The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

Caz_Mnaz

AHT2020 said:

Hi all,

I have been lurking for a while now so thought it was about time I officially joined in the waiting game!

Our timeline:

10/10/20- Our house goes on the market

21/10/20- Offer accepted on our house (chain of three below us) 

23/10/20- Our offer is accepted on our purchase (no onward chain, sellers moving into rented)

23/10/20- Solicitor appointed for sale and purchase

04/11/20- Mortgage application submitted  

09/11/20- Valuation and home buyers survey completed on our purchase

12/11/20- Our buyers buyer pulls out of their purchase

20/11/20- Our house goes back on the market 

01/12/20- Our sellers say they will give us until after Christmas to get back under offer 

02/12/20- Our mortgage offer issued

09/12/20- Our sellers decide to put their house back on the market after all

16/12/20- Offer accepted on our house (purchasing with cash from sale, their buyer  has nothing to sell)

17/12/20- Our seller accepts a higher offer on their house from a cash buyer

06/01/21- Home buyers report completed at our address

06/01/21- Our offer is accepted on a different house (unoccupied with no onward chain)

14/01/21- Mortgage application submitted  

03/02/21- Building survey and valuation completed on our purchase 

05/02/21- Our mortgage offer issued

Ideally we would like our sale and purchase to complete together however are prepared to move into rented if needs be to ensure that our buyer gets the stamp duty holiday benefit. We have our mortgage offer, our searches are being done and some enquiries have been raised on our purchase but we have no real idea where we are at with our sale, we’ve answered some enquiries and they had their survey at the beginning of January.

Now we just wait! Good luck to everyone and congratulations to those of you who have exchanged already!

You've hard a similar journeys to us... Our buyers buyer pulled out (but last minute) it was awful not being able to do anything about it. Thankfully our buyer managed to get a new buyer lined up within a week so we didn't have to go back on the market (massive relief as it took us 3 months to get a solitary offer)

Fingers crossed you're not on this thread as long as some of us 😂

Robby1988

Our timeline...

April 20 - House goes on the market.
June 20 - Accept an offer & find our next home which we have offer accepted on.
August 20 - Our buyer decides that she wants a full structural survey on our house.
Sept 20 - Our buyer pulls out citing issues with the survey. Claims about structural issues that don't stack up and won't let our agent see any of the report. We lose the house we were buying, so around £2k down the nick.
Oct 20 - House back on the market. Now with no chain, we are going to sell up & rent then buy later to reduce stress.
Nov 20 - New buyer found, cash buyer. Has survey carried out straight away.
Dec 20 - After a 2 week wait, survey results are back.  We give the buyer £2.5k off for some damp & roof repairs. We were shown the report & no mention of structural issues this time round strangely!
Jan 21 - Buyers searches come back and some enquiries raised. I reply to the enquires the same day.

Absolutely nothing since and I don't know why!!!!  We just want this place sold.

annetheman

I must have the world's first and only spontaneous solicitor. 
He emailed out of the blue to say he hadn't received a scan of the hard copy I sent last Thursday (stupidly, not via recorded delivery). I had completely forgot about the whole thing today because so busy/back-to-back with work 

I am asking a friend to help witness another copy signature if needed, but solicitor is checking if seller will accept electronic signatures. Incidentally, she is flying to her brother's to celebrate Chinese New Year - sigh. So may ask a friend B.

Contract from me is currently the only thing holding up exchange but completion date of 26th agreed by all, so still enough time to sort this out.

Protip: don't send contracts via regular snail mail.

oniongirl

annetheman said:

I must have the world's first and only spontaneous solicitor. 
He emailed out of the blue to say he hadn't received a scan of the hard copy I sent last Thursday (stupidly, not via recorded delivery). I had completely forgot about the whole thing today because so busy/back-to-back with work 

I am asking a friend to help witness another copy signature if needed, but solicitor is checking if seller will accept electronic signatures. Incidentally, she is flying to her brother's to celebrate Chinese New Year - sigh. So may ask a friend B.

Contract from me is currently the only thing holding up exchange but completion date of 26th agreed by all, so still enough time to sort this out.

Protip: don't send contracts via regular snail mail.

