The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

Chooru

HopeAndDriftWood said:

@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. 

Thank you for your reply!

It's so incredibly frustrating. I think what is frustrating is that everything moved so fast at the start, with all searches, etc being completed within a week. We have now had several weeks of radio silence, with the only updates being given when I've chased. Issue is with seller's solicitor being slow to respond to queries, with some queries still outstanding, although they are gradually reducing in size. My solicitor has been great, but obviously if you're working with slow colleagues, I guess there isn't a whole lot they can do.

I don't want to pull out, but if we can't get completion in the time frame I need (which, to be fair, should have been ample time!), then there is a real possibility that we will need to pull out because it will become financial unviable/and we'd end up locked in another tenancy agreement... Just such a mess. Also extremely stressful!

Newdrake88

HopeAndDriftWood said:

@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. 

Awww sorry to hear this what are you going to do? 

We are going ahead for the 5th after the vendor Saying earliest they can do is 10th due to some things being collected, we have said we will arrange that! 

Planning exchange now 

novelle

justcat01 said:

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!

As @HopeAndDriftWood said correctly, it can be doable but really depends on a number of factors.

Looking at my timescale you cansee the enquiry  stage takes a month and still I don't know if my solicitor is satisfied with the answers.  

From the emails I received from the very efficient locum of my solicitor,  it took a week for the seller's solicitor to answer the questions.  Since then the answers have been sitting in my solicitor's mail box for 1.5 weeks, until I asked her what was the progress.  Her efficient locum then followed up for me and made some real progress.  And now it's been stuck again with no responses from my solicitor ! 

So if you have an efficient person to help you out, I am pretty sure things can be done a lot quicker.

snbkr12

I can finally move to this thread after receiving our mortgage offer yesterday. Solicitor has mentioned that he can probably push completion until after Christmas, me and my partner are in disagreement about the pros and cons of this. Can anybody shed light on the benefits of delaying completion?

For context, we are FTB living with parents and no chain.  

Ref44

Not exchanging today; buyers solicitor is apparently dealing with today's completions. Holdup has now been identified; the deposit includes gifted monies and the solicitor hadn't bothered to get the required statement. According to our EA this has been supplied so we will hopefully complete on Monday and move on Wednesday. Where is the SRA when you need them?

justcat01

novelle said:

justcat01 said:

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!

As @HopeAndDriftWood said correctly, it can be doable but really depends on a number of factors.

Looking at my timescale you cansee the enquiry  stage takes a month and still I don't know if my solicitor is satisfied with the answers.  

From the emails I received from the very efficient locum of my solicitor,  it took a week for the seller's solicitor to answer the questions.  Since then the answers have been sitting in my solicitor's mail box for 1.5 weeks, until I asked her what was the progress.  Her efficient locum then followed up for me and made some real progress.  And now it's been stuck again with no responses from my solicitor ! 

So if you have an efficient person to help you out, I am pretty sure things can be done a lot quicker.

Yes, true.

It's our vendor who is pushing to complete by that date (or at least before Christmas) so hopefully that means her solicitor will be quick with it all.

As it happens, my husband has also been called to do jury duty starting the 20th December, so hoping that we get in before then or it can be rescheduled.

Thrugelmir

Chooru said:

How far in advance is it OK to push a completion date? 

@Chooru You can only suggest and ask. Everybody else in the chain will have their own agenda.  Matters will take as long they they take. Then you've the issue of people being able to complete on any given day.  Taking time off work isn't always practical for some people. 

greensalad

Flurry of activity today! 

My vendor emailed to discuss dates directly and explained they're going to be abroad most of December. A little annoying but oh well. They're suggesting exchange before they go abroad early December and complete in January. Works quite nicely for us, gives us some time to get some early things booked in (like new carpets) and works well with our end of tenancy date, plus have a relaxed Christmas.

However somehow both of our solicitors and the sales progressor all seem to think someone (I don't know who they think...) is gunning for an early December completion? Which seems a bit quick as legalities aren't yet finished. 

Anyway, I'm not just trying to get everyone (our vendor, their solicitor, my solicitor, and sales progressor) to firm and agree the early Dec / early Jan proposal which sounds great for all of us... except not sure about top of chain yet. 

But at least it sounds like the enquiries have been returned! But not filtered through yet.

trance_abbey

Ahhhhhhhhhh..... I dipped out of this thread for a couple of months because it was too stressful to sit here while there was absolutely no movement happening.

I don't know if any of you remember me, but I had an offer accepted on a chain free, leasehold property back in April that later turned out to have a boundary issue (council tenant next door had moved the fence and there's an ongoing dispute about where the property line actually is).

After a LOT of waiting I got a message from their solicitor about 3 weeks ago asking if I'd be happy to complete with the boundary fence issue outstanding. I had been asking them to send me the documentation about the dispute for several months so I asked for it again, in order to 'make up my mind'.

They sent me through two letters, one from 2002 and one from 2003 from the council saying that the fence was in the wrong place and that they'd be engaging in an arbitration process with the tenant to get the fence restored. 2002!!!

I told them that they had to be kidding.  They offered to pay half my stamp duty as a sweetner. I told them that I was happy to have a constructive conversation but less than 5k wasn't going to help.... so I went off and slogged my way through looking at another bunch of properties, found one which was great and put an offer on it and was preparing to tell the original vendors to go jump when my dad convinced me to do a bit of a power move.

So I emailed the vendors and said they'd misrepresented the boundary issue and that I'd done everything right and was ready to complete but I wouldn't have ever offered what I had if I'd known the age of the boundary issue.  And then I offered them 25k under the agreed price.

They came back to me yesterday and said they'd take 20k off if I complete next week.

soooooo..... I guess I'm completing next week!

greensalad

trance_abbey said:

Ahhhhhhhhhh..... I dipped out of this thread for a couple of months because it was too stressful to sit here while there was absolutely no movement happening.

I don't know if any of you remember me, but I had an offer accepted on a chain free, leasehold property back in April that later turned out to have a boundary issue (council tenant next door had moved the fence and there's an ongoing dispute about where the property line actually is).

After a LOT of waiting I got a message from their solicitor about 3 weeks ago asking if I'd be happy to complete with the boundary fence issue outstanding. I had been asking them to send me the documentation about the dispute for several months so I asked for it again, in order to 'make up my mind'.

They sent me through two letters, one from 2002 and one from 2003 from the council saying that the fence was in the wrong place and that they'd be engaging in an arbitration process with the tenant to get the fence restored. 2002!!!

I told them that they had to be kidding.  They offered to pay half my stamp duty as a sweetner. I told them that I was happy to have a constructive conversation but less than 5k wasn't going to help.... so I went off and slogged my way through looking at another bunch of properties, found one which was great and put an offer on it and was preparing to tell the original vendors to go jump when my dad convinced me to do a bit of a power move.

So I emailed the vendors and said they'd misrepresented the boundary issue and that I'd done everything right and was ready to complete but I wouldn't have ever offered what I had if I'd known the age of the boundary issue.  And then I offered them 25k under the agreed price.

They came back to me yesterday and said they'd take 20k off if I complete next week.

soooooo..... I guess I'm completing next week!

Woweee, that's a significant amount of cash! Well done. Sounds like a bit of a PITA but the money sounds worth it!