FTB. Do I wait for Vendors? Advice pls.

Annaleah

So we are first time buyers. Had an offer accepted on a property a few weeks ago. At the same time , the vendors had an offer accepted on an empty property so just us and them in the chain which is good news.

We had had our lender valuation done and recieved our mortgage offer.
As we are new to this I asked the estate agents what the next thing is to do. They told me to instruct solicitors to do searches.

Now, previous to this property, we had an offer accepted and the house was downvalued by 15k by the lender. Vendors would not budge on price so we lost our valuation fee and carried on looking.

Our current vendors haven't booked their lender valuation in yet, so after what happened to us previously I have told the estate agents I am not instructing solicitors until they have at least done this so we avoid losing any money in case of a problem.
Am I right in doing this or does it sound like I'm messing them about?

Tiglet2

You need to instruct solicitors so that they can write to the vendor's solicitors to obtain the draft contract paperwork.

You can instruct a firm on a non-completion, no-fee basis and you probably won't have to pay for searches until the draft contract paperwork has been received (though some solicitors do require a fee to start work up front).

The lender will want to know who is acting for you as the solicitor will also be acting for them (and the lender needs to be on the solicitor's panel). The lender will send a copy of the mortgage offer to the solicitor.

The countdown of how long a transaction takes is the date of receipt of draft contract paperwork by your solicitor. Until then no work will be undertaken by the vendor's solicitor on the sale of the property to you.

Your mortgage offer will have an expiry date. The longer you hold off, the less time you have before your offer expires to get the legal work done.