Hello to all in this miserable boat.
We went SSTC and had an offer accepted on the house we are buying in November (and it's a short chain as our vendor is moving into a vacant property, so that's the end of the chain).
Our buyers and their crap solicitor have held the process up for weeks and weeks already (rest of the chain has been waiting ages) whilst they had two mortgage applications turned down, and generally faffed and taken ages to do everything, but we've all waited for them.
We were first told we were 'nearly ready to exchange' nearly 3 weeks ago and were just waiting for buyers to return their contracts with plan to complete on the 27th of March. Fab.
Then buyers solicitor raised loads of random last minute enquiries that they could have asked weeks before. Okay.
Buyers enquiries were answered and contracts were returned. Fab. Plan was to exchange last week.
Oh but apparently the buyers made some mistake with the witness signatures so had to have another set of contracts issued. They assured our EA these would be back by Saturday. They weren't.
Couldn't exchange on Monday therefore as contracts hadn't been received back at buyers solicitors (the dozy gits had put them in the regular post and not sent them next day delivery).
Was told yesterday (Tuesday) that we could exchange if the buyers contracts arrived in the post that morning. Hurrah. It did! But, then their dopey solicitor realised that there was an error in the amount written on our buyers' gifted deposit letter from their grandmother. A letter that it had been with them for literally weeks and weeks and so should have noted this error ages before. So now not possible to exchange until this was corrected.
However because our mortgage company needs 5 days between exchange and completion to release funds the fact we didn't exchange yesterday meant we all had to renegotiate a completion date so there would be 5 working days still between exchange and completion.
So this morning the whole chain agrees to complete the 29th. Buyers solicitor confirms the amendment they need to the gifted deposit letter has been received and all ready to exchange. My solicitor and estate agent both contacted me this morning to say exchange was happening today. Hurrah! So I waited. And waited. And waited. By 4pm I contacted my estate agent to confirm what is happening. Apparently one of the banks in the chain still hasn't given official confirmation that completion on the 29th is okay, and can't exchange until this is received. If I hadn't have contacted my estate agent I probably wouldn't have known as no one contacted me to tell me this.
Estate agent has said that exchange should probably now happen tomorrow.
If it doesn't we will need to re-negotiate the completion date AGAIN to allow 5 working days between exchange and completion, and it means we won't be in by Easter, when I have been saying since early January that we need to complete by Easter because I can't get time off work in April.
Can you tell I'm fucked off with this whole process now.
If we don't exchange tomorrow I might kill someone.