Buyers slowing chain down, what can you do?

[Deleted User]

Hey everyone 
To cut a long story short, we’re selling our home to first time buyers through a local estate agents. 

We accepted their offer over 3 months ago, and in that time the searches have completed, but they haven’t got a mortgage still.

We’re ready to go with our onward purchase, but we’ve been held up for about 4 weeks now due to them. The house we’re buying is occupied, but as we’re not ready because of our buyers, we’re struggling to get any real updates on when we can move forward. We’d like our buyers to be in the same situation as us so we can start pushing forward.

We have chased the agency, requesting an update and explanation on why it’s taken them 12+ weeks for a mortgage offer, but we’re just told it’s in progress and we should hear soon.

We’re getting restless because our fixed rate on our current mortgage has expired so it’s now costly each month we continue to live here! 

Is there anything we can do? I never quite know where we stand, as in, is this a ridiculous amount of time and should the agency be doing more? 

Flugelhorn

can always ask the agent whether it is worth marketing the property again - means starting all over again of course and there would be a delay in getting a buyer etc 

MaryNB

Three months is more than enough time to get a mortgage offer. I'd be worried they're struggling to get approval. 
At this stage you could tell the buyer that you're going to remarket the property, maybe then you'll get some straight answers. If you don't hear anything then actively start looking for another buyer. Obviously there's the risk of your onward purchase falling through if you ditch your buyers, but that could happen anyway if they don't get an offer.  

[Deleted User]

Thanks both! 

That’s my thoughts as well! It seems an unnatural amount of time, and we’ve managed to progress our application in half the time they’ve had. 

I know it’s no one else’s fault that we’re now out of our fixed rate term and facing much larger payments, but obviously we’d hoped to have moved with the average time being 12-16 weeks, or at least have a date.
My worry is we have no idea when they’ll be ready, when we can exchange, or complete and therefore no idea how long we’ll be left paying this ridiculous increase each month :-(

pinkshoes

I would be asking the EA if the buyer is actually a proceedable* buyer, and if not then you will have to re-market.

12 weeks is more than enough to get a mortgage, which would indicate they have a very low deposit or poor credit or unstable employment or similar. 

*this is the term the EAs use to get their fee, so don't let them fob you off. TELL them that if the buyer has not got a mortgage by Friday 12pm then they are clearly not a proceedable buyer and you will need a new buyer finding that CAN proceed.

HopeAndDriftWood

Wow, 12 weeks! I thought we'd done well being patient... we're going into the 8th week of our buyer's mortgage offer. It appears he is remortgaging another property to get the deposit for here, and that's taken a LONG time, and is now being re-valued again, before ours can be valued... allegedly taking place this weekend. The first valuation was on the 1st. I suspect the surveyor shortage has slowed it down, but they're also using Kensington, who seem to have a reputation for taking a long time.

At least we've had updates, though, and it's only been 7 weeks! Which feels like forever. 

I'd definitely be asking the questions @pinkshoes has said. 

firebubble

The EA is being paid by you, so they should be just as incentivised as you to get the sale completed. I don't understand why the EA isn't giving you more detail about why the mortgage is taking so long - I can't help but think that's not a good sign. Has the survey been done - and did it come up with anything material?

You're not being unreasonable in wanting answers. In the meantime, I think there are two things you can do. 

The first is to tell the EA to put the property back on the market. You've been very patient, but the buyers/EA need to be keeping you properly informed of what is going on with the mortgage. Telling you the mortgage is 'In progress' is not properly informed. Properly informed is telling you specifically what the delay is, even if it's likely to be lengthy so that you can make choices which are in your own interest. The possibility of new buyers coming in, perhaps with a better offer, will focus your buyer on getting to exchange asap.

If your EA won't put the property on the market and won't give you an proper explanation, then you can go with the second option, which is reasonable but on the hardball side.

The second option, if you want to make your EA sit up and pull their finger out, is to serve notice on the EA to bring your contract with the EA to an end. This won't affect the accepted offer (as this EA found the buyers, they will be entitled to the commission when the sale goes through, whether you're in or out of contract), but it will mean that you are free to go to another EA who isn't fobbing you off and remarket the property (ie indicating that you're about to pull out of the current transaction). It will also mean that during the notice period of your current EA, your transaction will get scrutiny higher up at the existing EAs, which can trigger a more realistic assessment of the likelihood of this particular offer reaching completion.

[Deleted User]

Thank you. 

It’s very strange because when they made the offer, the EA confirmed they were proceedable, but 12 weeks later and no mortgage still

I asked the agency what their deposit was and they said they didn’t know, which I found strange because we made a total of 4 offers while trying to buy our onwards and we were asked every time what our deposit was. 

As my house is only 2 years old, they’re not having a survey. 

MaryNB

Deleted User said:

Thank you. 

It’s very strange because when they made the offer, the EA confirmed they were proceedable, but 12 weeks later and no mortgage still! 

I asked the agency what their deposit was and they said they didn’t know, which I found strange because we made a total of 4 offers while trying to buy our onwards and we were asked every time what our deposit was. 

All we’ve been told is they live with family, so you’d hope to assume as first time buyers who aren’t renting that it would be a straight forward application. 

Despite us getting ours so quick, the EA keep excusing it on a ‘backlog’ from COVID with lenders behind on mortgage offers.

As my house is only 2 years old, they’re not having a survey. 

After 3 months it safe to assume they have far from a straight forward application. They could have recent defaults or used payday loans. They may have overestimated what kind of mortgage they could get based on their salary (I've seen a few posters here express surprise that they can't get something high like 6x their salary). Maybe they're self employed or relying on bonuses and they didn't use a broker so don't know the appropriate lenders to use. 

HopeAndDriftWood

Oh man, @Deleted User, that sounds SCARILY like our buyer.

We did the cash buyer, then the estate agent doesn't know where the deposit is coming from, then mortgages have been slowed down because of Covid lines of excuses, too... 

Then finally got a bit stroppy and was told that he needs to remortgage his house for the deposit, which was taking longer than expected... 

Then the valuation finally took place on the 1st, so mortgage offer should be within 48 hours... then that it'd been referred to the underwriters so would be a week... then last week that the wrong valuation had taken place, so it all needs to happen again. Allegedly the new valuation is this week. 

12 weeks is so long. Our mortgage offer took 4 days in late July. I'd push your estate agent, so you at least know what you're dealing with.

MaryNB

Also if I were you I'd very be annoyed with your EA if they didn't do their due diligence. Like you, I had to send proof of my deposit to the seller's EA. I even had to do a financial check session with them (although that was really an attempt to sell me their mortgage product). They wouldn't taken the house off the market until I had my mortgage offer - which obviously I was very annoyed about.