Progress on house chains in England - estate agent updates or lack of updates??

HM0002

Tiglet2 said:

HM0002 said:

eddddy said:

HM0002 said:

We knew there was an onward chain. The vendor split up with his partner and he is looking to buy a different house (presumably downsizing).

Is the house jointly owned? Do they both have to find new places to buy / live in?

Buying from separating couples can sometimes be difficult. For example, because one party blames the other for the break-up and losing their home, or one party doesn't think the split of proceeds is fair. So they try to sabotage the sale etc.

And/or there might be 2 onward chains.

HM0002 said:

A week later I had still not heard so I phoned, she seemed annoyed that I had called to chase and said that she thought the offer had been accepted, and she thought there was an onward chain. (But she was kind of vague about confirming either). She said that she would keep me updated.

Some estate agents are good at sales progression, some are bad. It sounds like you have a bad one.

It's very strange for an estate agent to be annoyed by your call. In your position, I'd suspect that is a defence mechanism.

I'd suspect that either the estate agent has messed something up, or they don't know what's happening - but rather than admitting it, they're acting annoyed to stop you chasing them.

As far as we are aware, she has moved out and only he needs to find somewhere.

Also our offer was accepted very quickly which suggests that there isn't a lot of disagreement around selling.

Our experience suggests it's more likely the estate agents that are the problem here:

After we viewed the property we told them we were extremely interested but we had some queries. The estate agent dealing with the sale, went on leave and forgot to reply or update us before she did. So we had to chase. This could quite easily have lost them the sale, as this was our favourite property but we had also viewed two others we really liked.
They lost some of our information around proof of funds and had to ask for it again.
They send the memorandum of sale to my Scottish selling solicitor rather then the English one responsible for buying. Despite the fact that I gave them both in an email and explained which was which.
They lost the details of my selling solicitor and had to ask for them again.

Hardly all reassuring? So yes sounds like we picked an estate agent that are bad at both sales and progression. They get good reviews though, so we had such high hopes for them when we put in our offer!

Has your English Solicitor now got a copy of the memorandum of sale, showing the correct details?
Has the vendor's Solicitor now got details of your English Solicitor, via the memorandum of sale showing the correct details?  You need to check that the EA have been writing to the correct party,

Both solicitors tend to send an initial letter of introduction to each other before the draft contract pack is sent by the seller's solicitor to your solicitor (EA to check they haven't sent letters/documents to the wrong solicitor). 

The sellers will also need to complete and return the Fixtures & Contents and Property Information Form, as these form part of the contract pack.  Has the vendor sent these back yet?  Both sellers will need to sign the documents and provide their ID and pass the AML checks.  

Your solicitor will probably not order any searches until they have received the draft contract pack.  The pack will contain title documents.  Searches are made according to the title number and although they can quite easily find out the title number, solicitors tend to wait for the draft contract pack to see exactly what is being sold to you, rather than look for and assume that the title number they have found is actually the correct one.  Maybe not pro-active, but many solicitors take this approach now.

Estate Agents usually have a sales progressor who can speak to all parties in the chain for progress reports, but they are not included in the legal work and so any information they find out is purely based on what someone tells them.  

As your vendor(s) are looking for separate properties to buy, it doesn't sound as though your chain is complete yet.  There really is no point for either solicitor to start much work yet (or you to start spending money on searches/surveys) as little progress can be made without a complete chain.

Thanks. I'm fairly certain the solicitors do now have the draft contract pack. They actually just emailed to ask if we want to start searches.

She has already moved out of the property, so only he needs to find somewhere to buy before they can complete the sale. But we aren't sure if his offer was accepted or if there is an onward chain as the estate agent hasn't confirmed.

It's hard when the English system is so unfamiliar and there isn't really anyone we can ask to find out what's normal and also what we are within our rights to do. For example when the estate agent is chasing us to start searches even though the chain is not complete, then we don't know if it's really within our rights just to say no, we are going to wait until the chain is complete.

HM0002

Thanks I just decided I needed to call and find out what was happening with the chain, since they had not replied to my emails last week.

Turns out the chain is actually now complete They just hadn't told us.

The last person in the chain is buying a new build but at the moment that's expected the be completed by June. Even if it's still a bit later will be fine for us as my goal was to be in by the end of July

Thanks everyone for your input, turns out I needed to just be more proactive. But because the estate agent didn't seem happy last time I called and because she didn't reply to my email I started to feel like my chasing wasn't helping.