Is anyone else stuck in the hellish nightmare that is waiting for your house sale to go through and want to moan and rant with me?

[morelovetogive]

Eurgh, it is really getting me down now. We accepted an offer on our property and had an offer accepted on another back in August. We were told at the time the chain was; person who we are buying from is moving to rented, us, lady buying ours, lady buying hers, investment company. Infact 5 weeks ago, 1 week before we were hoping and planning to exchange, we discover there is another couple at the end of the chain, our buyers estate agent had failed to tell anyone, including their client about them! First time buyers buying from the investment company and the investment company were actually doing a back to back sale. They were at the very beginning of preceedings at that point. For the last 3 weeks we have been told they are just waiting for their mortgage offer to come through, should be imminent. Still nothing. We are relying on the money we will have left to pay for Christmas and DD's birthday in December. We are moving because we can't afford to live here. The longer we are here the more stressful it is getting. I realise 3months is nothing really but its the whole any day now, edge of your seats, waiting for the phone to ring that is really getting me down. Anyone else in a similar situation getting equally frustrated that would like to rant away with me??

Just wanted to say that you aren't alone... We finally exchanged last Wednesday, 2 days after the original date which was pushed back 3 weeks because the end of chain whom we thought were moving into rented basically told a lie and ended up buying a house... 3 weeks after we all apparently 'completed'.

And then the start of chain had a very incompetent solicitor... Who decided to be on leave on the day we were supposed to exchange. And also decided that there was no need to inform her client what exactly to do... So banks were not informed, money not transferred. Etc.

Roll on Monday and my completion date. Hang in there... It'll happen.

If the mortgage offer hasn't come through within 2 weeks of the valuation then alarm bells should be ringing. We only realised that our buyers mortgage offer wasn't through when we started to push the point that we needed to complete by a certain date. It transpired that the lenders (for some reason) had changed their minds & wouldn't lend to them. they spent the next few weeks trying to fob us off that they were doing a fast track mortgage with a new lender & we would get a call about a survey any day. After 3 weeks I insisted the agent re-market the property & we actually found out that the original buyers were unmortgageable (as I thought) on the same day we got another offer from a couple who had viewed a few days before. :) I cant believe our luck! :)

Chase it up strongly, that's my advice. :)

I also had problems - I put in an offer on somewhere with vendors who told me that they were ready to exchange when someone pulled out of buying their property - but it turned out later that they had lied to me and were also having trouble getting a mortgage because he was self-employed - same story as you SparklePrincess - I was told that they were getting a fast track mortgage etc. etc. but when I was told for the third week in a row that survey access was just about to happen I pulled out. It wasn't my dream house anyway - if it was maybe I would have waited, but both the vendors and the EA lied to me and the EA didn't return my calls. I spent over £500 though - I rushed through my survey and searches as I believed that I was behind and everyone was waiting for me to catch up.

I'm moving in with family now for a few weeks, I've found somewhere that seems a lot simpler, and that's in the process of going through, but I wanted to break the chain to get my money in the bank and remove one type of stress!

Thanks all, good to know we aren't the only ones! I will chase up again. The mortgage situation is worrying me. We were told they were struggling to get enough deposit together but that is all sorted now and mortgage offer should be confirmed any day, that was a couple of weeks ago though. Sounds like we could be being fobbed off too doesn't it. I will chase EA today. No point phoning solicitors they don't return our calls and when we complained about this we were just told, well we don't have any more information for you!

Well after an infuriating conversation with EA i have told them that they have till the end of the day to tell me what progress has been made at the end of the chain or we are pulling out. I told them i believe that these people are unmortgagable and wasting everyones time. If we pull out though i have no idea how we will pay for the solicitors fees we will owe. Eurgh i feel sick.

selling family house, has not changed hands in over 50 years, old solicitors have lost some of the original deeds (although they photocopied them for me in January) including the plan which defines the boundaries of the property.

I hope you get some news soon morelovetogive. It does sound very similar to our situation, but your chain sounds scarily long. If we weren't lucky enough to find a new buyer immediately we would be over 2k down with mortgage fee's surveys & searches. Fingers crossed for us all.

Thanks, i was assured EA would call me back by close of business today, i guess thats in about 8 mins time and i still haven't had a call. So i guess thats my answer then. Not sure what they hell we do next. We already have loads of debt, the house sale would have cleared it and reduced our outgoings. We don't have the money to pay all the fees we have accrued and i am feeling very naive about getting into this situation in the first place. I have to go to an evening work meeting in an hour and i feel sick at the thought.

PigletJohn, thats terrible, they had better be turning that office upside down looking for them.

It's not really being naive - you can't plan for everything! When I got into the situation I was in, my EA was great - she was the one phoning another EA further up the chain and my vendor's solicitors to find out the real situation and push things along. Can you get your EA to speak to the EA of the property where there's a problem - or even other EAs in the chain to create a bit of momentum - because either the original buyers come up with a mortgage, or they will have to find alternative buyers, which might be possible. It's not just you that's affected though, so you might find some other people able / willing to do some more pushing. Although if your EA is not even phoning you back then that might be hard!

Well after I phoned them this morning the estate agent says that actually everyone is ready now all the way down the chain and contracts have been issued at the end of the chain. I asked whether she would confirm that the mortgage offer had been received then and she said she didn't know for sure but would assume so if the contracts had been issued . So assuming that this is true and we are not being spun another line, we should hear about dates any day now. Not sure what to think to be honest. Time will tell i guess...

I really hope so for you! So stressful.

I am in the process of remortgaging and buying 2 houses and the mortgage offers have been out within 48hours so as Sparkle said I would worry if I had not heard in a few weeks.

stupid solicitor has found lost deeds now and the house is now on record at the Land Registry.

Time, cost and frustration