The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

waitingforsomething

greensalad said:

Solicitor finally got back to me that our vendor still hasn't responded to the small amount of outstanding enquiries we had. With no explanation as to why.

Still no update on my vendor's vendor splitting the title deed for their sale.

Signed all my paperwork and sent it this week. All we've got left to do for our sale is transfer the deposit. Why is no one else doing anything? It's driving me mad. Refusing to talk about dates but without a deadline in place how can we keep pushing the solicitors to do their jobs?

How frustrating, have you spoken to the estate agent? 

Jamierez

Jamierez said:

sw7 said:

Jamierez said:

9 months since selling our house, 8 months since having an offer accepted on a property and we've no end in sight. All the contractual paperwork has been sorted but we still have no agreed exchange/completion date. Our sellers have still to find a suitable rental property and now one of them is looking to buy a property and the other is renting. It looks like we are going to be in a chain and we will miss the stamp duty holiday end date and with a good chance of missing the next one in September as well.

We've been looking elsewhere but there have been so few properties of the size we're after come on the market and that has meant the asking prices have increased and they are snapped up at the asking price or higher. We've decided to wait it out as paying an increased price for a property added with having to fork out for additional fees doesn't make it seem worthwhile, even with now having to pay stamp duty.

Ah well, at least the weather is good!

I feel your pain and sympathize entirely. We had an offer accepted at a similar time and it took our sellers 4 months (we're first time buyers, so at least there is that). And I know exactly what you mean regarding the market at the moment - if we hadn't held on then we wouldn't be moving any time soon.

Luckily our sellers did eventually find somewhere and we're (hopefully) on track for later this month, but who knows at this point.

I hope things work out for you soon.

Well we're now officially off the waiting to exchange thread. The people we are buying from have pulled their property off the market. 9 months wasted and my big take home is not to buy from a couple divorcing. The lady can't afford to rent or is not willing and she can't get a mortgage. Her estranged husband doesn't want to see "his kids onto the street" and has pulled the property off the market until she can sort her life out and get a permanent job. He is still living with her despite having a new partner and needs the money from the house to buy his own place. 

 Our house has been valued at 15% more than last year so we're going to have to put  our property back on the market as it's the only way we can get the property we need as the market in our area continues to go up. Our buyer is going to be offered the property at the new price and I hope he sticks with us but I do feel for him as this is his first purchase.

Our one year anniversary of selling and buying has been and gone and we are still waiting to exchange. We are on our 4th house in a year and our latest was advertised as no forward chain but now we find ourselves in a chain. The sellers advertised the property as NFC in good faith as they a) didn't need the sale of their property to buy and b) they had already bought a property which was advertised as NFC before sticking their house on the market. The owners of this house were moving into rented.

It turns out the owner of the property they are buying made a blunder, one that should have been picked up by them months ago, and they are now no longer moving into rented and are now buying. We are now in a waiting game for the chain to complete again. 

We have no leverage as our sellers do not need the money and are prepared to wait it out. 

novelle

@HopeAndDriftWood This is so complicated.  So what are you planning to do? 

@RS2000 You are willing to pay extra for better service but end up have to keep chasing the EA to do THEIR work! Hope your buyer 2 is good and soon make some progress.

@charlotteo1988 I hope you can do it in 7 weeks. But again, there are many factors affecting it.

@greensalad reading your progress makes me feel mad too! Sometimes it makes you think everyone does not bother about the house, you are the only one who cares about it! 

novelle

@CarriePopping Oh no... your 1st property has been dragging for almost half a year! Fingers crossed for your second property.  Lucky you have a good solicitor 

@waitingforsomething Yeah at least someone in this group has some good news this week! Congratulations you are completing today!

novelle

My never-answer-my-emails-and-calls solicitor is back in her office from her annual leave this Monday. I emailed her for an update yeaterday, on the completion date and the other conerns we raised last week. 

now waiting for her reply. I have a feeling I will have to call her next Monday and automatically be sent to her voice mail.  

