Moving Etiquette

Mr_Banana

We are having an issue with our house purchase.
The vendors of the house we are buying are having problems with their purchase over the land registry of the garage that goes with the house they are buying. Their Estate Agent told us they could have had things sorted by now by buying the house now and the garage later but decided against to save on legal expenses.
Everybody else in the chain is ready to move so they are effectively holding everything up.
The 2 questions I have are
1. Can land registry problems take a long time to sort out?
2. If we decide to move into temporary accomodation would it be acceptable to make a revised offer to our buyer to offset some of the increased costs in doing this?
We discussed this with our sellers Estate Agent and they became very of hand with us and became quite rude when we said we were considering finding a rental and pulling out of the purchase to get the chain going.
Are we being unreasonable?

AnotherJoe

Yes & Yes, in that order. Whats your plan if your revised offer is not accepted? Are you happy to walk away?

As to "are you being unreasonable", well "it depends". Have you got a timescale for the vendors to get it fixed? On the face of it, if they are delaying things to, say save £500, then its not at all unreasonable for you to want that to defray your costs.

Also, there's quite a difference between going into rental and pulling out of your purchase.The two dont have to be exclusive.

Mr_Banana

In answer to your questions
- yes we are happy to walk if the revised offer is not acceptable
- if we pulled out the purchase it would take a while to find another house so a rental for 6 months would be an option. We would then be in a good position for our next purchase.
As for a time scale we have been told the land registry problems could be fixed in about 2 weeks but have no idea how long this kind of issue takes to sort out?

davidmcn

Mr_Banana wrote: »

As for a time scale we have been told the land registry problems could be fixed in about 2 weeks but have no idea how long this kind of issue takes to sort out?

We don't know what the issue actually is. I don't know whether you do. If it requires the involvement of neighbours and/or lenders (who may have no interest in anybody's house-moving plans) then it could be a lengthy process. And although it may be possible to separate the house and garage-buying processes, they might not want to commit themselves to buying the house without any guarantee that they'll ever get the garage too.

Slinky

Would an offer to pay a bit more (effectively the vendor's extra legal expenses) encourage them to get a shift on and go? I'm not saying it's right that you'd have to do it, but if it's say £250-£500 it could be a much cheaper/easier option than going into rented and moving twice. Sometimes you have to think laterally.

AnotherJoe

Nice idea !

G_M

It's pointless commenting without knowing the legal issue.


If the property I'm buying had an issue like what I guess this one is, I'd not progress till it was resolved.


As for the EA saying " they could have had things sorted by now by buying the house now and the garage later" well, EAs are not lawyers. And even if they fully understood the legal implications they do not know the full details of the legal issue. They should not be commenting- buyers and sellers have solicitors for a reason.

davidmcn

Slinky wrote: »

Would an offer to pay a bit more (effectively the vendor's extra legal expenses) encourage them to get a shift on and go? I'm not saying it's right that you'd have to do it, but if it's say £250-£500 it could be a much cheaper/easier option than going into rented and moving twice. Sometimes you have to think laterally.

Costs could easily be into four figures if it involves a third party (their legal fees, lenders' fees, surveyor's fees, vendors' vendors' costs for (temporarily) splitting their title etc). And as I said above, may not be an option anyway if the vendor wants certainty before moving.

Mr_Banana

According to the EA our sellers could have bought the house now with a guarantee of the garage later - I cannot confirm this but it is what I was told. They decided against as it was going to cost them more in legal fees.
As to offering to pay this we were never given the opportunity even if we wanted to. We only found out about the registry problems after we received no response to dates put forward for early to late November. Our Solicitors could not get an answer to our sellers solicitors so we contacted the EA directly and were told the above.
My main grumble is not being kept informed. Apparently "no those dates are not possible" is not important enough to tell us.