The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

Nosignalinput

Hi all. 

We've been waiting for an exchange date for ages now. Sorry if this is long, but I just want to give you some background:

Offer accepted on our house at beginning of July. We put an offer on a house a couple of weeks after this. Everything was going smoothly, until our vendors said they were buying a house that's currently under probate, but they didn't expect it to take long as it was quite a simple case and the brothers of the woman who had died wanted to sell pretty quickly, without the use of an estate agent. 

Fast forward to December and we're still waiting on probate. I have never hated a word more than I now hate the word 'probate'.

Our buyers are FTB living with parents, and given that our vendors are buying an empty house, we thought we'd got quite lucky with the chain of three until the dreaded 'probate' word was mentioned. 

Near the end of October, our buyers solicitor started talking about dates. He mentioned 5 November as an exchange date, which we said we would be happy with provided probate had come back. It turns out the solicitor went ahead and gave that date to our buyers as confirmed, when we'd never 100% confirmed it. So our buyers bought building insurance and the post for it came to our house (I obviously didn't open it, but it's clearly from an insurance company and our buyers have since confirmed it). 

After this didn't happen, their solicitor told our estate agent that our buyers were getting frustrated (you and me both!), which our EA then turned into them 'considering their purchase'. This obviously panicked us. Luckily, our next door neighbour knows the sister of the woman buying our house and our buyer had already asked if she could check with us about any updates. We ended up talking to our buyer direct, and she said they had no intention of pulling out at all and was shocked the solicitor/EA had said this. She's currently pregnant and 8 weeks away from her due date, so she's understandably getting a big anxious about it all. She'd simply asked the solicitor for an update and said normally she'd be fine waiting as long as it takes.

On our vendors side, he got in touch with us early on in the process because the EA he uses has been terrible. Yesterday he said that everything is more or less done on the probate side, it just needs 'rubber stamping'. So basically it's sitting on a desk somewhere waiting to be confirmed. 

We bought this house under help to buy, so had to spend £500 on a survey and admin cost for our redemption quote. It ran out mid-November, but has now been desktop extended until February. If we still haven't moved out by then, we'll have to re-do it all. Our mortgage offer also expires in February. 

We started packing up early in November as we'd been told that 'probate should be granted any day now' by our vendors EA, which prompted our solicitor to become annoyed as they told us nobody could give a deadline on probate as they simply don't know and it takes as long as it takes. So, annoyingly, we're currently living in a house full of boxes. We don't even have space to put Christmas decorations up thanks to boxes upon boxes, although I'm now considering shifting stuff around to do it anyway as we have a two year-old and I feel like he's missing out. 

I'm not hopeful it will be done before Christmas now. We've already got quotes for removal, but we're pushing it to book one in now when it's so close to everything shutting down for the year. I've also got to get our fridge disposed of as there's an integrated fridge at our new home, but we obviously need it until we move. We pretty much only have two weeks left or we're getting pushed into January. 

Anyway, sorry, I just needed to vent. It's been a long, tedious process. 

LizaVCook

Exchanged and completed yesterday. What an awful week. Too exhausted to moan but it almost didn’t happen.
Anyway we did get there and I can finally relax. Other than redecorating of course!

MsACam

Congrats LizaVCook, after all of that, good to see the positive end result!

hockeylover40

We were supposed to exchange Wednesday. Didn't hear anything from our solicitor.

Chased up first thing Thursday morning - apparently he'd had trouble getting hold of our buyer's solicitor. 
Spoke to our buyer directly who said he thought we were exchanging Friday (today) and his solicitor was now unavailable for the rest of the day.

Both chased again this morning - told exchange should happen today. Now our solicitor can't get hold of our vendor's solicitor :argh:

Getting stressed that we're going to lose our movers if we can't confirm - they won't accept a booking until we've exchanged...

sheffield_soldier

I am so !!!!!! off right now with my solicitors. So far all my process has been near perfect and expecting to complete two weeks today. My solicitor has just been waiting for a mine interpretive report (normal for my area) since 2nd November. After googling this report I see it is normally the same day you get it back.

When questioning my solicitor last night she said she is waiting on the sellers to buy it. !!!!!! - 1 month for £150 which I just paid there and then.
Now when the report comes back its got to go to my lender and could have cost us a move before Christmas!

I hate poor communication

hockeylover40

hockeylover40 said:

We were supposed to exchange Wednesday. Didn't hear anything from our solicitor.

Chased up first thing Thursday morning - apparently he'd had trouble getting hold of our buyer's solicitor. 
Spoke to our buyer directly who said he thought we were exchanging Friday (today) and his solicitor was now unavailable for the rest of the day.

Both chased again this morning - told exchange should happen today. Now our solicitor can't get hold of our vendor's solicitor :argh:

Getting stressed that we're going to lose our movers if we can't confirm - they won't accept a booking until we've exchanged...

 After all that stress we have finally exchanged 19/20 weeks after having our offer accepted (19 July) and are completing on Wednesday!

 I just had a mad dash to get to the movers before they closed to collect boxes so we can pack over the weekend.

Good luck to everyone still waiting!

badger09

LizaVCook said:

Exchanged and completed yesterday. What an awful week. Too exhausted to moan but it almost didn’t happen.
Anyway we did get there and I can finally relax. Other than redecorating of course!

So glad you managed to get it over the line. Hope you left your buyers a bottle of fizz. As FTB's they've really pulled out all the stops and moved incredibly quickly so you could get your dream house.

Hebblethwaite

I've also exchanged today. It's almost seven months since my offer was accepted. We're due to complete next Friday and I really hope things go smoothly between now and then!

Want2move2021

Our sellers paperwork arrived with their solictors yesterday so we had hoped to exchange. Then today, but our seller's solictors went AWOL this afternoon. Hoping to exchange and complete simultaneously on Monday, lots of nagging to ensure authority can be given Monday morning. Cannot believe they still need to get it confirmed each day when one of the sellers is in the forces and deployed.... Unlikely to get Monday off so husband taking this one for the team!

Croon979

Been lurking for ages in the hope that I can join at some stage if I ever got close enough to exchange. After a fraught few months it looks like I will be able to!  

We have had an offer accepted on a property a few weeks ago. We had previously offered on it a few months ago and were gazumped. We were absolutely gutted at the time. However, that sale fell through and the seller came back to us. After some soul searching, we made a reduced offer and it was accepted. 

Today we got our mortgage approval through so it actually looks like it may actually stick! I was worried as the property we are buying is a relatively newly built property (last 6 years) but there was no warranty with it which we thought may be a problem for the bank. The seller built it himself and intended to live in it but had a change of circumstances so is now selling on. However after a physical valuation and great survey, the underwriters are content to lend on it despite the lack of structural warranty. 

So I think I can allow myself to get quite excited now. Searches are already underway and seller is pushing to exchange before Christmas with completion at the end of January. Neither of us are in a chain so it appears doable in theory.

Fingers crossed!