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 :)

mary, there's nothing to stop you exchanging and completing on the same day so if it's possible to exchange by then, I suppose it's technically possible to complete!

3 weeks and 3 days and counting then! Best start thinking about sorting the loft .

Hello all. Can I join in?
We received a proceedable offer on our house on 8th Nov, after being on the market since last December! (We had an offer still standing from another party, but they haven't sold theirs yet).
We already knew which house we wanted to buy, and had our offer accepted on that on 10th November.
Since then we have appointed a solicitor, applied for a mortgage (valuation tomorrow, but we are only borrowing a very low LTV so that should be fine), arranged a full structural survey (happening next Mon), and am mid form filling re fixtures and document finding re all sorts of other peculiarities of our house (private water/sewage system etc etc).
I still can't quite believe that we might actually get to move after all (we were going to take off market if the house that we wanted to buy sold to someone else). Hopefully things will run smoothly from now on after all the hassle of trying to sell in the first place.
We haven't had anyone ask to do a survey on our place yet, so we might be working a bit quicker than our purchaser, but the chain is complete (we are buying an empty property being sold by the sons of the owner who has moved into a home already) so I see no reason not to push ahead.

Ahem.

Can I make an announcement please...

WHHOOOOOPPPPIIIEEEEE!!!!!!!

(We exchanged contracts yesterday and complete next week)

does happy dance, in between ringing all the utilities

Congratulations!!!!

We exchanged yesterday...massive relief!

Good luck to everyone who is still waiting, I hope you exchange soon!

Well done to those who've exchanged!
Our solicitor is turning out to be totally incompetent. He keeps ballsing up. The other two parties in the chain are just waiting for him basically. I'm so angry and so frustrated. I'm wondering where I can complain. He's also lied to try to cover himself. I just want to scream.

Well just to update - this guy has now been taken off our case and has been replaced by someone else who has dealt with our sale earlier this year. I'm relieved and feel more confident that things will progress now

Fingers crossed dotty.

Congrats to the recent exchangers.

We had our structural survey today, and it's thrown up a couple of things that could be very expensive, so we need to find out more about one of them and get a specialist in to look at the other. But no damp or rot or anything else horrendous like that.

We're in!!!! House is filthy and needs cleaning from top to bottom, there is a lot more decorating and fixing than we expected, boxes everywhere and its chaos BUT I already feel at home

So relieved to finally reach the end of this moving journey - it's a good job this is our forever home because I'm never moving again!!

Thanks to everyone for all the support over the past 10 months. I really am keeping everything crossed for you all and hope you are all in your new homes soon xxxxxx

Yay, congratulations Gemma!
Everything is still going along OK for us, we're going to go down and have another look around this weekend, hopefully sort out who's getting which bedroom etc and see what we'll need to replace.

Hi all...some non judgemental advice please.. I have been lurking for months and now we are apparently nearly ready to exchange. So, for lots of reasons we decided not to have a homebuyers or structural survey, mostly because we couldn't afford the full structural thing and the cheaper one is so full of caveats that it isn't of any use. Anyhow, now we have heard that without a survey to rule out subsidence we can never claim in the future as we can never prove it wasn't already present. Does anyone know if this is true please? Tia.

congratulations gemma . Our survey has been booked, searches sent for, all in the hands of everyone else. still aiming for 12th Dec move .

Gemma what madness is this??! In your new house??!!' Wahey! Huge congrats!
Two documents are missing but now the solicitors seem to think they'll be found tomorrow (who knows?!) and there's crazy talk of completing either on 5th or 12th December. I'll believe it when it happens (SO much to do though!)

Piglet - I've never heard that before and would be surprised if it's true but I'm no expert.

marymoo - I thought searches took about 6 weeks? They do here anyway, so 12th December would be a bit ambitious!

Apparently a mortgage offer letter (which we should read very carefully - is this just standard?!) was posted to us today. But banks are seemingly not able to attach copies of such offer letters to emails .

cantsleep yes our solicitor told us to read the offer carefully, as it's what the contract's based on. It's not really difficult though, just sets out how much they are lending, what rate, over what term, the address of the house etc. should all be fairly straightforward.

MeAndPiglet - insurers can be notoriously reluctant to meet subsidence claims on a property they've recently taken on. The safest bet is to continue to insure the property with your sellers insurer as they're obliged to continue to insure the property even if the owner changes (assuming premiums are still paid).
This might mean a higher insurance premium for you than you might have been able to get elsewhere though. NB there's usually a high deductible (usually £1000) for subsidence claims.

Thanks Millions and CSWS there are no signs whatsoever to the untrained eye of subsidence, and no insurance claims fir any in the past 11years anyway. So no reason to worry at all just so stressed by the whole house hunting business that I spend ages obsessing about phantom disasters that may befall us. Oh for a happy ending soon!

can'tsleep - 10 days after our offer being accepted our searches are back! amazing what can be done in reality when things are pushed. It took about 2 months for the house that we pulled out of, as we didn't keep asking. just the mortgage valuation holding us up....not being done until monday . Hope everyone else is getting the answers they want.

Well done Gemma! So glad to hear it feels like home ready! We're meant to be exchanging tomorrow, apparently! I've signed the contract and just transferred a hefty £10k to my solicitor online don't have the time to go into the bank branch and my limit per day for a transfer is £10k, so doing it in chunks, another £10k tomorrow then the balance on Sat. All ready for completion in Monday. So nervous that something's happened to my money though haha. So paranoid.

Having finally exchanged I can wholeheartedly say the English conveyancing system is stuck in the dark ages. Its not quite quill pen and carrier pidgeon but it isn't far off.
How about a single conference call between all solicitors involved in the chain so exchange can indeed happen simultaneously instead of 8 sets of solicitors playing telephone tennis for 8 hours? And estate agents arguing/lying about who called who last?

Anyway, much sympathies to those still waiting to exchange.

OK, so the surveyor/bank are dragging their heels, so it's looking more likely to be the 19th than the 12th. That will still be a 4 week move, so not bad I suppose.

4 weeks still very good.
It seems that the council of the area we are buying in are notorious for being the slowest in the country for searches, and there's nothing that we can do to make it take less than 6 weeks. So I imagine that we won't get to move until fairly late Jan.