The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

Tiglath

Still haven't exchanged, don't know when it's happening, and nobody can tell us what the hold-up is except the buyer's first solicitor who is currently not talking to anyone including the buyer's second solicitor and the actual buyer, it seems. We're attempting to take a longer term view and hoping to exchange by the end of this week. Our estate agent is trying to keep the whole chain sweet, but our vendor has been pushing for exchange since 4th January.

mutley74

Best of luck to everyone still in the process of buying. My completion was on the 26th Jan and to be frank i wish i did not more thorough viewings (although i did see the property about 5 times). But more behind curtains, inside the fitted wardrobes and exterior condition. Finding so many faults despite a full survey carried out, and vendors being a bit difficult in getting a few trade quotes for work in on acceptance.
My advice is persevere with thorough viewings and always ask a professional builder/elec/damp proofer to check anything for you if unsure, as one can easily underestimate costs to rectify a hidden bad job!

G.McC

Hi all,

First post on here after watching for quite some time! My partner and I are FTB and have been looking at houses since September and by a complete stroke of luck, have agreed to buy the house next to my parents! It's a private sale which is great as no chance of getting gazumped and our seller has already bought her new house.

We applied for a mortgage with Nationwide on Wednesday, they have received our documents (pay slips, bank account and proof of deposit) and they've now organised the valuation for early next week. Hoping that this means they haven't found any red flags on our documents or credit searches?

We know our seller and we know that we're incredibly lucky to be getting the house - our only worry is the mortgage! We have a 15% deposit and we're getting the house at a great price so we're hoping that the valuation goes through without any problems!

We agreed to buy the house back in November but now that things are starting to move I find myself getting seriously impatient!

We instructed the solicitor a week ago but haven't heard anything from them since paying the deposit. Our seller isn't planning on moving out until June so there still a fair bit of waiting to do. Any things to look out for or get in place in the coming months/weeks?

pink_pirlie

JaneyLouWho wrote: »

Being at the bottom of a non-communicative chain is testing my patience! The estate agent we are buying through isnt returning my emails, my solicitor cant get sensible responses from the solicitor above.

This is exactly our situation right now so I feel your pain!

My solicitor says the estate agent are ignoring us on purpose. I am going to go in tomorrow so they can not escape me! Going to give them drop dead date for exchange as we don’t have even an inkling what timescales we are waiting for right now.

Our vendor is buying a new build retirement property. I was assured only a week ago by the EA that the vendor was still on to complete in February and today had we received contrary information from our solicitor (as per my previous post).

My parents went to the building site today after the email from solicitor now I know where she is buying and turns out the house carcasses are mostly complete but that the insides are still to do. I have zero confidence the property will be ready to complete in February.

Does anyone have any idea how long a new build takes to be kitted out on the inside?

I feel everyone s frustrations on this thread! :mad:

spendinglikemad

Update from us is solicitors called me to provide an update from land registry and next part of the process is to send out a notice to neighbours to advise of the changes to land registry in case they want to object and then they have 15 working days to object (has to be a valid objection ie they would have to prove ownership of the land ie that they have upkept it - its a mature hedge which has always been in same location ) Basically this has happened as the land registry sometime in the last 20 years updated the map and the boundary is now in the wrong place - as we moved out last year the neighbours all are a bit peeved with us - as we didn't share the information with them that we were planning to move out and kind of ignore us when we go around to the house now!!! (nowt as funny as folk eh) so I am hoping they are not awkward - so now the waiting has extended another 3 weeks - ho hum.......

From our dealings over the title deeds and lang registry it has transpired that both our deeds and my neighbours deeds are wrong so at least it shares this info with them for when they want to sell their property (£300 and 2 months worth of conyenacing time to deal with) - somehow a big triangle shaped parcel became unregistered which goes over the boundary of the ours and neighbours house

Roll on March for exchange (hope our buyers are still on board as we agreed sale last Nov)

SLM

juniordoc

Well done GMcC. 15% is not a bad first time deposit these days. Hopefully a private sale means you're getting a good price since the seller is saving big-time on estate agent fees!
Are nationwide doing a homebuyers report with your valuation or do you need to arrange your own survey?

Cheery_Daff

What a palaver SLM! Hope it gets sorted quickly.

Hope the new build doesn't take too long pink_perlie!

Welcome G.McC. Just make sure you get all paperwork at your end turned round as quickly as possible! Might be worth getting the solicitor to confirm they've started the searches (if you want them to start before you've got the mortgage offer through, that is).

Time for an update of the Spreadsheet of Blame :rotfl: :rotfl: Not done it for a while If you weren't around when I updated before, this is a spreadsheet I set up months ago when I was getting VERY grumpy at things being delayed, and feeling partly responsible cos our mortgage was taking so long to go through. Each party has a column, and the days are listed down the side. Each week I go through and update who was to blame for the delay being caused on each particular day

Things got a little confused between the mortgage broker and lender (but they were both as bad as each other). I've recently added a new column for the bottom of the chain - didn't seem fair to blame our buyers themselves for *their* buyers dropping out and the new ones being a pain in the @rse :rotfl:

So...

Us: 27 days (a few days between receiving and accepting offer, finding a house to buy, and a brief few days of food poisoning where I didn't do anything)
Broker: 23 days (faffing before putting application in, filling form in wrong causing a lower offer amount, refusing to contact me to sort it out)
Lender: 41 days (initial processing, then a load of faffing making a decision when the house was valued at £0 and we had to change the title plan)
Solicitor: 12 days (pretty good! Mostly changing title plan docs - everything else was done while waiting 3 months for the mortgage...)
Buyer: 28 days (selling their house after we'd accepted offer, then selling again when their original buyer dropped out)
Seller: 16 days (suspect this is their solicitor rather than them, taking 2 weeks to answer a simple question about the title plan)
Bottom of chain: 75 days (not fair really as original bottom of chain dropped out, so they've become responsible for every single day of delay since the start of December :rotfl: But don't feel sorry for them - they said they were ready to exchange on 31st Jan and got us all excited but we're still waiting for them to get their act together now!)

Completely pointless but somehow knowing who to blame makes me feel better :rotfl: :rotfl:

milliemil

Hey all,

Update over here and a bit of a rant!
After accepting an offer on our house November the 6th, reserving our new build property and all ready to exchange by the 8th of December to find out or buyers hadn't even applied for a mortgage!
A valuation, structural survey, drain survey, and a 6% decrease in price of our house later...
I have been told we are finally exchanging today!!!

Then we get a phone call from the buyers solicitor asking for a cavity wall insulation guarantee, of which I have no idea where on earth I would get it from!

However the sols have said not to worry and we can still exchange without one - but why wait until the last second to ask for one!!!

Fingers crossed it all goes ahead with a move in date for next Friday - best start packing!

Nicola83

We exchanged on our new build today!!!!
We can move in next Friday!!
It has been such a smooth process, our solicitors have been incredible, they've not dropped the ball once, we will definitely use the same firm if we ever move again.

JaneyLouWho

Still no progress here, but my lovely solicitor did manage to speak to the solicitor above my sellers solicitor and found out that all their sellers searches are back on their purchase, and that responses to enquiries are coming in bit by bit this week. Unfortunately though not all responses are back, so they cant report to their client, and cant give any indication of when they will be ready to. And so we wait. Still got absolute silence from my sellers estate agent, shes avoiding me completely.