Home Buyers Support Thread Part 3

[juneybean]

Part 2 here -> www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/a1905904-Buyers-support-thread-part-2?msgid=48420379#48420379

Hope it's okay that I made the next thread :)

Well after worrying so much about the mortgage, that actually turned out to be the easy bit, and unfortunately the surveys on both the house we are buying and the house we are selling have shown up issues.
The one we are buying means we need to send a few contractors in to check things for us, but unfortunately on the one we are selling, the buyer has pulled out because of the survey! I am really gutted as it means we will probably lose the one we are buying and not sure I have the emotional energy to go through selling this one again. We also have to get the problems that were raised on the survey fixed to make sure it doesn't happen again, ughh.

Oh Ditsygal... I don't know what to say! Was there no scope with your buyers for them to hold on whilst you sort the issues? I hope they are nothing to serious and that you can sell your property again soon. What about your onward purchase? Are the survey issues something you can swallow? If so they might hold fire for you if you can convince them that you will do everything you can to get another buyer quickly. Keeping everything crossed for you x

We are still hoping for exchange in the next few weeks - additional enquiries are still outstanding on our purchase but our solicitor and EA are chasing hard. Our seller has only lived in the property for two years so I'm hoping the building regs etc were all in place when she bought the house. So far our buyer has waited a long time (our chain broke twice above us - we accepted their offer back in February) so I'm hoping they will be okay to hold on just a few more weeks!

Sorry to hear your news Ditsygal. I know first hand how emotionally stressful it is and we're not even selling, just buying!

Some slightly more positive news for us this week...! The people selling our house have made an offer on a property, which has been accepted, and which has a 28day deadline for exchange. However it's a repossessed house which from my understanding will continue to be advertised, but the estate agent selling their house (the one we're buying) say there will just be a notice for 7 days, after which it will officially be sold. Not sure I believe that as the estate agents are pretty clueless!

On the plus side though the sellers are happy to push the sale as quickly as possible, so we might exchange this month and complete soon after! Fingers crossed...

Omg Gemma fair play to your buyers they're very patient! We had our offer accepted 10.5 weeks ago and I've been going mental!

One tiny step forward - we were officially allocated the house by the housing association today. Someone led me to believe this would take a good six months, it's actually taken less than a week!

Now for the searches and the mortgage application.

Sending quick completion and exchange vibes through the ether to everyone still waiting.

Title deeds are sorted so we are signing the contract on Monday

Still some outstanding enquiries most straight forward but still need the building regulation certificates for the extensions - once that's sorted we should be ok to exchange - very nervous as we have been at exchange point twice before and the chain broke both times.... so want it to be third time lucky ??????????

so with the threat of pulling out if the sale last Friday the vendor magically produced some plans for the extensions on Thursday evening.....at least that is what we thought until I realised they were just architects drawings. No stamps of approval . DH has gone to the council himself now to have a look and it seems that it is as we feared and 2 rooms are missing . Have emailed our solicitor (not sure what we are paying them for when we have done all the work). And our buyers are now pushing for a completion date!

marymoocow great detective work by your husband Hopefully your sellers can sort something out soon for you!

I have a suspition that we are about to head into the same waters.... we are pretty much ready to exchange except for waiting on two outstanding enquiries. The first is an indemnity insurance because the house has been extended over the garage and the covenants say no changing the look of the front of the house. The extension is over 10 years old so solicitors think low risk and that an indemnity insurance will sort it.

The second is that we are still waiting on building reg certificates for two extensions (one over the garage and one at the back of the house). I have checked the local government website and planning permission was granted. Our solicitor is chasing our sellers solicitors for the building reg certificates but they have gone too quite for my liking... so my guess is that they dont have them

Our seller has only been in the house for just over two years and the extensions were all done before she moved in - I would have thought her solicitor would have checked this before she bought the house?!?!

If they dont have them we have to decide what to do next... if we ask them to get retrospective certificates they wont pass as the work was done over 10 years ago so wont meet 2014 standards. We could look at another indemnity insurance but that doesnt guarantee that the work has been done properly...

In the meantime our bottom of the chain are pushing for exchange this week and completion next week.

Why do solicitors take so long!!!!

With respect Gemma77, it isn't solicitors taking too long, they are instructed to represent their clients in what is a considerable investment in property. I am sure you would prefer it if the various legalities were in place before exchange of contracts and as you rightly say, the vendors should have been aware when they bought their property that the extensions needed building regs etc so that was perhaps a mistake on their solicitors part. It may well be that your solicitor will ask you to take a view on this issue, i.e. that you decide to go ahead without the correct paperwork, accept an indemnity policy and perhaps get a builder to go and look at the extensions and give his opinion on whether they have been built to an acceptable standard. I work in conveyancing and it always amazes me how often clients think exchanging and completing can be done whenever they wish it to be done and not when the appropriate legalities have been satisfactorily dealt with. Don't forget too, that mortgage lenders often have strict rules too, which the solicitors have to satisfy otherwise the mortgage lender can withdraw their offer at any time up to exchange. Hopefully you'll come to a mutually acceptable resolution and be able to exchange in the not too distant future.

Hi Spickle, I understand that there are good solicitors and just like other professions there are always good and bad - also understand that solicitors are working for the best interest of their client.... just frustrating that some of the solicitors we have been in contact with over the past 10 months have been slow generally.

Simple things could be better - like not using external post for things that could easily be dealt with by email. Even our solicitor has said how frustrating it is that other solicitors in the chain rely on snail mail and take so long to return call (if they return them at all) One particular firm at the bottom of our chain have been really awful and she and she now only speaks with the guy in charge.

