Waiting to exchange contracts

chelsclutton

Hello,
We are selling our house and there is a very short chain as we are buying a new build, and our buyers have a FTB buying theirs.

Long story short, we accepted the offer on our house on 9th Dec and all conveyancing relating to our sale was complete 7 weeks ago. We are being held up by the FTB solicitors who still haven’t provided him with a report on searches or sent off enquiries to our buyer. Unfortunately they are having a private sale so no estate agent to chase things, and we are using Purplebricks so they are not too worried about chasing unless I chase them first. However, I spoke to PB this morning and they’ve spoke to our buyer who has informed them that no one can get hold of the FTB’s solicitors and they seem to be ignoring him. Searches were ordered at the start of January (as were ours which were returned within 3 weeks) so now we are all a bit stuck with what to do if the solicitors won’t answer anyone. 

Does anyone have any advise or similar stories to put my mind at ease? 🤣

babyblade41

Sounds  as though FTB's have gone AWOL .. you need to determine if this purchase is going ahead , as your buyer may need to re-market 

chelsclutton

babyblade41 said:

Sounds  as though FTB's have gone AWOL .. you need to determine if this purchase is going ahead , as your buyer may need to re-market 

Thank you for responding! The FTB and our buyer are friends and apparently have been in constant contact with eachother directly, but the problem lies with the FTB’s solicitors who aren’t even responding to their own client - from what I can gather the FTB has been constantly trying to chase his solicitors for the search report but not getting anywhere with them

Tiglet2

chelsclutton said:

babyblade41 said:

Sounds  as though FTB's have gone AWOL .. you need to determine if this purchase is going ahead , as your buyer may need to re-market 

Thank you for responding! The FTB and our buyer are friends and apparently have been in constant contact with eachother directly, but the problem lies with the FTB’s solicitors who aren’t even responding to their own client - from what I can gather the FTB has been constantly trying to chase his solicitors for the search report but not getting anywhere with them

Sounds like the FTB Solicitor is waiting for all the paperwork to come in before raising enquiries, which will include all search results.  Some solicitors raise enquiries piece meal, but other solicitors think this is counter productive since all paperwork is needed and satisfactory responses to all enquiries is needed before being in a position to exchange.

If the FTB is not getting much response from the solicitor, I'd take that to mean that they are still not in a position to proceed at the moment.  Ideally, a solicitor would update clients weekly, but in reality where solicitors are acting for many clients, they may only update when there is something to say.