The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

GM0895

Following a number of additional enquiries and the buyers solicitor finally responding, we’re completing on Friday (23rd June)! 

There’s finally light at the end of an 18 week long tunnel!   

foxandflowers

Offer accepted on purchase: 2nd Feb
Offer accepted on our house: 15th May (eek)

Draft contracts were sorted out two weeks ago, searches are back as far as I can tell, and I have recieved the enquiries from our buyers solicitor today. We are buying cash an empty property, and our buyer is also cash, so hoping for a speedy resolution to all of this, but it has been a drag so far. 

Hoping to get a date to exchange & complete by the end of the month, but who knows at this point. 

Grasshopper42

fiish said:

Time for me to join after lurking for some time

5th May - offer accepted
9th May - instructed solicitors, obtained mortgage recommendations from broker
10th May - sellers had offer accepted on onward purchase
15th May - mortgage application submitted
16th May - lender instructed valuation
19th May - lender valuation done (desktop valuation, EA confirmed no surveyor visit)
23rd May - solicitors received draft papers from seller side
24th May - instructed searches
31st May - mortgage offer received
1st June - received TA6 and TA10 from solicitors
8th June - Level 3 survey appointment

Bit of a slow start because of all the bank holidays, and the lender taking their time on our mortgage application, but everything seems to be going at a decent clip now, solicitors on both sides seem responsive, seller quick to answer questions too.

Has there been any update with this? we're similar times ( couple weeks diffrent) to you so just comparing

fiish

Grasshopper42 said:

Has there been any update with this? we're similar times ( couple weeks diffrent) to you so just comparing

Not a lot, survey has come back and our solicitor has raised more enquiries. Negotiating with seller over some fittings they're offering to sell. Getting a contractor to visit the house to quote for some repairs the survey recommended.

Most annoying thing now is the surveyor has been basically unreachable for follow up since the report. I've had to resort to asking friends, this forum, and a family member who's a structural engineer, for advice.

Updated timeline:

5th May - offer accepted
9th May - instructed solicitors, obtained mortgage recommendations from broker
10th May - sellers had offer accepted on onward purchase
15th May - mortgage application submitted
16th May - lender instructed valuation
19th May - lender valuation done (desktop valuation, EA confirmed no surveyor visit)
23rd May - solicitors received draft papers from seller side
24th May - instructed searches
31st May - mortgage offer received
1st June - received TA6 and TA10 from solicitors
8th June - Level 3 survey appointment
11th June - L3 survey report, more enquiries through solicitors

fiish

2 weeks of nothing happening, then it all happens at once!

Surveyor came back with answers to my questions, and the solicitors dropped the final report pack (with mortgage deed, TR1, contract, replies to enquiries etc), all this week. Now the ball's in our court to go through, sign, and return the paperwork.

gazfocus

gazfocus said:

Thought I’d join this thread for some venting haha. 

17th February - Offer accepted on our sale. 

18th February - Solicitor instructed
24th February - Documents completed and sent back to solicitor. 

14th March to 6th April - Sporadically received enquiries from buyers solicitors and replied same day. 

6th April - Buyers solicitor requested something additional from the council. 

12th May - Up to date redemption figures received by our solicitor and everything ready to go. 

17th May - Discovered our buyers buyers (FTBs) are having to query something with their lender which has had to go back to the valuer.

This is where we are currently. We’ve been waiting 3 weeks now and have had no movement whatsoever.  Emailed our solicitor today and received an autoreply to say our solicitor is now on leave til 19th June! Really hoping one of the other solicitors in the firm can try and push things along as it’s already been 15 weeks since offer accepted, don’t want to be waiting til the end of the month for completion. 

We are still waiting. 19 weeks now 🙄

Our side is all done, as far as I’m aware, our buyers side of our sale is all ready, and all we are waiting for is the resolution to one query to do with the house our buyers are selling which involves a piece of land. 

Spoke to our estate agent and there’s some progress been made today thanks to the estate agent getting involved and doing some of the leg work that solicitors should have been doing, but we’ve now given the chain a deadline of 14th July to agree a completion date otherwise we will put the house back on the market. 

Our estate agent couldn’t guarantee things would move any further in that timeframe but she agreed the deadline was fair. 