Maybe we have been unlucky (which is an understatement having had our chain break three times now) Probably best I don't get started on estate agents

I feel I can join in with this thread now, we had our mortgage approved yesterday so it now feels like it's really going to happen! We're just buying, not selling (well, we are trying to sell but failing at the moment) and hoping to move in January. We've got a survey booked next week so not much else to do at the moment apart from wait for search results and survey results.

Does anyone else feel like there's a flurry of activity at the start then it all slows down interminably? We accepted an offer (and had ours accepted) at the end of August which feels like an age ago now. We're still trudging slowly on with nothing going drastically wrong (like some other poor posters) but still no date for exchange....

And not all solicitors are created equal...our current one is fab but our last one was dire (and went bust).

We finally exchanged this week, exactly 8 weeks after I made my offer on the house. Some tedious ups and downs over the last week or two, but I'm focusing on the future now.

I have a lot to do to get ready for the move (under 2 weeks away now), but I have buildings insurance and have booked removals, and have started trying to sort out the utilities.

Still lots to sort out in the house, have done several dump runs already and have stuff listed on ebay (not sure if that was a good idea!). I advise anyone waiting for exchange to get ahead on this stuff as you don't always have much control over completion dates if you have a chain which can leave you with a lot to do in a short space of time.

Congratulations on exchanging Sellingin2014! Great news x

Apparently sellers solicitor has answered queries and is sending them to our solicitor in the morning.

IF our solicitor is satisfied then we are exchanging early next week with a completion date of 28th Nov.

Keeping everything crossed answers to the enquiries are ok

Hello - can I join this thread and ask for advice.

We are buying our first home, we are cash buyers in rented at the moment. We had our offer accepted at the start of September on a property and we were told that the people we are buying from are ready to go as are the next people up the chain (the house we are buying had been under offer already and their original buyer had pulled out)

Our Solicitor is ready to exchange but we found out yesterday that the people one up the chain only had their mortgage valuation done yesterday. We have been up front the whole time that we need to move by end of November as our rental property is being sold. What can I do to hurry this process along?

Nancy - start looking at new rentals and let the estate agent know that they need to get on everybody's case if they want to keep you as a buyer.

Quietly find out about storage solutions and staying with friends temporarily.

Hi Nancy, Once we had had our mortgage valuation done it only took a couple of days for our mortgage provider to send out their formal offer and then a week for our solicitor to sort and send us the mortgage report and deeds for our signature.

So if it was just the mortgage to sort then it doesn't need to delay you that much - it will depend on whether the searches were ordered before the mortgage was confirmed and whether contract enquiries have been raised.

All you can do to speed things up is keep in regular contact with your solicitor and estate agent and ask them to chase up the rest of the chain. We speak to ours every day! I'm sure they can't wait to see the back of us!!

Thank you both for your advice, I have told our solicitor to make some comments indicating that if we don't get in on time we may just walk away, from speaking to the estate agent this afternoon it seems that the people were cash buyers until last week and have suddenly decided to get a mortgage for a small % of their house price - it seems like everything else is in place and it is just this mortgage thing holding us up. If need be we can keep our stuff in storage and then stay in a hotel for a few days, but I'm not telling them that!

Grr, vendor's solicitor has yet to reply satisfactorily to an enquiry our solicitor raised about a month ago! She is also routing both him and the EA to her assistant. Our solicitor has otherwise had the report ready to go for nearly a month. Next week I will be further stepping up the calls...

Hi all, feels like we're finally getting somewhere after 6 months of waiting for the sellers to find a property!

We're cash buyers, we've had our searches and survey done and are sending in an electrician tomorrow to have a look at the fuse box which was brought up as being old in the survey (I'm not too worried to be honest, just want to make sure the house doesn't need a rewire).

What is our next step here, I cant think of much else we can do (aside from maybe negotiating the price depending on what the spark says)? Are we into the "keep chasing the solicitors" stage?

Hopefully things will start moving quicker for your now Crompers.

Our sellers solicitors was apparently sending answers to enquiries last Thursday.... still hadn't arrived today! EA spoke to them and they have been sent by document exchange and will be with our solicitor tomorrow. Keeping everything crossed that the answers will satisfy all the enquires as then we should be set for exchange.

Everyone in the chain had agreed a completion date of 28th but our buyer is now messing around. Apparently she can only complete on a Monday or Tuesday due to work commitment.... never mind that the rest of us work too and are taking holiday! So she is potentially delaying everyone until 1 December. We are pushing to see of everyone can go in earlier, say the Tuesday 25th but obviously depends if enquiries are all sorted this week.

Feeling really nervous and a bit sick.... This will be the third time we have tried to exchange. The last two times (may and August) our chain broke just before exchange (the last time on the morning we were going to exchange). Scared it is all going to go wrong at the last hurdle again.... Just don't think I can go through that heartbreak again.

Just heard that the solicitor enquiry answers are in.... our solicitor is looking at them now and will get back to us later. In the meantime, she has spoken to our buyers solicitor to get the bottom of the chain to get ready to kick of the exchange process.

Feeling properly sick now!

Haven't posted here in a while but we are waiting for dates now to exchange/complete. We sold our house to relocate - pulled out of our original purchase due to a horrendous survey -and we've been renting a hideous house so I just can't wait!
Never want to buy nor sell ever again! So much stress!

Fingers crossed you get an exchange date soon, Dotty and Gemma.
We've been in a couple of weeks now and honestly, once you move it all seems worth it. You will forget all the awfulness of the process once you get immersed in planning your lovely new place.