The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

LizaVCook

Well I’m a teacher and  want to move well before the holidays. Plus teachers get a day off for moving house! I’ll be packing the weekend and evenings leading up to the move. Speak to your EA and tell them to tell your vendor that due to you being pregnant you really want to be moved asap to prepare for the baby. Good luck!

rose_T

Really hoping to hear something this week! 

I emailed my solicitor last Tuesday he replied other side wants to fix a date of entry. My solicitor is suggesting mid December. I replied back saying our offer expires on the 9th December he didn’t reply. I tried to call on Thursday morning was told he would call me back nothing. 

I ended up emailing my mortgage broker but he was on holiday until tomorrow. Going to see what he says when he is back about ether extending or reapplying due to better rates now. 

17mths and counting!!! 

Please send me some Key 🔑 dust ✨ I need it lol 

Schwarzwald

10 month into my first property purchase.

London, leasehold, property is vacant, I am FTB, overall should not be toooo complicated one would expect.

I realize though that I got pretty unlucky and probably tick many boxes of the things that can go wrong:

Very difficult and generally dishonest vendor, survey came back with substantial findings that needed proper investigations, vendor dropped out, then came back again 24 hours later, vendor ultimately lacking certain key documents, which had to be organized during the process (took 3 months), poor conveyancing, slowly responding landlord and management company that mixes up documents, …

We have failed three (!!) times now to exchange on the dates envisioned, and I am pretty speechless by now how difficult the UK property purchase process is.

Apparently we are now aiming to exchange and complete next week, but I try to not expect anything anymore until papers are actually signed.

Have considered multiple times to drop the purchase but incrementally there was always more upside than downside to keep going.

While I approached this process v rationally and with an investor mindset, I cant lie that this process has been v daunting and exhausting. 

Right now looking at pre-packed boxes as removal company was planned to come today … fingers crossed some movement next week ….

Nicbetty

First house purchase here
AIP/DIP-October 26th
viewing - October 28th
offer made - bidding war until 3rd November
offer accepted -November 3rd
documents sent to broker for full application
valuation-November 16th
valuation agreed and full mortgage offer-November 16th
purchase pack , gift deposit forms sent -19th November 
search fees paid -19th November 

it’s all moved very quickly . No idea how long it’s going to be now.
good luck everyone 

Otb21

Emmajhowe90 said:

So we’re in a chain free purchase (sold our house and living with the in laws for the past 5 months). I’m currently 36 weeks pregnant and we should be good to exchange from a legal standpoint by the end of the month. Vendors always said their plan was to be out of their house by Xmas regardless.
However they’ve now turned around and said actually they’d like the Christmas holidays to pack up and move because one of them is a teacher?! I’m due before Christmas!! I don’t feel like it’s fair for them to hold us up by a month in this situation just because they want to take their leisurely time packing. We’ve just had half term, and what about evenings, weekends and the other half of the couple simply taking time off work? 

Am I being unreasonable wanting them to do this one thing for us? 

Bearing in mind they’ve messed us around with pulling out of selling the house to us twice before for various excuses and asked for £50k more than we were originally paying due to the house prices going up.

our surveyor has undervalued the house by £20k on what we paid and says we’re well within our rights to negotiate the price. Do you think we could say ‘we’ll still pay the full price as long as you commit to moving this side of Xmas?’… what would you do in this situation?

I really hope you are able to figure this out with your vendor. I absolutely see the situation from both sides but as chain-free buyers (living with family currently) we also feel like the buyers in these situations are the last to have any sort of say when it comes to choosing dates and stamping out preferences. Especially in a market like you say where buyers are paying above and over...

For my partner and I, when our first purchase fell through we made the decision to progress our sale so that our buyers could benefit from stamp duty exemption at the time which was coming to an end (or was going to start to be tapered off) back before Summer. Obviously, a massive inconvenience to us, all our stuff going in to storage and still there, living with family, working from home, etc. But in our opinion, we expected these possibilities selling our home so you just have to get on with it. 

The only thing you can do really is ask for a conversation with the vendors, I completely agree it is not a good enough excuse just because it is convenient for them. Selling and buying a house isn't convenient at all and more than likely they would just prefer to avoid moving over Christmas than anything to do with packing. Like you say, if you sell your house, you pack weekends, evenings, spare time. If they wanted to move before Christmas, they would make it happen in my opinion. 

I think one of the biggest issues with selling a house in this country is that we don't have any dates to work towards. There should be target dates where the chain must be completed by, the solicitors are working towards an approved date their end, etc/ Otherwise it is just so up in the air and everyone (including third parties - surveyors, etc) can just work to their own pace which results in completely unnecessary delays trickling down the chain. 

If I was you, chat to the vendor first and ask if they would consider a rethink around using Christmas holidays as packing time. If that doesn't get you anywhere and you still feel like you want to push the situation then I'd reopen price negotiations with them. You don't even have to mention the Christmas thing, especially if the property has been down valued. You may find though that as soon as price reductions start to be mentioned, they are suddenly a lot more motivated to get things packed and completed.

Best of luck with everything!  

stillwaiting1

I think I might be completing on Friday. I say might has I have emailed the conveyancer back last week to agree to the date and haven't heard anything back yet, not sure if contracts have been exchanged either. I hate not being told what is happening. 

LizaVCook

Finally had confirmation that the culverted watercourse in the seller’s garden is  the responsibility of Northumbrian Water. 

To help other people who find themselves going round in circles, email
plans@nwl.co.uk with the address of the property and you will receive a plan back with a layout of all the drains and pipes that belong to Northumbrian Water! Had we known this earlier it would have saved weeks of dead end phone calls and emails.

Now that this is all sorted, we are finally ready to exchange! 2 weeks after finding buyer no. 4!! 

It  can be done!!

nicolanickynic

stillwaiting1 said:

I think I might be completing on Friday. I say might has I have emailed the conveyancer back last week to agree to the date and haven't heard anything back yet, not sure if contracts have been exchanged either. I hate not being told what is happening. 

If you have exchanged, you would definitely know it. The solicitor will contact you on the day for your explicit consent beforehand and then will explicitly confirm when you have exchanged.

If you’ve not had this then likelihood is you’ve not exchanged contracts.

Hope they get back to you with an answer sooner rather than later.
Good luck.

andy444

andy444 said:

Was hoping to exchange contracts on my purchase today after my solicitors said yesterday that it should all be ready to commence today. 

But my vendors' useless solicitors weren't ready today as a senior solicitor there has to sign off their contract. I got an email from the EA several days ago stating that's all that was left to do several days ago so they've apparently done little on that aspect since. 

Still waiting for the goddamn solicitors to check the contract is fine. It's the only thing holding it up. To the best of my knowledge, the vendors haven't chased up their solicitors when I would've thought it'll be in their interests to do so.

T4taylor

We’re in a long chain, the bottom are ftb who have an MOD H2B to draw down which takes 10 days apparent, then our buyers, then us, then our vendors one of which has already moved into rented for a new job. 

We’ve all signed contracts (well I think we all have unless the vendors are yet to do theirs) and everything outstanding I think is back. Our mortgage offer expires on the 10th December so need to complete on the 8th or 9th, wondering how soon we can exchange…