The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

Hannimal

Oh no @matthew91822 - I am so sorry  

zv13424

Finally exchanged today, with a proposed completion date of 28/09!

atrixa

Stressful day with the house. Estate agent ended up ringing me and the vendor and ended up chasing my solicitor (I also chased yesterday) re an enquiry about a DPC guarantee. After a 'oh, I didn't get your email' (LIES!) things have finally gotten moving and hopefully should get things resolved this week. It's looking to be a price reduction, so I've contacted my mortgage advisor and it looks straightforward!

SoTiredTho

Had our offer accepted in June.
We were told at the beginning of the September that the completion date was going to be the 21st of September. Cool, had all the signed contract documents sent off, booked a moving service, cancelled our lease (FTBs!). Transferred our funds to the solicitors. We were ready to go.
Aaand then very, very, very late last week, we were told that actually, someone further up the chain is having some unforeseen issues, and so the completion can't be the 21st. But hopefully it'll be the week after. 
That was fine, we had a few weeks leeway on our lease. Not ideal, bit of a mad scramble to unbook everything. But fine.
Then yesterday, heard that the person having the issues might be withdrawing their offer on the property altogether. So we could be waiting for months if they need to find a new place; it doesn't sound like the person is willing to consider renting some accommodation so all the other sales can go ahead. 

Everyone above us is in the chain is alright, thanks to being property owners; they can just stay in their houses! We're still not sure if our landlord is going to accept us changing our minds on the lease cancellation at such late notice. Might just be naivete as a first time buyer, but we cancelled our lease assuming that the whole thing wouldn't collapse less than two working days before what had been agreed multiple times as the completion date. Oh well, we can take it as a fun learning experience for next time! 

We've got storage reserved and a temporary place to stay for a few weeks lined up in case the worst comes to the worst, and gearing up to have a very stern conversation with our solicitor this morning. Trying to keep everything civil, but have never been so frustrated by anything in my life. 

Definitely need some good luck sending our way for today. 

Hannimal

 @SoTiredTho
There is little your landlord can do if you do not vacate the property, does he have new tenants in mind yet? It's most likely in his interest to keep you there as long as you can if you're good and reliable tenants (which I am sure you are), particularly now with another lockdown coming in. 

I am so sorry you're having to deal with this, I hope the sale goes through. It must be so stressful and disappointing for you. Hopefully should it not go through you can keep the chain with the new top finding elsewhere to purchase. 

leodis23

Update from the EA today... Because my seller's solicitor sent the paperwork to the vacant house in August, and not her address in Australia, it's pushed things back a few weeks. Apparently the paperwork has now been signed and is back in the country, so hopefully have some sort of movement this month (but not holding my breath)

Drawingaline

Bertiemaus said:

Hello! 

Was hoping I would be able to post joining in with the nail biting wait but just had an email from our solicitors that have thrown us a bit. 

We thought we were nearing the end of the process and as both sides are chain free hoped it would be straight forward. We had our mortgage offer made last week and are in the home stretch with some enquiries we had made to the sellers (a leaking lateral drain and dates missing from gas and electric reports). 

We had been in regular correspondence with an assistant at the solicitors regarding these queries and some pertaining to the contract pack. All fairly simple. Searches were returned 2 weeks ago and they said they were waiting for our mortgage offer to come through to properly review them. 

We enquired if there was anything outstanding on our end and when we might be able to talk exchange and completion dates. The email response was that they were ‘looking to begin raising enquiries with the sellers solicitors either this week or next.’ 

I thought raising enquires happened much sooner in the process? Indeed, through the correspondence about the contract pack I thought it was in process. Is this normal to be raising the enquiries at this point? Or do all enquires happen after searches are complete? 

Our sellers are a bit annoyed that the process has already dragged a bit and we’re obviously keen to get moving! 

I’m a FTB so may just not understand the process, but don’t want to go back strong and annoyed if it’s misplaced. Any help would be so appreciated. 

Thanks! 

Initial enquiries can be made early on, but anything thrown up by the searches cannot be raised until they come back. Hopefully there won't be much to raise.

croag

Been waiting over a month for any signs of replies to enquiries. I got a message from estate agent on Monday saying he would like to exchange by next Wednesday so I can give notice to my rental place - telling me the sellers have sent all enquiries back over a week ago. My solicitor is completely ignoring me after asking 3 days in a row now about this. I am using a LISA so they need to give 7 days to pull through the funds. So thanks to my solicitors I'm going to lose an entire month rent. Very frustrated.

periwinkleperkins

Finally have our mortgage offer only to get a phone call from our solicitors to advise the agency they instructed to perform personal searches isn’t acceptable to the lender, so they’ve now got to apply for full local authority search instead which will take 3-4 weeks to be returned (and incurs additional cost). 

Arghbloodyhouse

Offer accepted in March.

Just starting to feel worried. The national lockdown slowed us down at first, and some lack of responsiveness from my solicitor, but my searches were back and I started to suggest completion dates late-July.

I'd bought the house without a chain but very late in the game (i.e. when I started to ask about completion dates) I was told there was a chain after all. It was disappointing but I know these things happen, and the good news was it turned out his house purchase was going through very quickly so far and he was just waiting on his searches to come back. The LA gave a deadline of 21 August for them to be back.

Three months after they were submitted, his searches haven't come back. I haven't heard anything from anyone for two weeks. My solicitor has said she'll chase for any update. I think it's the silence but I just keep worrying the pandemic has spooked him and he'll pull out.