks, I've rang the buyer this afternoon and they're very apologetic and say it could be next week.

But then they've said that a lot.
We wouldn't normally say we'd leave the house available until completion if we were attracting regular buyers. The houses in this area only seem to attract BTL investors at the moment.
Our house will be the second cheapest three bedroom property within the local area (and the cheapest one with a garden and driveway) so might generate interest.

It would be perhaps for the best if it simply motivated our buyer into pressuring their lender as much as possible.

Good idea, we just completed on our sale and made the same threat and it worked! Exchanged within a week and completed the next week. Some people are just soooo slow! Good luck but I’m sure you will have this sorted ASAP. 

NAC2809

What a bloody week. 

My entire chain agreed to completion on the 14th May, and at no point did my solicitor indicate it wasn’t possible. She did tell me she’d have any enquiries relating to the searches sent off by Wednesday of this week at the latest which didn’t happen. When I chased her up on it she said it would be next week and then told me the earliest she could achieve for completion would be the 21st. 

I think I saw red and was absolutely livid. 

I know it’s only a week but I checked with her twice if this was manageable and she never indicated it would be a problem. She communicated with the EA to ask if the chain agreed with the 14th. Also she give a timeframe that she didn’t meet, which just felt like she was placating me. 

And this resulted my second email of complaint to the companies partners. I previously complained at the end of March as I went through an entire month of radio silence where no one was actually looking at my case and no progress was made. 

Then I was given a new solicitor after my first complaint. 

The morning after my second email complaint i was assigned a new solicitor (I’m now on my third with this company ahah) and she’s been amazing (so far). Within 4 hours of my initial contact with her I had email upon email with loads of documents and she’s posted out my contract to sign. 

I also managed to swing a reduction in their legal fees. 

It feels like it’s been a hellish week and I’m really really hopeful that in 2 weeks time I’ll be collecting my keys. 

Fingers crossed. 

caz_cardiff87

Hello everyone.

New to the threads and a FTB. 

Had my offer accepted on 3rd April. 

Instructed solicitor on the 5th April

Mortgage offer on 27th April - had a bit of a delay as we were looking at joint and sole options. Then they down-valued by 5k so renegotiated midway with the vendor. EA's were livid and i got a very ranty agent banging on about them not even going in the property... not my problem?? i can't tell them how to do their valuation. Turns out the vendor was fine with it and responded same day saying no probs! I assured him we would not be renegotiating again.

Spoke to solicitors secretary today who pulled up my file and confirmed they had received contracts from myself and the vendor and my mortgage offer. Drainage search was back but still waiting for local searches - our area is about 4 weeks... so hopefully they will be back next week.

No chain here, i'm buying a post-war 3 bed semi from a landlord who is trimming the fat on his property portfolio. He's refurbushed the place so can move in and just decorate as and when. We both want a quick sale so hoping nothing much comes up with enquiries etc. I was pretty thorough when i viewed the place and the boiler is new so no probs there. Guttering looked fine, nothing really obvious stood out but i'm not a surveyor so fingers crossed! Managed to find a local guy today who is going to do a homebuyers survey for me next week. He's done a few in the area i'm buying in so gave me a heads up regarding the concrete structure etc but said some have been modified since they were originally built. Was a pain trying to find anyone with availability for May. 

My anxiety is through the roof to be honest but just appreciating that I have time to declutter and what not. I said i'd call the solicitor every thursday for an update if i didn't hear anything. I trust they are on the ball, don't want to become a nag as i appreciate they have other clients further along and fridays are mental for them with completions. I figured for now thats enough as not much can be done until the local search is back. 

Hoping to get in by beginning of july but not sure if i'm being nieve / ambitious.

birdmadgirl8

Apologies for silence. It's been turbulent. We were into 7th week of waiting for vendors' solicitor to respond to enquiries raised early March. I was about to post to say we had some movement ☺️ they'd finally sent doc we needed for lender...and then replied to outstanding enquiries. Hooray! Then work imploded & I had some bad news about my dad's chemo (@Caz_Mnaz - just seen your tough news...solidarity and hugs). We still needed news of vendor's onward purchase of vacant property, but agent went on week's holiday so had to wait. Meanwhile, buyers send questions we've already answered. Our Solicitor is annoyed, but reckons we're close to exchange - she sends pre-exchange pack 🎉 Then buyer says they want to visit again. I'm trying not to be anxious about this and ignore my paranoia. On Tuesday take call from vendor's agent. They've lost their onward property (2nd one) their seller put it back onto market (thought our vendor had pulled out - yeah right 🙄) and got offers our vendor can't match (their offer accepted early Feb). !!!!!! 😭😭😭Vendors gutted & considering rental- they really want us to buy. Will have confirmation of this today (agent working Sat). If they do go into rental we'll need month between exchange & completion. This means completion just before our mortgage offer due to expire & we need to exchange by end of next week. Buyers don't know this yet--though agent is priming them--BUT on Thursday they raise more (mostly ridiculous) Qs, one of which could jeopardise whole chain. They raise it 6 months in 🤯🤬😡REALLY???? This could have been dealt with while we waited for vendor's solicitor. So, we're going into bank holiday with everything on the line and juggling nightmares in both directions. I'm miserable and done with this whole thing.

Caz_Mnaz

Oh @birdmadgirl8 what a lot of stress and twists! It's awful isn't it.... I was hoping someone would have at least suggested a date before the Bank hol but my sol said yesterday he'd heard nothing. Sigh. And as you know the stress of non related house stuff is almost too much x