5th month in purchasing a chain-free house

asbear

I am a first time buyer, purchasing a house without a chain (a corporation sale). Not it's in 5th month and the completion date is still undecided. I am really tired and worried about missing the stamp duty holiday.

It was really eventful process:
- HSBC lost the track of my mortgage application and I had to chase them nearly 10 times to get it back on track and then approved.
- My solicitor did not start the local search during the first month.
- Seller's solicitor been unresponsive for a month and quit which halted everything and took another month to get restarted.
- the new contact of the seller's solicitor was not updated on my solicitor's system hence the communication did not go through
- an unanswered enquiry got dropped and came back in recently (company search, because it's a corporation sale?)

My solicitor said everything is done on my side and only thing holding up is the answers from the seller for the pending enquires. The estate agent also checked up with the seller's asset management company and they said they are chasing their solicitor.

Now it's June, I wonder how likely my purchase would complete before the end of the month. We still haven't set the exchange date yet. I thought about asking my solicitor to set the date but unfortunately my solicitor do not respond to my email unless there's any urgent issue. 🤔 

AdrianC

So the delay is because the seller hasn't answered the queries yet.

Do you NEED those answers? Does your lender?
What are the questions?

If you do need them, then you aren't ready to exchange, because the wrong answers may well lead to you pulling out...
After all, if the answers don't affect your willingness to exchange, why are you waiting for them?

Are they questions that a corporate seller is even going to answer other than "Don't know"...?

Why is it a "corporate sale", anyway? Repo or ex-let or PX or...?

asbear

I think those are some legal enquires like "company search" and the "company certification" but I don't really understand what those are. So yes I think those seem to be needed. The seller's solicitor have been failing to answer those two enquires for the last 3 months, and we haven't been given the reason.

> Why is it a "corporate sale", anyway? Repo or ex-let or PX or...?

I heard that the previous owner has passed away and it's sold to a property company.

AdrianC

asbear said:

I think those are some legal enquires like "company search" and the "company certification" but I don't really understand what those are. So yes I think those seem to be needed. The seller's solicitor have been failing to answer those two enquires for the last 3 months, and we haven't been given the reason.

So you aren't ready to exchange.
If you aren't ready to exchange, a completion date is aspirational, no more.

Why is it a "corporate sale", anyway? Repo or ex-let or PX or...?

I heard that the previous owner has passed away and it's sold to a property company.

The family probably went with a "quick sale" outfit, then... This may also be an issue for you, if that sale was less than six months ago, many lenders are reluctant to lend on such a short ownership by the vendor.

Forget answers to any enquiries that aren't utterly straightforward.