slow progress on house sale

Squoozy

My mother died last October ans we are in the process of selling her house. We accepted an offer on 1st May and had already appointed a solicitor and filled in all the forms we needed to.
The buyers are first time buyers and we were told they already had a mortgage arranged, thus we accepted a fairly low offer for the house. About a month after we accepted the offer we hadn't heard anything and called the solicitor, who still hadn't heard anything from the buyer's solicitor. Nothing appears to have progressed at all since then. To cut a long story short as of yesterday the buyer's solicitor says that they are waiting for the buyers to pay for searches and cannot progress at all until that has happened. The buyers had a mortgage survey of the house at the beginning of May.
I'm getting really worried and and wondering if the sale is going to go ahead. Its all very stressful for me. We live 200 miles away from the house, I want to be able to move on emotionally, and the agents and the solicitors couldn't appear less interested.
Any advice welcome.

eddddy

What does the estate agent say about this? Are they progressing the sale?

If they get paid on completion, it should be in their interests to chase the buyer.

If the buyer isn't communicating, and you have lost faith in them, the next step would be to tell the estate agent to start marketing the property again.

Doozergirl

Put it back on the market. The searches are the first thing a solicitor does and it's part of their being properly instructed, so their solicitor has done nothing yet.

Has anyone actually spoken to the buyers? Radio silence for a month isn't good, especially at the beginning of the process.

Squoozy

Thank you for your replies. My husband called the agent who said the buyers don't want to pay for searches until they have a full survey and that is happening next week. We have talked it through and decided to put it back on the market. It seems the buyers can't really be serious about the house. Now the estate agent has 'stepped out' and calling back. Im very tempted to switch agents as well, but the process is so long and I just want to sell the house.

Crashy_Time

What is a "fairly low offer", in % terms discount if you don`t mind me asking?

KL0001

They have a survey booked, which is a positive thing. Yes it!!!8217;s slow, but it!!!8217;s going in the right direction. I can understand why some people hold off on searches until they have had their surveys done and mortgage in place, although this certainly does slow things down. Perhaps come back with an ultimatum of sorts that you expect their solicitor to be fully instructed as soon as they have the survey results and that you want to progress to exchange within x number of weeks of this. I assume your solicitor has the draft contracts etc ready for them? And you have ensured any paperwork you might have (planning permission/building regs sign off, FENSA certificates, gas safe certificates etc) have already gone to the solicitor if they exist.

SG27

If they have booked a full survey, wgich would cost about £500+ then I woild say thry are serious.

Bass_9

KL0001 wrote: »

They have a survey booked, which is a positive thing. Yes it!!!8217;s slow, but it!!!8217;s going in the right direction. I can understand why some people hold off on searches until they have had their surveys done and mortgage in place, although this certainly does slow things down. Perhaps come back with an ultimatum of sorts that you expect their solicitor to be fully instructed as soon as they have the survey results and that you want to progress to exchange within x number of weeks of this. I assume your solicitor has the draft contracts etc ready for them? And you have ensured any paperwork you might have (planning permission/building regs sign off, FENSA certificates, gas safe certificates etc) have already gone to the solicitor if they exist.

I think 6 weeks is incredibly slow to get a survey done. Usually you can upgrade a valuation to a survey with your lender so it's quite unusual to get it done separately.

Plus, I doubt the solicitors have done anything (let alone draft contracts) if the searches haven't even been requested.

Does make you wonder whether the mortgage was actually in place as OP was told.

SG27

They have been waiting for their mortgage offer before booking the survey.

Get the estate agent to pester the buyers and find out ehats going on. Thats what you are paying them for!

Doozergirl

Some people donthis because they think it saves money potentially, but no one knows where the issues will come up in a purchase.

Your buyers are FTBs, they think it's all about the structure. Fact is, solicitors find potential issues too.

They are going to be jumpy if they're approaching it so cautiously so I'd expect some negative feedback from that full survey unless your house is MINT.

I think it's worth putting it back online and taking details of potentially interested parties until that survey takes place. They can't have it both ways. They either move at pace or you keep your options open.

Squoozy

Thank you again for all the replies. In answer to the question about the house price, it was on the market for two hundred and we accepted one seven five. The house is not perfect but it is very large and very smart, with new windows, new central heating system, kitchen re -fitted a year ago. It’s also close to a very good school, There were some issues with damp, tiny patches on a ceiling that we had a builder look at and replaced some guttering. It’s a lovely house and in my view the buyers have a real bargain.
We have filled in all the paperwork, provided certificates etc. Our solicitors have drafted a contract but the buyers solicitors won’t engage at all until they have money for searches. We were told when the offer was made that the buyers had a mortgage agreed in principle. The agent said yesterday (we called him back at 4pm when he had avoided us all day) that they have not yet had a mortgage survey of the house, so the mortgage is not finalised. In fact we think the ‘full survey’ is the mortgage survey.
For the moment we have said the buyer can go ahead with the survey but we will be putting it back on the market if nothing happens after that. I believe that the buyers are playing a game with us and may ask us to reduce the price if the survey picks up anything. We won’t be reducing the price any further and I’m annoyed we accepted their offer. It was all very quick, within two weeks of the house being on the market, and because my sister and I were so upset at loosing our mum that we took the offer just to be able to move on.