The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

ele_91

ss2020jd said:

Congratulations too @ele_91. Brave to do both on the same day! 

This wasn’t the plan we meant to exchange a couple of weeks ago but there was always one hold up or another… I had to put all my faith in our conveyancer when she called at 4pm the day before and said ‘we will just exchange and complete tomorrow’… luckily no chain either side so no removals. I don’t think it would be possible otherwise 

Thrugelmir

geostar37 said:

MayMark said:

Day 8 of trying to exchange and as I’ve heard nothing I’m assuming it has not happened!!! It’s becoming such a stressful situation now not sure how much more I can cope with. Everyday we get the update in the evening to say tomorrow will be the day and it never is, this chain of 5 is an absolute nightmare! Everyday it’s a different reason!

Day 8?! You poor thing! You have my utmost sympathies.

Nothing new here - our solicitor has confirmed that there is a ‘missing contract’ at the bottom of the chain. Our buyers have told us they have booked removals for the proposed completion date - at the same time as our solicitor has told us if we don’t exchange tomorrow then we can’t do that date. . . 

Nobody seems to know if the buyer or solicitor is at fault. All I know is if I was this incompetent I’d have been sacked a long time ago! 

The one certainty is that you'll never know the truth. Solicitors don't discuss their clients personal affairs in detail to other parties.  The "missing contact" is just a smoke screen.  

birdmadgirl8

@geostar37 @MayMark @mortgage_noob
Sending you all positive vibes and feeling your frustration. Keeping fingers crossed that you finally exchange by end of this week @MayMark and that your chain sorts itself out @geostar37 - shambolic incompetence at best. @mortgage_noob I'm in a similar place to you. Spent weeks chasing contract pack and now our Solicitor seems to be sleeping on it. It's exhausting and depressingly predictable.

rose_T

ss2020jd said:

Thank you @WorriedKirkels @Deleted_User@harsxx @rose_T (for the magic key dust!) and fellow pre-, during and post-exchangers and completers on this thread for the supportive messages and for understanding and sympathising with my woes and concerns!
 

So, after not hearing anything all day I finally chased up to be told that is was still expected to happen. Then when it got to after 3pm, I really began to doubt it would. I had always thought the cut off was 2pm. Anyway, after very nail-biting time stretching into late afternoon I was told that apparently it was just a matter of the funds arriving after being sent. More nail-biting until it was finally confirmed it had happened!
My poor buyers were apparently camped out with a van full of their worldly goods waiting for keys to be released while this was happening. 

I am so relieved. The ups and downs are all now a distant memory. Although it started well the issues with the buyers buyer seemed to go on forever. Despite this, we got there in the end. 

So, if you are going through similar, know that it does eventually get resolved one way or the other. 

Wishing everyone some success over the rest of the week and beyond. Will be keeping everything crossed for all of you and look forward to hearing your positive progress! 

Now I just have to do it all again as a buyer! 🤪

Congratulations 🏠🔑🥂

greensalad

E_D_FTB said:

greensalad said:

What's the average length between exchange and completion?

We want to give notice on exchange in our rented, but we have 2 months notice period. We want an overlap anyway, but I'm guessing 4 weeks between exchange and completion is out of the question. Seems like 2 week or 1 week is more common on this thread?

I think the average is 1-2 weeks, but it can be longer if you need it to be, and I wouldn't say 4 weeks is crazy long! Ultimately, it'll take longer than 4 weeks for them to find a new buyer and get to exchange and notice periods are a totally reasonable reason to delay completion a bit.

That's interesting, would be amazing if we could get the full 4 weeks as it means a lot less rent to pay on the overlap for us!

purplebutterfly

Thanks for yesterday's good wishes @ss2020jd

Last night our seller informed us of a "slight hiccup" - their solicitor had the wrong bank details and they had to resend them across!  

If we get in the house by teatime today, I will be overjoyed but surprised 

E_D_FTB

mortgage_noob said:

mortgage_noob said:

E_D_FTB said:

mortgage_noob said:

Hi everyone, 

buying my first home so just wondering what is left to do

• Mortage offer received, signed and returned to solicitor
• Suvery done
• environmental and local searches back
• our solicitor sent enquiries on the 1st July but unfortunately has not responded to emails from us asking if the responses were received - Is it usually the case that they take this long?

No chain and we'd like to move as soon as possible so keen to know if we can think about talking dates soon?

Hi @mortgage_noob, welcome! We're also FTB at about the same stage as you - waiting on some enquiries, although they were only send on 22nd. Sadly, enquiries can take a while depending on the seller's solicitor and the seller themselves being speedy or not. But your solicitor should be chasing and certainly shouldn't be ignoring your emails. I would call if I were you, much harder for them to ignore.

In terms of talking dates, why not? Worst case scenario your proposed dates don't work, but I think it's good to start aiming for a date to keep everything moving. But I would go to the EA for that, rather than your solicitor if you're struggling with responses from your solicitor.

Our solicitor has been awful tbh, when we do call her she's extremely curt and the calls don't last more than a minute. She says things to get us to leave her alone but then doesn't action anything....

Once we called to ask her if she had received anything from the vendor (after emailing to no responses) and she said no, called the EA and found out she'd had the draft contracts for over 3 weeks!

We're not hassly people, maybe 1 email a week but it is difficult sending documents into a blackhole and wondering whats happening.

Just found out the seller's solicitor respond to our enquiries on the 9th July.... that's almost 3 weeks ago and our solicitor hasn't even bothered to let us know if she's received responses. 

So frustrated

Our initial enquiries were with the solicitor for a couple of weeks before we were sent them - but that was mainly because he was waiting for searches etc to be returned to then send us a document pack to review. He then sent additional enquiries the week we were sent the first bunch of documents. 

So it might be something like that, although if you're emailing they should be updating you on what they're doing. We're also on about 1 email a week and we always get a reply explaining what's going on.

E_D_FTB

greensalad said:

E_D_FTB said:

greensalad said:

What's the average length between exchange and completion?

We want to give notice on exchange in our rented, but we have 2 months notice period. We want an overlap anyway, but I'm guessing 4 weeks between exchange and completion is out of the question. Seems like 2 week or 1 week is more common on this thread?

I think the average is 1-2 weeks, but it can be longer if you need it to be, and I wouldn't say 4 weeks is crazy long! Ultimately, it'll take longer than 4 weeks for them to find a new buyer and get to exchange and notice periods are a totally reasonable reason to delay completion a bit.

That's interesting, would be amazing if we could get the full 4 weeks as it means a lot less rent to pay on the overlap for us!

Fingers crossed for you! We were hoping for a quick turn around between exchange and completion, but that's not looking possible anymore so ours will probably be over 4 weeks. You've just got to remember that the whole house buying process from offer to completion takes ages, and there's very little point in your seller's going through the stress of finding a new buyer for the sake of a few weeks.

stressedout45

Does anybody else feel like their entire life is absolute clown shoes at this point because of this whole process?!  🙈😂😂

Mizydoscape

Hello can I join? Our house went SSTC on 26/05, we had an offer accepted on a house 2 weeks later. They found a chain free onward purchase sometime mid June so we got a shift on and are just waiting for enquiries to be answered on our purchase now. Have signed the contracts for sale. 

Yesterday I had an update from our agent to say that another property has literally just been added to the top of the chain 😒 so now we wait for them to catch up with everyone else. I said we had hoped to be in to avoid Stamp duty at the end of September and my agent was like "oh... well they can usually catch up really quickly once everything gets going". So now I'm feeling a bit blah about it. 

Uhhh so frustrating!