Nervous first time buyer!

Squirrelz92

kjelyse said:

Squirrelz92 said:

Oh my gosh, you are still waiting?!?! That's outrageous! Must be soo stressful for you waiting for them for this period of time!

Funnily enough, twenty minutes after I posted this I got an email from my solicitor saying that she got the searches back! So it was about a month and a week, all told. 

Who knew that complaining on a forum could have so much power! Speak of the devil, I guess 

Wow well fancy that! Excellent news! Let's hope the rest of your conveyancing moves swiftly to make up for lost time!!

kjelyse

Simultaneous exchange and completion is set for August 17th! It's been so weird; there was almost a month and a half of nothing, and then suddenly everything happened!

How is everything else doing?

Slithery

kjelyse said:

It's been so weird; there was almost a month and a half of nothing, and then suddenly everything happened!

No, there wasn't a month and a half of 'nothing'. Your solicitor will still have been working on your case - just none of it needed your involvement.

kjelyse

Slithery said:

No, there wasn't a month and a half of 'nothing'. Your solicitor will still have been working on your case - just none of it needed your involvement.

Oh, no, I know that! I've been in regular contact with my solicitor and they've been great. We were only delayed because the local searches took over a month due to Covid. (Which is completely understandable.)

What I mean is, there was nothing for me to do and then suddenly, there's everything to do.

nervousftbs

Pleased you have a date now @kjelyse after a lot of waiting - we are now at the "doing nothing" stage - we have sent our solicitor everything he needs for exchange (bar the money, we are keeping that for now!) and the insurance because we can't get that yet - we thought we were a couple of weeks away but sadly top of the chain are being very slow so our broker keeps applying gentle pressure to the EA to hurry things up (EA is managing the whole of the chain so has a vested interest in it all running smoothly!) so for now we just have to wait and keep filling up the pinterest boards! 

azouria

I thought I'd jump on this thread as another FTB, feeling horrendously anxious! We're buying in London and the demand is ridiculous, so the house that we've had our offer accepted on went on the market on a Thursday, had 8 viewings over Friday and Saturday & 4 offers by Monday morning (3 at asking!) Luckily we had our offer accepted as I was the most speedy at sending over documents. 

The stress we are having now is that we think it might be worth less than the asking price - it was well priced for the area, but it's on a B road. We didn't think much of it as we've always lived on main roads, but after some post offer research it looks like houses on that road generally go for 25k less than ours, though there's not many recent sales to compare. So a building survey & valuation was done last week and now we're in the waiting game for the results which should come in tomorrow. So so worried that it will be worth less than the asking and the seller won't negotiate! We so want this house as we're desperate for a garden and not much is coming on the market where we are looking - being stuck in a flat for 5 months with no outdoor space has driven us crazy! 

[Deleted User]

azouria said:

I thought I'd jump on this thread as another FTB, feeling horrendously anxious! We're buying in London and the demand is ridiculous, so the house that we've had our offer accepted on went on the market on a Thursday, had 8 viewings over Friday and Saturday & 4 offers by Monday morning (3 at asking!) Luckily we had our offer accepted as I was the most speedy at sending over documents. 

The stress we are having now is that we think it might be worth less than the asking price - it was well priced for the area, but it's on a B road. We didn't think much of it as we've always lived on main roads, but after some post offer research it looks like houses on that road generally go for 25k less than ours, though there's not many recent sales to compare. So a building survey & valuation was done last week and now we're in the waiting game for the results which should come in tomorrow. So so worried that it will be worth less than the asking and the seller won't negotiate! We so want this house as we're desperate for a garden and not much is coming on the market where we are looking - being stuck in a flat for 5 months with no outdoor space has driven us crazy! 

Congratulations! All will be well.

Where in London are you hoping to live?

Windofchange

kjelyse said:

Simultaneous exchange and completion is set for August 17th! It's been so weird; there was almost a month and a half of nothing, and then suddenly everything happened!

How is everything else doing?

It's painful hey. We complete a day later than you having had our offer accepted in January. There have been many months of nothing, and then just over a week or so ago the estate agent called and said let's try to get all the contracts exchanged today. Completely out of the blue. We went for three weeks between exchange and completion as we needed to run down the new rental period we had just paid in our current property. I don't want to go through this process again for a looooonnnnnngggg time. 

kjelyse

It's finally all done! Whoo! Here's my timeline for posterity. 

15/05 - MiP accepted. Decided against using a broker and, luckily, had no issues. 
16/05 - Viewed house of my dreams, immediate offer & acceptance.
18/05 - Solicitor instructed, received memorandum of sale from EA.
20/05 - Full mortgage application submitted to Yorkshire Building Society.
22/05 - Documents received from solicitor via snail mail, immediately filled out and returned; submitted evidence to mortgage underwriter.
25/05 - Homebuyer's survey done. Nothing of real concern found.
03/06 - Mortgage offer received.
22/06 - Draft contract, fixtures and fittings form, environmental and water searches received! Warned of delays to local searches. Turns out the draft contract was so delayed because the seller's initial forms were "lost in the post".
28/07 - Local searches FINALLY received!
03/08 - H2B ISA closed, all documents signed and returned to solicitor. Simultaneous exchange and completion set for August 17th.
17/08 - Called solicitor at 9am to make sure everything was ship-shape before I set out on a 4 hour drive to collect the keys! It's a good thing I did call, because there was a problem - the seller's documents had, once again, gotten "lost in the post". Told that the seller would drive to their solicitor to sign everything in person. Finally got the all clear at 13:00.

All told, I went from offer to completion in 3 months and 1 day. Whew! The dead zone between 22 June and 28 July where there was nothing for me to do except twiddle my thumbs and wait was the hardest. So glad it's all finally over.