Oh no! You think you'll save time not waiting to go to the post office! Sorry, how annoying! 

thaddy

annetheman said:

I must have the world's first and only spontaneous solicitor. 
He emailed out of the blue to say he hadn't received a scan of the hard copy I sent last Thursday (stupidly, not via recorded delivery). I had completely forgot about the whole thing today because so busy/back-to-back with work 

I am asking a friend to help witness another copy signature if needed, but solicitor is checking if seller will accept electronic signatures. Incidentally, she is flying to her brother's to celebrate Chinese New Year - sigh. So may ask a friend B.

Contract from me is currently the only thing holding up exchange but completion date of 26th agreed by all, so still enough time to sort this out.

Protip: don't send contracts via regular snail mail.

Oh no hope you manage to get it all sorted in time. Our solicitor wouldnt accept scanned copies so it was a bit of a mad rush trying to get the hard copies sent in time. Since you are giving out protips here are a few more!
Protip #2: Post offices are not opening or closing at their usual times so if you are sending anything urgent make sure you get there in good time 
Protip #3: Don't be over zealous like me and send documents 'special delivery by 9am' if the solicitors office doesn't open before then. I was so stressed when our contract pack could not be delivered yesterday and the tracker said they would try again the next working day but thankfully somehow the delivery person went back after 9am. Panic over!!!!

thaddy

thaddy said:

tigerlily74 said:

Can you get your mortgage offer extended by 30 days? I believe nationwide were allowing this at one point if you appplied for the extension within 30 days of the expiry date.

Where did you get this information? The only web reference I have found on  extending a mortgage offer states 'Completion must take place on or before the date the offer expires. If it is apparent that completion is likely to be outside the validity period of the mortgage offer please contact the issuing office for further guidance.

We will endeavour to meet the new completion requirements providing completion takes place within 15 days of the original offer expiry date.

If completion does not take place on or before the offer expiry date this could result in a new application being required.' 

Our offer expires on 9 February and we have not signed any documents or been given an exchange/completion date yet. We still have ISAs to close down too. Really hope it will all be done in time.

So our Nationwide mortgage offer expired today and there is no formal guidance anywhere on how to get extension for *non-new build properties. We were basically told the COT needed to be submitted before the deadline to get the 15days grace period. We have a proposed completion date in 13days that the vendor still needs to agree so really hoping it all gets done in time! 

*Edited to say for new build properties there is a 45day extension if the offer runs out
https://www.nationwide.co.uk/support/product-support/mortgages/new-build-mortgage-offer-extensions

Caz_Mnaz

Do you not have a dedicated adviser? I'm with nationwide and have an actual person I can ring if I have queries or need advice? 

thaddy

Caz_Mnaz said:

Do you not have a dedicated adviser? I'm with nationwide and have an actual person I can ring if I have queries or need advice? 

We have a mortgage broker who tried to get info from his BDM but any extensions have to done by the solicitor and apparently the internal team that deals with it is not taking calls at the moment. It was super nerve wracking trying to sort it all out!

Caz_Mnaz

Oh lordy I'd be a state. Fingers crossed. Mine runs out in June if I'm still on this forum by then I'll be raging 😂

Kbenn0

mjle said:

Kbenn0 said:

I’m hoping I don’t regret our decision to pack early. With 3 children in tow, 2 cats and two dogs then add in the mix we are both working full time .. we felt it was the best option  
Im so glad I’m not on my own feeling inpatient.. I was doing so well lol I suppose we all crack in the end with this long house moving process ! 

We decided to start packing too - with 2 little ones and 2 dogs we felt we best make a start. So hopefully we dont regret it either! 
My partner is working alot of shifts at the local hospital in the coming weeks, with her normal work and the vaccinations, so it would leave very little time for us to pack! (obv no childcare at the moment too doesnt help!!)

Good luck with getting exchanged/completed!

You sound in a very similar situation to us. I could not even begin to process the panic of packing in just a few weeks with kids and work. I also work in a healthcare setting. I’m finding it very therapeutic reading that it’s not just me obsessing over Emails and waiting on news .. tomorrow was the expected searches completion date. Queue mini meltdown if they are not 😂.