Waiting on Vendor.

Fable404

Hi all. This is my first time posting here and I'm looking for advice from some more experienced individuals.
My partner and i are in the process of buying a house, our deposit has already been paid to the solicitor, and they have our signed contract on file ready. We have been in this position since mid December 2020. 
We were under the impression that we were waiting on one document from the vendors solicitor before we could exchange contracts, with the vendor having initially told us he was expecting early January 2021.
We viewed the property in early September, and our offer was accepted right away. In October 2020 the seller informed us that they had found a house and had their offer accepted, but that they were having trouble with their lender approving the mortgage and were considering other lenders, but preferred to stick with the current one to avoid and exit fees as the lender has their current mortgage.
Fast forward to January 2021 and after chasing up with the seller we learn that he still does not have a mortgage offer all these months later, again telling me that if he did not have an answer he would go with a different lender. A few days later, he tells me that a problem with the lenders systems caused the application to be denied, and that his application has been transferred to the complex credit team. I have a friend who works for this lender that tells me this process can take upto 8 weeks. 

Is there anything we can do to speed up completion on our property?

moneysavinghero

What was the deposit paid for? This normally only gets paid at the point of exchange of contracts.

Best thing you could do to speed things up is put the house back on the market and find a buyer who is actually in a position to be able to proceed. This is not what you want to hear, but unfortunately sounds like the reality of the situation. You are trying to sell to someone who in effect has no money.

Fable404

moneysavinghero said:

What was the deposit paid for? This normally only gets paid at the point of exchange of contracts.

Best thing you could do to speed things up is put the house back on the market and find a buyer who is actually in a position to be able to proceed. This is not what you want to hear, but unfortunately sounds like the reality of the situation. You are trying to sell to someone who in effect has no money.

We are buying the house. The deposit has been transferred to our solicitor in anticipation of exchanging contracts. We beleived we were close to exchanging but are now learning that the vendor is still having trouble securing a mortgage for the forward property.

Diabhay15

You sound in a similar position to us. People we are buying from still don’t have their mortgage offer. We have sold our house and moved in with parents because our buyer was becoming very impatient and we didn’t want to lose them. Keep being told now that *hopefully* they will have an offer next week as Santander are very slow issuing offer at the moment.. but I think there is more to the story. 

We are strongly considering looking at other properties, and there’s one that has no chain up with the same agents. 

We are awaiting the agent to update us tomorrow and making a decision from there.