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 :)

Welcome to the thread chica. Chains are a complete nightmare, I hope you get some movement soon. I'd be keeping an eye on the market anyway, just in case.
We just don't know what to do next, there's nothing else on the market to buy, there are a very small handful of properties to rent, none of which we really like. Looks like we'll either have to move (renting) to somewhere we don't particularly want or to a house we don't want. On the upside, the kids really enjoyed their new school visit last week!

Chica that sounds like a nightmare!

We had an open house on sat and have had a few offers today. Just waiting for the EA to send details through for us to consider but at least one of them was of the amount that we want so we are pleased. Our vendor has also found somewhere and that is vacant and our potential buyer has nothing to sell so fingers crossed it works out and the sticking point on the chain will be us!

On a side note I've just read through the pack from the conveyancers 'recommend' by the EA and they are double that of other quotes I've just got so we will be telling them to do one and swapping!

Lizzie Are you in our chain?

I'm feeling a bit more relaxed now as I've realised I can get £100 a month interest on our deposit money by sticking it in two Santander 123 accounts. So it can take as long as it needs to.

£100 a month? That's a high rate of interest! .
No, not in any chain, our house purchase just fell apart (see earlier posts.)

Well our open house on Saturday was officially a success! There has been a bit of a bidding war and the offers have gone up £6k and we have now accepted one.

Can anyone shed any light on when in the process you start talking about completion dates etc? We are in a position where, if we complete before 1st April, we have to pay early repayment charges on our current mortgage as we are still in a fixed term period. Our buyer is a 1st timer and our vendors are buying a vacant house (but not in probate so no foreseen hold ups) so we are assuming they will both want to move as soon as possible.

I don't want to mislead anyone on the fact that we want to wait until 1st April to move, but at the same time I don't want to give all of the other parties a one-up over us IYSWIM too early in the proceedings. Im assuming that it shouldn't need to take that long to go through the process but that there may well be reasons why it just takes that long so im not sure what to say just now. Do I just stay quiet until asked or it becomes clearer when its likely we will all be ready to go?

If I were you, I'd lay my cards on the table upfront. Nothing would be more likely to piss them off than spending money, needing to move by a certain date then finding out they can't because you knew you couldn't move till April.

Thanks Lizzie. We CAN move before April if we need to, we would just prefer to wait until it wouldn't cost us several thousand ££ extra. Im just hesitant about showing my hand first and so am wondering when dates are likely to be discussed. No-one has told us they need to move by a certain date at this stage. When would that come up? Im also going on holiday in March and DH is likely to need to go away for work in March but we don't know exactly when yet, so if its likely that it definitely wont happen before March then we probably couldn't move until April anyway so it will all depend on how quickly things progress. Its not outside the realms of possibility that none of us will get as far as surveys before the new year now so how realistic is it that we will all be ready to go by end of Feb?

But like you say, if we dont tell them what we would like now, then we risk p*ssing everyone off down the line if it all goes smoothly.

We told the estate agent when we were looking around the house when we'd like to move. If there's no urgency, it may not come up for a while but it's perfectly usual for it to be discussed at the point of making an offer. In fact, I'm sure on the particulars of the sale (or whatever they're called) that the estate agent sent out to us as basically their first job, it stated the anticipated completion date.

Also, are you staying with the same mortgage lender? They may waive the fee if you do.

Yep same mortgage lender and they wont waive the fee, we have already tried that one. We could keep the existing mortgage and take a second part out to top up so to speak but it complicates things and works out much more expensive per month and means we wouldn't get as good a rate.

I think the logical thing to do would be for us to ask whether anyone has any idea of when they want/need to move and take it from there.

I would be up front Bauer - people get VERY pissed off when things like this come up later on.
Well.....we have exchanged today!!! Due to complete on Thursday next week. Can't quite believe it

I really want to cry . It now turns out that it isn't searches that our buyers are waiting for, they haven't got their mortgage offer in place . Really want to shout at the EA who have clearly been misleading us all along. I do not want to be here still for xmas, surrounded by boxes when we were told that exchange today and completion on Friday/Monday was viable. Sorry needed to vent here as I need to stay positive in RL for the DC and DH.

That's awful mary! That's an absolutely shocking thing toislead you about.

dotty I appreciate that but as we are not 100% determined to wait till April (but obviously it would be ideal for us) I'm not sure that saying it now would be best. If all other parties say absolutely not, but it ends up taking that long anyway, might we have to compromise on other things that aren't necessary on the end? Or would it do no harm to let that be known now if no one else is in a rush?

Like I say, we will go faster and pay the charges if we absolutely have to as we have had a good offer on our house and we will now save £4k in stp duty so it's not like we can't pay it, it would just be nice to not have to.

Would maybe keeping quiet till the new year and getting a better idea of other people's positions be fair and then broach it then? Or would we be shooting ourselves in the foot by not asking now?

