The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

FtbDreaming

Oh dear yours sounds even more stressful than mine. At least mine has answered the phone right the way through even though she has technically done sweet fa. My saving grace has been my mortgage broker. He solved the mortgage offer problem for me and got on the solicitors case a bit too after it dragging on and on. 

Has anything been done on the conveyancing? Mine hasn’t done nothing. They’ll be sending off for the searches tomorrow so they said. God knows how long that will take. Wishing you the best of luck keep me updated! Its refreshing to share even though its stress.

Windofchange

We're also having a bit of a mare, and it's totally down to a lack of communication. 

Offer made, rejected, re-made and accepted Jan 31st
Mortgage broker and conveyancer instructed Feb 1st
Mortgage offer received Feb 7th
All searches back and queries answered sometime in mid March
Requested exchanged date via solicitor mid March and then lockdown
silence for the past 6 weeks or so
Spoke with solicitor a few days back - not a lot has happened
Requested in no uncertain terms I want to know when we can get moving as our mortgage offer expires in a month. No answer as of yet. 

How hard can it be for our sellers to give an indication of when they might be willing to move!? Either them or their solicitors just don't seem to respond to anything. I'm assuming that something is going on somewhere as otherwise surely we could start discussing at least? Coming up to 5 months and still no closer to knowing when we might move.

sjc93

FtbDreaming said:

Oh dear yours sounds even more stressful than mine. At least mine has answered the phone right the way through even though she has technically done sweet fa. My saving grace has been my mortgage broker. He solved the mortgage offer problem for me and got on the solicitors case a bit too after it dragging on and on. 

Has anything been done on the conveyancing? Mine hasn’t done nothing. They’ll be sending off for the searches tomorrow so they said. God knows how long that will take. Wishing you the best of luck keep me updated! Its refreshing to share even though its stress.

It's been an absolute nightmare from the beginning with these solicitors, to be honest. They've used the whole covid lockdown as even more of an excuse to be incompetent, so you're really lucky to be able to get hold of your solicitor on the phone.

Yeah, so all of the conveyencing has been done now - searches done, enquires back, drafted contracts and final contracts have been sent to us which we've sent BACK to them, so it literally is now a case of them withdrawing the funds and doing exchange and completion ASAP and talking to the other solicitor. The other solicitor wanted to complete by this Friday which isn't going to happen at all now. It just makes us look really stupid to the vendor and the solicitor. Thankfully for us, our EA has been brilliant and has communicated with us the whole way through otherwise we wouldn't have a clue with what's going on!

Wishing you all the best of luck too, and do keep badgering your solicitor. The thing I've learned is to definitely go through a local solicitor, even if it's more expensive. It's really not worth all of this stress - and to CONSTANTLY chase them!

Disney_Pluto

I’m waiting to exchange and complete too. Baby is here in 6 weeks so holding on to hope that it will be before that but that’s slowly drifting away. 

All but local searches have come back. Local search won’t be back until 12th June as they hadn’t been working. All other enquiries been answered. So literally waiting on that one search which is so frustrating. 

We are part exchanging so there isn’t a chain as such and just want to get in ASAP now. How does even the simplest of transactions seem to take forever. I know covid hasn’t helped but it’s so stressful. 

Hope the rest of you guys get some good news soon and hopefully any sort of date to work to. 

Have you all been packing boxes etc or not bothered until you have a date? 

sjc93

How exciting for you @Disney_Pluto!! Do you know what you're having?

We were waiting on a Local Search for a while too and everything else came back within a week enquiry wise, so I feel you on that one!

We don't have a chain either. We're FTB's and the property is empty and the vendor we're buying off is buying a property in Prague; so there's really no reason as to why this is taking so long - it literally is a case of our solicitors holding everything up.

We've packed a couple of things up at the moment, but until we've got a date we haven't bothered with too much.. Luckily we don't have that much to move realistically! How about you guys?

amieloustew

Forgot to update you all - completed and got they keys on Friday and officially moved in today 

Disney_Pluto

Thank you @sjc93 we are having a little girl and already have a 5 year old boy. So been a bit of a nightmare trying to homeschool, husband working and me having to start maternity leave early due to covid, because I’m a nurse so since third trimester haven’t been allowed to work. We thought this would be a quick process with the developer buying ours and the house we are buying being empty but there were 3 weeks before the sellers solicitor even had the plans for our solicitor. Luckily both sets of solicitors are working from home but they are so slow. 

Do you actually have a reason as to why yours doesn’t seem to be getting to the final
hurdle? You think the seller would do anything to keep you as a buyer in this climate. 

Well I have lots of my clothes packed in suitcases as none of my normal things fit me anyway and we have lots of the breakables like vases, photo frames etc all packed. Not sure we would’ve done that had we not had the baby on the way though. The rest we obviously need to live on a daily basis. 

gagahouse

Was one week away from completion on a new build then everything stopped upon lockdown. Developers claims to have been back at work since May 4th but having visited the site since then and up to yesterday saw no one working on site at all. Enquiries to sales staff as to when completion will take place has been met with the excuse they are still working on their 'building plan'. Surely the houses that are completed like ours should be their priority after all they've had no cash flow for the last 2 months but I've been met with a dismissive attitude that is seriously peeing me off now. I think the reality is they are struggling to get the contractors back on site and therefore can give no visibility to what should be simple cases as ours.
My only hope of a quick resolution is that their reporting quarter end is end of June and this usually spurs them into action as they want to book the sale in that quarter.
Spoke to my solicitor today and she is frustrated working from home with no access to the documents which are kept in their central London office so that doesn't bode well for a speedy resolution either!

sjc93

Perfect set for you then @Disney_Pluto! I'm sure we'll talk before, but I hope everything goes well IE birth etc at this crazy time & you're resting and not stressing out too much! You deserve the break anyway given you're frontline!

There doesn't seem to be a reason for delaying yours either! Our vendor and their solicitor are really keen to get this done as soon as possible, and our solicitors are so hard to get hold of that it just makes the problem even worse. We wouldn't have had half the information we do if it wasn't for us regularly being in contact with the lady at the EA who's in talks with us and the vendor/their solicitors. I think the solicitors really are dragging their feet, and it's really bad considering I'm WFH and our level of service hasn't dropped so I don't expect the service to have dropped on their end either. I can appreciate a delay, but they're constantly getting things wrong, not responding to us properly & who knows what else is outstanding on our case when this new person looks at it tomorrow.

@gagahouse oh gosh... That sounds terrible! I'd definitely keep chasing the developers on that one. The thing I've learned throughout this whole process is that if you don't chase them, then they don't do it and you fall to the back of the pile. 

I'm just hoping that we're going to get a date this week/next week so we can start to actually inform our landlord (we're private renting) and everyone else that we need to. But I'm definitely putting in a complaint once we have completed with these solicitors. 

bob_the_dinosaur

amieloustew said:

Forgot to update you all - completed and got they keys on Friday and officially moved in today 

thats great news