The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

BlueTwiglet

Congratulations to all that have exchanged! So pleased for you!


A little bit of a hectic week here but long story short, my solicitor has finally emailed me to advise that all remaining enquiries were sent to the buyers solicitors today and they have asked for proposed dates. Trying not to get too excited because I was also told this a week ago today but fingers crossed.


I am also buying a property and now just waiting for my mortgage lender to sign off on the Occupier Consent Form for my partner. Hopefully that will be done in the next couple of days because ideally I would like to tie the two together as all enquiries for the purchase have been answered.


As long as everything continues smoothly, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel! Must keep a level head, must keep a level head.....

lovehols

Due to seller not being able to answer all of septic tank queries we had to pay for a septic tank survey which was done on Sunday. Awaiting report but it's not good, hoping seller will negotiate price given that basically it all needs replacing!

All the other outstanding queries, eg access etc all been sorted and solicitor says will send letter shortly, so it's just the sh*t issue now - literally.

Seems ages since we had our offer accepted in December! Seems a lot of people have exchanged recently - Congratulations!

lovehols

T4taylor wrote: »

Hi gang, I!!!8217;m jumping in with what feels like the worst luck in the world...

July House 1
Went for a look round- family friend was renovating, loved it.
August
House was valued by EA at £220,000. As we were family the offered it us at £210,000. Applied for mortgage and paid £500 application and valuation fees.
September
After lots of tooing and froing with paperwork and bank statements for mortgage got AIP. Solicitor instructed and £300 paid. House valued by surveyor at £190,000 and family friend not prepared to negotiate. Pulled out and lost £500
October House 2
Found a brilliant house at £200,000 went to see it and put in an offer straight away. Ended up in a bidding war which we won at £212,500. However EA warned us to look at the placement of proposed HS2- turned out to be less than 5 mins walk from the back garden for a 5km viaduct and the East Midlands Hub station. Sadly pulled out.
October House 3
Found another great house advertised at £200,000. However land registry said the rest of the street was around £160,000. We put in an offer and was rejected multiple times even though we!!!8217;re first time buyers and they had no other offers. Decided on £195,000 but they would not take it off the market.
We acted quickly and paid mortgage fees, collected paper work again and instructed solicitor and survey. The day survey was to be booked the couple decided to split up!! And take the house off the market. Lost £135 mortgage fees, managed to get survey fee reimbursed.
November House 4
Really despondent so decided to just find any half decent house that at least had an easy transaction. Found one for £180,000 put offer in and was accepted straight away. Paid mortgage and survey fees again, another £500.
December
Valuation came back at the right price so begin signing docs with solictor who sent off searches.
January
Phone call on the 4th Jan, the house our vendor wanted to buy has gone to probate.
16th Jan searches revealed subsidence, missing building regs and indemnity.
February
Constant chasing to find out what!!!8217;s going on with probate and enquiries on searches.
Last weekend went to view some more properties thinking of returning to the market.
Today
Found out completion date proposed for 23rd March. This was only after I had been chasing...
The saga continues!

Oh my word! Thought we were unlucky with two failed purchases and finally finding our dream.gouse on viewing 48! Hope everything goes ok for you.

G.McC

Thanks everyone. We've saved £15k over the last year (which is much easier to do when you're living at home - the only downside to saving every last penny is that I've forgotten what it feels like to spend money so might get a shock when I have to pay all these bills) but the rest of the deposit is coming from an inheritance so we can't take all the credit!

As FTB they're doing the valuation for free but offered to upgrade to a home buyers survey for £225. I've heard mixed reviews about their surveys so I did some phoning around and while the majority of the quotes were £375-400, I spoke to a highly recommend independent surveyor, explained that we'd only want the survey for peace of mind and he has quoted us £295.

There's a bit of a mixed opinion around getting a survey - I'd probably just pay the £295 to say that it's done and to have the piece of paper but partner and parents don't think it's needed and I'm better to save where I can.

The house is old but it's been well kept by the curent owner. It's the same age as my family home (1920s) and we anticipate similar problems - when my parents moved in 30 years ago they replaced floors, ceilings, windows, electrics, added a loft conversion and pretty much everything else you could think of. Thankfully there doesn't seem to be as much work needed on the house we're buying. There's no red flags visually and we've been round at all times of the day in all types of weather. Our seller has told us about any and all problems that they're aware of, right down to a cracked tile.

My parents argument is that a surveyor won't be able to see anything that my dad (who is a plumber/electrician/joiner/annoyingly good at almost everything DIY related) can't see. We won't be able to check under carpets until we're in and we wouldn't be using a survey to negotiate price as the seller has already offered us the house at £25k less than the estate agents valuation. I honestly don't think that there's anything that would defer us from buying - it's a great house in an even better location and we'd never normally be able to afford it.

Other than having some legal protection, would a home buyers survey be much use? Realise the post is probably better suited to another forum but curious to see what you guys think since we're all sort of waiting together!

lovehols

G.McC wrote: »

Thanks everyone. We've saved £15k over the last year (which is much easier to do when you're living at home - the only downside to saving every last penny is that I've forgotten what it feels like to spend money so might get a shock when I have to pay all these bills) but the rest of the deposit is coming from an inheritance so we can't take all the credit!