Oh and congrats dotty! How exciting!

bauer, what do you think you might have to compromise on? I would still say it's best to be completely up front, just tell them what you have said here, that your ideal would be 1st April but at a push, you could go sooner if necessary.

I have no idea lizzie! I imagine I'm just overthinking it TBH.

While it is a good idea to be upfront about ideal completion dates it is unrealistic to assume everything will fall into place exactly when everyone wants it to. 1st April is not that far away with Christmas slowing things down now till January and it is entirely possible (probable) that you wouldn't move until April anyway. I'd be inclined to suggest 1st April to everyone as a realistic date but that you would be prepared to be flexible if everything is ready earlier than that. My own sale and purchase last year (three in chain) took from October to April to complete because of various issues that came up on the searches and enquiries.

Congratulations on finding a buyer Bauer.

Once you have appointed a conveyancer, they will send you a set of forms to complete - one detailing fixtures and fittings that you plan to leave/remove, and one concerning other bits like water supply and party rights and stuff.
One of these forms (think it's the fittings one) has a section where you are asked for any specific requirements re move date. This is where I think you should say that your preference is to move sometime in April. Once you have completed your forms, you send them back to your conveyancer, and they send them on to your buyers solicitor with the draft contract. The buyers solicitor will then send them on to the buyer.

Welcome to all the new joiners to the thread.

We got a response from our vendors regarding the price reduction that we had requested as a result of the survey. We asked for £11k, and they have agreed to £0.00. They claimed (though I suspect poss a bluff) that they had another person wanting to buy via the other agent that they had it on with. My dh went mental and wanted to pull out, as if the other buyers are real, then they have clearly marketed it after they agreed to sell to us (it was still on rightmove as for sale with the other agents as of yesterday!).

The vendors have agreed to get the windows working, which was one of the problems (the least expensive one), and they have also agreed to leave their piano (we had been going to offer them something for it previously) as a gesture of goodwill. But it does mean that we won't be able to redo the kitchen next year, or if we do then the roof repairs will have to wait and we will have to hope that it doesn't leak.

Grrr again at your buyers mary. Has their mortgage been refused, or were they just really late applying? I must say that ours all seemed very simple to get, and not at all complicated by all the supposedly new rules. I don't know if that's just because we have a very low LTV ratio, or some other reason, but if our experience has been typical then there's no excuse for your buyers not having sorted theirs.

Thanks cantsleep and spickle. OK so the forms ill have to fill out should say something about move date requirements? If that is the case then I don't really see the point in raising it early and making a big deal out of it. As you say, its quite likely to be April before we get moved anyway.

That's what I was thinking, that 1st April isn't that far away really when you consider that our buyer is unlikely to get a survey done before xmas now anyway as they only have a mortgage in principle at the moment so still need to do the full application I assume.

Anyway, a brief update. The EA emailed me yesterday evening to say that she believes that another offer is about to come in and so she hasn't formally accepted our preferred buyer's offer yet. I cant see that we will get a higher offer than we already have TBH but I guess it makes sense to give them today to put an offer in and see.

We completed! Mortgage application only took 6 months.....it was ridiculous.

Congratulations!! 6 months, that's ridiculous. Who was it with?

I'm going to look at a house that's just come on tomorrow, seems to have lots of potential so hoping we may be back on soon.

Just popped back to see how others are getting on..... And I see Dotty has finally exchanged

Congratulations - such a relief eh!

We are starting to feelore at home in the new house, looking forward to Christmas in my new
Dining area

hope my buyers mortgage isn't going to take 6 months, although if they applied for it as soon as we accepted the offer (which we were led to believe) then it has already been 4 months .

OK. so nothing is going to happen before the new year now as they still haven't got their mortgage sorted. Christmas in our house will be surrounded by boxes. Will have to fetch the tree and decs out of storage, which we will have to pay an extra month on. I know in the general scheme of things it is a first world problem, but it is not nice being lied to with no explanation afterwards .

It's a wonder houses get bought and sold, isn't it?

I've spoken to our EA and no-one in the chain is willing to vacate early. They all want to wait to see if the person at the top finds something when more houses are expected on the market at the end of January.

This is fair enough, as I'd probably do the same in their situation. But I've told the EA that we'll be looking at the new houses to the market too. Houses are selling within a week around here so I don't think our seller will be devastated if we pull out though we don't have a chain behind us and a new buyer will most likely bring a chain with them.

Best case scenario is that the person at the top finds a house not in a chain at the end of January and then we can all crack on. But it's likely that it will just create another person in the chain that we need to wait for to find a house. If that happens, we'll be looking for one that's not in a chain because this can't just go on forever. We'll have been waiting 3.5 months at that point. The EA said she had one chain that took 10 months to complete before they could all proceed.

I really thought we'd escape most of that as we're buying a 4-bed detached so thought we'd have been near the top of the chain. But there are two parties who are downsizing which is making it longer.