The NEW waiting to exchange thread...

Still no news. Nothing. !!!! all.

Kk235b, solicitors and estate agents I think don't really like to give back park figures about when completion or exchange likely. We thought we were ready to exchange mid march too and were still just waiting.

I mean, you know that stuff like this happens, you just hope it doesn't happen to you. And it seems that some people are just plain selfish and don't care who up or down the chain has to go through.

We kinda had what happened to you, thought someone was going to be the break in the chain and then they weren't. And now we are stuck living at a friend's kinda, and it can't go on forever.

I can understand people not wanting to go into rental if they don't have to, and it's hard to get a short term rental especially. But a bit of honesty goes a long way.

Also it seems so dumb to jeopardize the sale of your own house as well cos what good does that do you? If your vendor loses you they'll have to find another buyer and they could lose the house they have chosen.

Do you know if there are more people in our likely to be in the chain? Might be with finding somewhere else to stay if you can. If he's just got himself and you into a longer chain i suspect it'll be more than a month. :-(

x_malibubabe wrote: »

Solicitor just waiting for signed contracts back and then we can exchange! She's hoping to complete by Friday. Fingers crossed! Put the offer in on 30th December, no chain (FTB and vacant property!).

Can I ask you, do you have any idea what factors held up the process? Was there one item, one document, one request, or one person that was the sticking point?

Seems for an uncomplicated sale like this one, 3+ months to exchange is a long time(?) Or were both sides pretty chilled as to date of exchange? Were you not concerned at any point that you still had no guarantee of the vendor's commitment?

24 October 17- we accepted offer on our house sale
13 November 17 - we had an offer accepted on our (hopefully) future house
15 November 17 - Mortgage application submitted
1 December 17 - Mortgage offer received
26 January 18 - complete on sale of our house, our seller’s solicitors advise completion expected w/c 19 Feb. We move into temporary accommodation.
5th February - advised by estate agent completion expected before the end of February. Short delay - can cope with that.
Feb comes and goes. No news at all. EA ignoring us. Nothing coming from solicitor.
5th March - find out vendor is buying a different property to the original one due to complete in Feb so starting conveyancing from the start again. Argh!!!!

Then nothing. We wait and wait and wait. So patiently.

Finally today, 9th April 18 - seller is almost ready to sign contract and agree exchange and completion dates. Apparently just a few outstanding enquiries to be signed off. Seller wants completion on a Monday.
We have advised 30th or preferably the following week so we will have the LISA bonus on 17/18 in the account to use to the purchase (we accepted we would probably have to forego 25% on the bonus but as we weren’t expecting to be able to use it at all its not the end of the world. it’s been the only benefit of the delay!)

Fingers crossed dates are agreed by this time next week :-)

Joining in on the stress! FTB, hating every minute of this process so far. I'm not a fan of waiting OR stress so this whole thing is torture for me!

Timeline so far:

16/03: Offer accepted on house
16/03: Mortgage application submitted
20/03: Tesco Bank request more paperwork due to fixed term contract of employment
22/03: AIP
26/03: Solicitor instructed
29/03: Solicitor rejected from Tesco panel - withdraw services
05/04: Survey carried out
06/04: Instruct new panel-approved solicitor
09/04: Receive survey - enquire with EA regarding building regs approval for work done to house.

Which leads us to today...over 3 weeks in and not even an official mortgage offer back yet

Does anybody have experience with gaining retrospective building regs approval? Does it delay the process much?

So glad I am not alone in the horrible process of constant worry...

Hi everyone


Lots of new names since the last time I was here, hoping that's a good sign that there's been plenty of graduates. We've been quite hasty in offering on a house that we've viewed once, the day after we saw it. After all the back and forth on the last one and ultimately backing out when things got messy because of doubts on all sides, and doing second viewings on 4 more properties with massive pro and cons lists on all sides, this feels quite terrifying. But we both came out of the viewing with a good feeling. It needs quite a bit of updating, it's 35k more than the last property (but 55k less than another property OH was keen on) and it's got one less bedroom, but strangely is bigger and better suited to our needs. I'm quite scared that there may be structural issues, it could need rewiring and it probably needs a new boiler. But we'll see how it goes. Here's the timeline:
03/01 Offer accepted on House 1
04/01 AIP agreed with Yorkshire - valid for 30 days
08/01 Instructed solicitors to act on our behalf
10/01 Provided EA with proof of deposit, AIP and ID
12/01 Received pack from solicitors
15/01 Paid fee for Searches
18/01 Applied for full mortgage with YBS
26/01 Phone call and email from YBS detailing information required to proceed with application
26/01 - GOT ENGAGED (not relevant at all, but completely distracting me from the fact we're supposed to be doing house stuff)
31/01 - Survey conducted
05/02 - Searches returned
19/02 - Mortgage offer confirmed
21/02 - Paper version of offer received
22/02 - 1st set of enquiries, vendors survey, etc received from Solicitors. Half of items missing or incorrect. Survey filled out badly with lots of mistakes - eg Vendor says there's no water meter, and property isn't connected to mains sewerage, despite the survey confirming the location of the water meter and confirming that there's mains sewerage. Solicitor confirms she is waiting for responses on missing docs and inconsistent answers
08/03 - Email from solicitors advising that the missing enquiries have been answered, there's no consent from the covenant holder for the extension added. We can either get indemnity insurance, but this only covers financial loss, or ask for retrospective consent, but there may not be time because if we don't complete by 21st March the vendor is pulling out
09/03 - Covenant owner hypothetically tells us that consent will cost £100 and would be done by return post. But there may also be an issue as the property was leasehold at the time the extension was built. Tell solicitor that we are not going to buy the house if consent is not obtained. Go to look at a house that's come on the market since we last looked (House 2)
12/03 - Officially withdraw from House 1. Solicitor tells EA, who ring us to confirm. We're done with this one now.
23/03 - offer on house 2 (after a second viewing with both sets of parents, OH getting quite stroppy about covenant consent for extensions and OHs parents being quite harsh about the property)
26/03 - Vendors of house 2 decide not to sell.
05/04 - View house 3 - dated and potentially needs work, but a nice space and a nice feel
06/04 - Offer on house 3. After a bit of back and forth, with us starting at 30k under asking and them really wanting 5k over asking, we end at 5k under.
07/04 - Sign paperwork at EA, contact YBS who reconfirm the amount they are prepared to lend (since the property is more than our mortgage offer and our AIP is expired)