Solicitor still not received draft contract after nearly 6 weeks

janoid19 · 11 November 2020 at 5:19PM

I'm a FTB and its now nearly 6 weeks after my offer was accepted on a house and my solicitor has still not received a draft contract from the vendors solicitor. I have my mortgage offer in place and my Homebuyers survey booked in for Friday.

Is it normal for this to take so long or would it be expected to be sent by now??

Thanks xxx

Thrugelmir · 11 November 2020 at 5:22PM

What is your vendor intending to do?

FinallyStoppedLurking · 11 November 2020 at 5:22PM

Everything is taking a long time. Some areas (and so the solicitors working in those areas) are taking longer than others. Speak to your solicitor and find out what the local situation is and see if they have sent a tracer to the vendors.

It is also worth contacting the estate agents and expressing your concern and frustration. There's a possibility the vendors are dragging their heals. Explain that you need to complete before X date and so if things do not start to progress you will consider viewing other houses.

janoid19 · 11 November 2020 at 5:26PM

Thrugelmir said:

What is your vendor intending to do?

I got an email from my the EA 2 weeks ago to say that they had had an offer accepted on a property with no chain.

janoid19 · 11 November 2020 at 5:27PM

FinallyStoppedLurking said:

Everything is taking a long time. Some areas (and so the solicitors working in those areas) are taking longer than others. Speak to your solicitor and find out what the local situation is and see if they have sent a tracer to the vendors.

It is also worth contacting the estate agents and expressing your concern and frustration. There's a possibility the vendors are dragging their heals. Explain that you need to complete before X date and so if things do not start to progress you will consider viewing other houses.

Yes I think I will contact the EA next and see if they can find out if something is holding them up. Thanks x

mlb95 · 11 November 2020 at 5:33PM

janoid19 said:

I'm a FTB and its now nearly 6 weeks after my offer was accepted on a house and my solicitor has still not received a draft contract from the vendors solicitor. I have my mortgage offer in place and my Homebuyers survey booked in for Friday.

Is it normal for this to take so long or would it be expected to be sent by now??

Thanks xxx

Hey so ours took three weeks to arrive, but we were told by our solicitor to expect it initially after a week. We then rang the EA who said they would chase it and we were then informed it had been sent. Another week went by and our solicitors still hadn't notified us to say they'd received it. So I rang our solicitor again to ask if I should contact the EA again as a week for the pack to arrive sounded odd and I wanted to check it'd not gone missing in the post. Our solicitor then made contact with the vendors solicitor and turns out it was an email that had failed to send... So they resent it and it was received immediately.

I think contact the EA to chase the vendors solicitor and see if they've sent it yet and if they have , how ? Maybe yours is a faulty email also or has been lost in the post.

Thrugelmir · 11 November 2020 at 5:42PM

janoid19 said:

Thrugelmir said:

What is your vendor intending to do?

I got an email from my the EA 2 weeks ago to say that they had had an offer accepted on a property with no chain.

Probably still organising their mortgage. Not likely to start to incur solicitors costs until they know their purchase is proceeding.

ZeeOwen1 · 11 November 2020 at 5:50PM

It's so frustrating isn't it. We finally received ours after 4 weeks. In the end we had to chase the EA and found out our vendor had two solicitors one for her sale and the other for her purchase that's why it was so hard chasing the right solicitor.. Anyway apparently the solicitor firm didn't realise and now one solicitor is now in charge of both the sale and purchase. Fingers crossed you get your draft contracts soon.. Just keep pushing. We're now in week 3 waiting for our searches so everything is taking long. Good luck.

tigerlily74 · 11 November 2020 at 6:56PM

We have been waiting five weeks, my vendor is using Purplebricks’s solicitors and with no estate agent chasing either it’s just taking an age. I am in contact with the vendor and love the house so just waiting! I am hoping it won’t be much longer as we can’t request the searches without it!

thaddy · 11 November 2020 at 7:35PM

We've literally waited 3 whole months for the draft contract but got a request to pay for searches today so hopefully things will finally start moving along. I would follow it up just incase there is something holding it up unnecessarily.

AskAsk · 11 November 2020 at 7:36PM

it does seem to be a long time. our solicitors send out the contract pack pretty much within the first week of us accepting the offer. i had to tell them to hang fire until the buyer got his mortgage appointment.