Worried we're about to be made homeless whilst buying

Jmoo

Understood on the flat aspect, but more generally I'd appreciate some advice on the house situation too.

canaldumidi

Jmoo said:

Understood on the flat aspect, but more generally I'd appreciate some advice on the house situation too.

Your thread title was: "Worried we're about to be made homeless whilst buying" which was the (as yet unclear) 'flat aspect'.

However, re the house I'm not sure what advice you are looking for. You can

* keep your finders crossed and hope this purchase goes through or

* start looking for a new house or

* both the above at once or

* remain in rented longer term and look to purchase a house later on.

GoogleMeNow

Jmoo said:

Me and my partner are long-distance and I've just got a new job in a new city where she is living. She's renting in a one-bedroom house, and we're really keen to get in a house now I've started working there. We successfully put an offer in with an estate agents in November, and there had been discussion of a move by March. Things seemed to be moving quickly with our application, our solicitor has taken our money and the deposit and asked for a completion date, with just five days' notice if we wanted to move. We told the solicitor we could move within days.

Foolishly my partner told her landlady she was ready to move out, and handed in her notice. But 24 hours later we were told the house we were buying was no longer moving forward and there will be a hold up. This has caused a problem as her landlady isn't returning her calls or emails after she provided an end date.

In the meantime I receive a call from the seller saying that the house they're buying is now in a dispute between two divorced people. One who has moved out doesn't want to sell, and apparently it's now involving a court. This has been an issue since they offered to buy the house in September, and I now wonder if it's why someone else dropped out buying. They know no other information, and the solicitors were kept in the dark too. I said we'd try to be understanding, but there are a lot of pressures on us about the move.

I've told the solicitor this saying we really need a timeframe to know what's happened. They've shrugged and said "hopefully" this is progressing, and it's just a case of waiting for a date, and that the seller won't split the chain. I'm not really happy with that, and would like a bit more cooperation, even if it's some dates we can expect progress.

I'm a bit stumped what to do - we obviously need to try to track down the landlady to see if she can stay in the flat. But my fear is if it's going to be long term, I'm going to have to find us a bigger flat, and presumably it'll need a long-term tenancy. We really can't afford to do that, on top of buying furniture for our first house. And I don't know how to play it with the solicitors and the whole process, we don't want to be awkward, but we fear at the end of this we might not even get a house.

Very foolish.  You hadn't exchanged so nothing is set in stone and anyone can change their mind/walk away.

Your purchase is going nowhere while the dispute/court is ongoing. 

Because of this your solicitor cannot give a timeframe and they certainly cannot give you some dates.

You could track down the landlady to see if she will agree to let you stay in the flat a bit longer.
You could rent another property while you wait for your purchase.  If you can find somewhere with a break clause at six months, that would probably work well.  With the dispute between the divorcing couple and the courts it could easily take months to sort out.
You could buy something else (end of chain) and rent/air bnb/travelodge until completion.

SuseOrm

If a divorcing couple are disputing the sale this could go on for years not months walk away and  find somewhere else to buy

Tiglet2

SuseOrm said:

If a divorcing couple are disputing the sale this could go on for years not months walk away and  find somewhere else to buy

Yes absolutely right.  Divorcing couples in dispute over a property sale can be fraught and can take ages, if at all.  Many will never be sold because the party that doesn't want to sell manages to buy the other out.