Bellway Part Exchange and Slow Solicitors - Worried things with fall through

sondy

Hi all - advice needed please!

We have reserved a house on a new build estate - paid £1000 deposit plus a lot of search fees and some upfront solicitor fees. They agreed to part exchange our house, knock 10k off the asking price of the newbuild and throw in some extras too. It's still a very expensive house but we have been excited and getting ready to move. All of this is subject to exchanging contracts by August 10th.

Our solicitors and the developer's solicitors have been dragging their feet- not responding to enquiries and very slow. Ours have been especially bad and I'm disappointed in them. I finally got through to somebody this morning who told me that 10th August exchange date was not realistic and she couldn't give me a date. She said she sent enquiries to the developer solicitors in the middle of July and hadn't received a response. Searches are back but need to be checked.

What do I do? Who do I chase? I'm really anxious this is all going to go through or they will try to up the price which we just cannot afford.

jennhg88

Deep breath.
Don't panic.

Ask your solicitor to chase for responses to the enquiries. She should be doing that anyway.

Do NOT panic about the exchange deadline, as long as there is progress it will be fine.

Do you need a mortgage? What is the application status?

sondy

Thank you for the response.
We have a mortgage approved.

jennhg88

Great! So remind your solicitor you have your mortgage offer so you are waiting on them to get things moving now.

sal_III

As above - relax, developers know very well the 28 days (or thereabout) deadline is almost impossible in the real world. As long as there is visible progress they will "reluctantly" extend it, moaning about it, but knowing full well it's quite normal.

I did the reservation beginning of April, got the mortgage offer end of April, exchanged end of June after much feet dragging by my solicitor and the HTB agency. The developer moaned about it taking so long and the "deadline" was extended officially several times and in the last several weeks they didn't bother as it was clearly very close to exchange and just waited for the process to finish.

They are well aware that if they cancel your reservation it will take more time to find a new buyer and then start the process from the beginning.

sondy

Thanks for the responses.
We have had some progress but the report and draft deeds sent through by the solicitors is full of errors: wrong purchase price, misspelt addresses and names and much more. Disappointing to say the least.We have gone through with a fine toothed comb and pinged it back.

Adam9W

Just wanted to add another point to the "don't worry" pile - We are currently in exactly the same situation with Bellway.

We part exchanged and were given the exchange of contract deadline of 6th July. It's now 1 month further down the line and we still don't know when that contract exchange will happen due to slow solicitors.

Bellway have been great in all of this. They can see there is progress and that we're doing all we can by providing information quickly / keeping them updated.

Put your mind at rest and just give them a call every now and then to keep them sweet, and everything will be ok.

Good luck with the rest of your move.