HM0002

I thought I would join the thread in an attempt to make myself feel better about the whole stress of buying a house in England and just to remind me that we aren't the only ones finding this process incredibly stressful. We are selling in Scotland and as missives conclude early in the process there it was too hard to tie in the dates so we have temporarily moved in with a friend. It was only supposed to be for a few weeks but it's dragging on a bit because everything is delayed and taking longer than expected and I am finding all the uncertainty really hard.

We had our offer accepted on 3rd March. There is an onward chain of four, but I think that was formed fairly quickly with a new build at the top of the chain and an expected completion date of early June. 

Luckily I learnt fairly early in the process that you have to chase as otherwise we were just not getting any info about what was happening and nothing was getting done. 

We had a fairly stressful negotiation around completion as we suddenly heard in mid June that the new build was delayed and the buyer wanted everyone in the chain below to complete on notice. We had said no to that anyway and I felt reached a bit of a stalemate but then the new build was delayed even further and they agreed to go into rented. 

We were then told that the chain wanted completion on 14th July with exchange as soon as possible. That was on 21st June. We would have preferred to complete earlier but we agreed because we just wanted to find a solution that worked fur everyone. We were ready to exchange in the middle of last week, but then heard that our seller's solicitor needed confirmation of release of fund before they could exchange. So exchange would be early this week instead. Fast forward to Monday. Still not exchanged. 

We are just keeping everything crossed we exchange tomorrow and all the uncertainty is finally sorted and we can book for my stuff to come out of storage etc. 

It's just like a constant ongoing saga. We thought when the chain agreed to complete on 14th with exchange as soon as possible that would all happen really quickly and that would be an end to the stress! But no it seems to keep on coming! 

ManuelG

Complete on Tuesday, packing is a true nightmare!

fackers_2

HM0002 said:

...

We had our offer accepted on 3rd March. There is an onward chain of four, but I think that was formed fairly quickly with a new build at the top of the chain and an expected completion date of early June. 

Luckily I learnt fairly early in the process that you have to chase as otherwise we were just not getting any info about what was happening and nothing was getting done. 

...

We were then told that the chain wanted completion on 14th July with exchange as soon as possible. That was on 21st June. We would have preferred to complete earlier but we agreed because we just wanted to find a solution that worked fur everyone. We were ready to exchange in the middle of last week, but then heard that our seller's solicitor needed confirmation of release of fund before they could exchange. So exchange would be early this week instead. Fast forward to Monday. Still not exchanged. 

We are just keeping everything crossed we exchange tomorrow and all the uncertainty is finally sorted and we can book for my stuff to come out of storage etc. 

It's just like a constant ongoing saga. We thought when the chain agreed to complete on 14th with exchange as soon as possible that would all happen really quickly and that would be an end to the stress! But no it seems to keep on coming! 

Sounds similar. My solicitors being really frustrating... 3rd team from the same company added to stress and delays incl incompetency! We are still without a exchange or completion date despite deadline being next Friday. This has been set out by all parties.

Moving companies are all not available now until mid-August! The problem is, we are away all of August. They just seem to mess up and I seem to be holding everything together with the Estate Agent, Sellers and buyers! Grrrr! Their rate isn't cheap neither. 

lis1320

Joining the thread, we are very early in the process but have a quick exchange deadline so things should be moving pretty quickly. We are FTB buying a house from a couple who is buying a new build, expected to be built by October. The developers have given us a deadline to exchange within 42 days so that the vendors can exchange with them. Although the early exchange deadline is scary, the developers have done some of the leg work already, e.g. searches as vendors were going to part exchange if they didn't find a buyer.

When putting in our offer we stated we would need a definite long completion deadline as we knew the new build may get delayed and we didn't want to risk a mortgage offer expiring. Vendors agreed to vacate by 30th November. 


26th June - offer accepted
30th June - memorandum of sale issued
4th July - draft contracts received and initial enquires raised
7th July - searches received from developer, all in date 

Next step is the mortgage. We have an offer in place from March (valid until September) with NatWest for a flat we were going to buy. Our mortgage advisor is seeing whether they are willing to extend for a further 3 months, taking us to December, on a new property.  He has noted that they are currently doing this for new builds due to market volatility and thinks we may have a chance as although we are not buying a new build, there is one at the end of our tiny chain.