As FTB they're doing the valuation for free but offered to upgrade to a home buyers survey for £225. I've heard mixed reviews about their surveys so I did some phoning around and while the majority of the quotes were £375-400, I spoke to a highly recommend independent surveyor, explained that we'd only want the survey for peace of mind and he has quoted us £295.

There's a bit of a mixed opinion around getting a survey - I'd probably just pay the £295 to say that it's done and to have the piece of paper but partner and parents don't think it's needed and I'm better to save where I can.

The house is old but it's been well kept by the curent owner. It's the same age as my family home (1920s) and we anticipate similar problems - when my parents moved in 30 years ago they replaced floors, ceilings, windows, electrics, added a loft conversion and pretty much everything else you could think of. Thankfully there doesn't seem to be as much work needed on the house we're buying. There's no red flags visually and we've been round at all times of the day in all types of weather. Our seller has told us about any and all problems that they're aware of, right down to a cracked tile.

My parents argument is that a surveyor won't be able to see anything that my dad (who is a plumber/electrician/joiner/annoyingly good at almost everything DIY related) can't see. We won't be able to check under carpets until we're in and we wouldn't be using a survey to negotiate price as the seller has already offered us the house at £25k less than the estate agents valuation. I honestly don't think that there's anything that would defer us from buying - it's a great house in an even better location and we'd never normally be able to afford it.

Other than having some legal protection, would a home buyers survey be much use? Realise the post is probably better suited to another forum but curious to see what you guys think since we're all sort of waiting together!

It's hard to say, we paid for a full £800 for a structural survey and a further £200 odd for a septic tank survey. Age of house was 1975 and in future we are doing some major work so wanted to go into it eyes wide open. It was detailed and included photos and specifically addressed areas we had asked him to focus on. It also avoids any future builders doing the whole "oh didn't you know x?" I'd either have the standard one or a full structural. Having had all three at some point, I found the Homebuyer one really not useful, it didn't tell us much of anything that my dad who is similarly to your dad by the sounds of it had picked up.

As we have been saving for a number of years paying out just over £1k in surveys was annoying, but as it's a forever home we wanted to be sure anything had been picked up on. No one can truly answer the question but my dad lifted carpets, went up loft etc and also highlighted a few things for me to then ask the surveyor (RICS) to look into more. If you don't go for the Homebuyer, don't be afraid to ask for multiple viewings or to ask for a builder, etc to Lok at any particular concerns.

Cheery_Daff

Don't want to get all over excited... but we've had a call from solicitor at 12 saying everyone was REALLY ready to exchange today :j

Mind you then had panicked phone call from buyer saying her solicitor said ours had said we needed 2 weeks to release funds :eek: rang him and that's !!!!!!!! - he said he needed to ring me to check we hadn't changed completion date as we had less than 2 weeks left :rotfl:

She went off to kick her solicitor half an hour ago, I'm teaching all afternoon so can only switch phone on between classes :eek:

Will we exchange today?! Who the devil knows! :rotfl:

lovehols

Cheery Daff - fingers crossed for exchange. Good luck!

liquoricet

Ooh fingers crossed!!! (And toes and eyes!)

Lovehols I'd get the middling version survey (as a minimum) done too. This is the most amount of money you'll ever spend, you want to know your purchase is dependable.

JoJo1978

Cheery Daff I'm going shortly into a job interview, when I log back on again your story will be the first I check. Surely it has to happen?!?!?!

phoebe1989seb

Hi all, have been offline for almost a week, so just catching up with everyones' news

Congrats to liquoricet, Vampyr, Tiglath, RXT, milliemil and anyone else that I've missed :T Hoorah :j

Welcome newbies and fingers crossed your wait for exchange is not too long!

We've had a rollercoaster of a week - last Friday (9th) we had to leave our temporary home as we were not yet ready to exchange on our purchase. I'll finally come clean and admit our *temporary home* was actually the house we'd sold and completed on on 26th Jan. Our buyers - in an extremely kind gesture because they felt they had completely messed us about - let us stay in our old home paying a peppercorn rent for two weeks They were able to do this as they haven't yet put their old house on the market.

Anyway, last Friday was moving out day - although we'd spent the previous few days removing our stuff into the two huge storage units we're renting for three months while we do essential works on the new (400+ year old) [STRIKE]repossession[/STRIKE] house we're buying.

So for the past week we've been alternating between hotels and DS's sofa bed

Then Monday on a 600 mile round trip, we went back to view the repo to check all was fine - or as fine as a house that's been abandoned can ever be - and suddenly got cold feet, mainly because of the lack of water supply to the property We were s'posed to be exchanging Tuesday, but we asked our solicitor to delay giving us 24 hours to think things over.

Having had our mini wobble, we awoke yesterday with new enthusiasm for the house and the challenges it presents and drove a further 250 miles to sign the blooming disclaimer our solicitor had somehow managed to omit to get to us previously

Today we transfered the whole purchase amount, SDLT etc and DH has just been assured that exchange is imminent, so we might be celebrating tonight!

If it happens, we should be completing early next week......which means we'll be heading back to our old house - again, lol - to collect ten tons of planters and garden stuff!

Hope you finally have something to celebrate tonight too, Cheery!