Advice for a friend having a nightmare pushing through sale

[33goingon64]

A good friend has had her house on the market for 9 months and has had three offers which all fell through for various reasons to do with the prospective buyers. She has found a place to move to and luckily the owners are waiting for her. The current offer on her place is from someone connected to the university in their city (mentioning no names it's one of the Oxbridge unis, to give you an idea of the size of institution she is dealing with) and the uni is buying 40% of the house.

The uni's lawyers are being incredibly slow and have requested specific surveys in addition to the usual one. The house is in very sound condition - friend spent a lot on getting it underpinned, new drains, new roof etc. My friend is petrified that after all the waiting they will come back asking for money off (which friend cannot afford to agree to).

She has two small DCs, one of whom should have started pre school in September but didn't cos they were meant to be moving - he is terribly unsettled and wants to start this new life he keeps hearing about. They are making the move to be nearer her DH's work - he currently stays away from home 3 nights per week as work is too far to commute daily. The new place is around the corner from his work... They are desperate to have a normal family life.

What can she do? It seems the uni is all powerful and faceless. She doesn't want to seem desperate in case they start bargaining, which she can't afford.

There isn't a lot she can do other than asking the agent to keep nagging prompting the Uni, and maybe continuing to advertise and take viewings on the house.

I wouldn't worry too much about the delay, with the Uni buying into it I would imagine there is a long chain that the decisions have to go through berfore anything is approved, and none of them will be in a rush!

I don't think that they would try and drop the price either unless the house was overvalued or there is something nasty on a survey. The buyer would have had a budget to spend and that will already have been approved so its unlikely they will try and play funny buggers.

Not much consolation but I think its just a case of waiting it out.

Have sent you a PM!

I would suspect that because the Uni is buying 40% they are treating it like a commericial purchase and as such need very different searches done. When I did my first commercial property purchase I was astounded by the additional searches including if there is a petrol station with in 3 miles, where every drain and electrictiy cable runs that the lenders required for purchase. Nobody held anything up a long the way, but it is slow. We made our offer mid March and completed on 29th September and we were just two individuals.

she has no pull on the university.

However the person who is going to live there might have. If he or she is aware of ther risk of the sale failing, they might be able to persuade somebody in the organisation to take it more seriously.

Thanks all and to Grendel for your pm!