Unsure what to do!

Tiglet2

ashleighduguid said:

@Tiglet2 so all in all the enquiries are relatively straight forward? And if not, there is an indemnity policy to cover it? 

So it is still unnecessary for us to be sat two months later with no queries actually answered (vendor assured the EA he has responded to most of them but vendor’s solicitor won’t pass the reply to ours).

Not quite.  You are buying an Unregistered property.  That explains why it took so long for the draft contracts to be forwarded to your solicitor.  All the old deeds need to be reviewed to ensure that the vendors were the owners and that their executors have the right to sell the property.  There needs to be a chain of conveyances between all the previous owners plus the solicitor needs to make sure there are no old charges on the property.  Your solicitor won't let you go ahead until this is all satisfactory.  I don't think the sellers have been avoiding answering queries, but executors often don't know the answers or don't know where to locate paperwork.  While some can be answered with indemnity policies, your solicitor may not accept an indemnity if, for example, there is not clear evidence that the property is theirs to sell.

hb2

Whether the executors have access to documents will probably depend entirely on how organised the deceased was with paperwork. The execs could have no idea where to find things or even if they exist anymore. When my OH executed his mother's estate, we were incredibly lucky that all relevant paperwork (and some that was no longer relevant) was easily found, but it could well have been otherwise.