It's so close to exchange and complete. I so wish that my solicitor can quickly deal with our case. Then she getsthe money, I get the house.  You see, we do not need mortgage. We are renting and have nothing to sell.  The house we are buying is an investment of our seller.  It's supposed to be nice and simple.  

greensalad

novelle said:

My never-answer-my-emails-and-calls solicitor is back in her office from her annual leave this Monday. I emailed her for an update yeaterday, on the completion date and the other conerns we raised last week. 

now waiting for her reply. I have a feeling I will have to call her next Monday and automatically be sent to her voice mail.  

It's so close to exchange and complete. I so wish that my solicitor can quickly deal with our case. Then she getsthe money, I get the house.  You see, we do not need mortgage. We are renting and have nothing to sell.  The house we are buying is an investment of our seller.  It's supposed to be nice and simple.  

Wow, August to (almost) November for an investment property is madness! 

greensalad

waitingforsomething said:

greensalad said:

Solicitor finally got back to me that our vendor still hasn't responded to the small amount of outstanding enquiries we had. With no explanation as to why.

Still no update on my vendor's vendor splitting the title deed for their sale.

Signed all my paperwork and sent it this week. All we've got left to do for our sale is transfer the deposit. Why is no one else doing anything? It's driving me mad. Refusing to talk about dates but without a deadline in place how can we keep pushing the solicitors to do their jobs?

How frustrating, have you spoken to the estate agent? 

So I haven't really had contact with our EA since we made the offer, as we were given the sales progressor pretty early on. To be fair, she has been pretty good. She responds to my emails probably the day after I send them, and last time I spoke to her she had done her job of chasing the chain and listened to my dates and concerns. I emailed her earlier this week for an update and she said she was chasing, but I also understand she has to get responses from other solicitors and the EA for the top of the chain (both our purchase and the onward purchase of our vendors are through the same EA which she works for). I don't think I'd go back to our original EA. We didn't even really have one to be honest as we were passed from pillar to post by them and did our viewing with the vendor!

Chooru

How far in advance is it OK to push a completion date? I am getting sick of this dragging out and because of the situation with my landlord, I want to put a deadline on this and I want all parties to agree to the date. If we're unable to do this, I need to seriously consider pulling out so I can sign a tenancy agreement to rent elsewhere (which is obviously less preferable!!)

justcat01

I don't really know where we are in the process at the moment. I guess we're relatively far along and should be able to complete by the end of next month.

I contacted my EA to find out if our buyers wanted anything from our house that we have offered. The main thing is a wardrobe that we bought last year to go in the recess in our bedroom. If they don't want to pay for it, I'll ask if they will be happy for us to leave it as it will be more hassle than it's worth to actually take it down.

We received an email from our solicitor this week with the fittings and contents form and a load of other supplementary information (title plan, boiler service docs etc). We had to sign a couple of things and send them back. I also found out that our solicitor doesn't work on Wednesdays so at least I don't have to worry if I don't hear from her on those days.

They applied for searches last week Wednesday so should have them back by now. Hopefully there won't be too many enquiries going forward.

Fingers crossed this all goes smoothly and we can be in our new house in.... eeekk... 4 weeks!

HopeAndDriftWood

@Chooru I've been looking into this recently... the legal guidance for solicitors tells them not to discuss dates until everything is in place and ready. We've been trying to get an idea of dates because I need to tell the hospital for birth arrangements... 

That said; we were all working to the 5th as our buyer's solicitor initially said that was feasible. Until yesterday, she was confident that the 5th could happen. Today, our earliest date is the 12th. The rest of the chain are furious. I don't know if I can wait that long. 

@justcat01 Best of luck! Four weeks might be doable if there's not much in the way of enquiries, and everyone is swift, and there's no weird mortgage requirements. 

@greensalad I feel you on waiting for enquiries. It looks like ours are now done but it's just one thing after another. 

I want to put a stop to it all today. Every time we're close, there's an end-of-the-week bombshell that puts us back another week.