Would anyone like an 'in a chain' support group?

[thenewaveragebear1983]

Would anyone like an 'in a chain' support thread? We're selling and buying and it's so stressful!! We've found our 'dream house' and had an offer accepted, had an offer on ours within a week which was subsequently retracted. Wondered if anyone else was finding this whole process ridiculously stressful?

I agree bear our solicitor is talking to all parties and to be fair she's been amazing. My stress levels seemed to have dipped a bit today, but after last Thursday and Friday they couldn't get much worse. I do have wine though (again)

Let's all hope for a better day for everyone tomorrow.

bear yeah we actually had to "instruct" our conveyancer to contact the sellers solicitor. She wouldn't do it without being asked first. In writing.

That's insane. How were they ever planning to arrange anything? Ye gods.
To be fair, our solicitor is good too. I can hear in her voice when I phone her every week for updates that she is getting tired of our seller's slowness. I just told her today that we are happy to proceed without any of the missing indemnity policies, just to get this misery over with.
I definitely think you have to be one step ahead all the time, driving it forward constantly. As soon as one person on the chain starts slowing things down it can all go downhill. I heard today that a friend of my dd's - her house on our road sold in June and has been in a chain of eighteen. They completed today. If that's possible, then anything's possible and it's given me renewed hope!!

A chain of eighteen. Wow! That's incredible!! I also have renewed hope.

Fingers, toes and grey hairs must be crossed at all times for tomorrow!

Eighteen!!! Bloody hell. I think there has to be at leaSt one person in each chain chasing, or nothing would get done.

I know. 18. Makes me shudder at the thought of it. It just happened to be a longish chain with a couple of separating couples who were each buying so it had several 'branches'. Horrific. My dh said last night he wondered if this would be our last move, (we're buying quite a large 'forever house' house, but he has delusions of grandeur) and I told him in no uncertain terms that if I ever move again it will be to a 2 bed rental by the sea. Alone.

Just for clarity:

Your solicitor will speak to the solicitor either side of the sale and purchase that they are acting on, but not to any solicitor further up or down the chain.

If searches have not been ordered or there has been a delay in ordering them, consider maybe that the buyer has not yet paid for them. Searches are not usually included in a fixed fee conveyancing deal and have to be paid for up front before the solicitor will order them.

Don't forget that any information requested from a vendor takes time (i.e. a PP was surprised how long it took to find out about electrics) because the vendor has to allow the inspection to take place and a report provided. The report has to be forwarded to vendor's solicitors who then forward to buyer's solicitors who will forward to the buyer. In this case, 14 days for the buyer to receive the response is reasonable, particularly if the report is put in the post at all times rather than scanned and emailed.

bear I have already advised the family that they will have to drag me kicking and screaming from this house... ps it is the 2 bed near the sea

Well, in this modern world of email and high speed communication, not to mention that new fangled gadget, the telephone , I would have thought that taking 14 days to tell a client (who is paying nearly half a million pounds for your house no less) that the electrics are unsafe wouldn't be too much to ask. The whole conveyancing system is outdated, old fashioned and ineffective. It's things like not being able to speak to anyone outside of your sale and your purchase that demonstrate that. I think a lot, not mine actually she's very good, but a lot, of solicitors that we've heard of are being paid a lot of money and aren't doing a very professional job and the same as in any industry, we are paying for a service that many aren't getting.

Bear - I totally agree.
The whole system is based on someone's word and there is no accountability or legal come back.

I am at the mercy of the bottom of the chain & the 'professionalism' of those she chose to appoint.

Feeling slightly calmer today - I will still chase every few days to keep everyone on the ball.

I totally agree bear
I am feeling a bit resigned to not hearing anything today (we should have exchanged last week) apart from threatening to pull the plug on everything, i'm not sure what to do. Do I give our buyers a deadline to come up with the mortgage offer? Or just hope its soon...

Anna does your solicitor know if they have used a broker or a bank? Is there any way they can contact the relevant person to at least find out? Our solicitor spoke directly to our mortgage guy (technical term!) at Barclays, and also spoke to the buyers broker via the EA while we waited for the actual paperwork to arrive. Our EA wouldn't even formally accept offers until agreement in principle was in place, and were quite quick at getting mortgage offers through so they might be able to at least find out if it's a definite no. I don't think there's any harm in suggesting you might have no other option but to relist your property if they don't get the notification to you, because ultimately you are incurring costs and could potentially lose your onward purchase if they don't. You would think that the buyers themselves would be being proactive and contacting the relevant people to find out if they can proceed.
It must be so stressful, just another problem with this crappy system.
Seriously, I'm going on dragons den with my 'one step, all meet in a room, one day turnaround conveyancing' idea, (admittedly the title needs a bit of a tweak!) - I reckon it's the way forward- everyone turns up with all their paperwork, their solicitor, their money, and bosh, a few hours later everyone leaves happy. (And yes, I know that's a bit rose tinted, but I'm becoming delirious with stress.....)
Good luck everyone today! I've delegated dh to ring the EA and the solicitor and give them a squeeze, seller signing contracts today and hopefully has her searches, then we are ready to rock and roll.

averagebear - your vendor could have told you direct but chose to answer the enquiry through his solicitor, who then passed on the response to your solicitor. Your solicitor may have gathered other information and responses before reporting to you. That is the correct way of doing things, however had your vendor chosen to tell you direct, then of course you would have been aware much sooner. With regard to telephone/email/fax etc, the vendor may have responded to a postal enquiry with a postal response. The solicitor for the vendor may have emailed your solicitor and your solicitor may have emailed you, but the conveyancer cannot insist that everyone connected to the transaction responds in this way. Many people do not use technology and the telephone is no good - everything must be in writing. Yes it may be outdated but until everyone in the chain (including clients) uses technology, things won't improve too much.

I also have to disagree regarding how much we are being paid. Conveyancing costs to the client have come down over the last 10 years or so to the point where many are having to cut costs in order to compete. That means one qualified solicitor earning a good wage with lots of "assistants" on little more than the minimum wage. Some of those assistants will go on to qualify but a lot are replaced by new assistants as there is a high turnover of staff. Generally these conveyancing firms have far too many clients and the work is done as and when it comes in and in the order it comes in so that no client is prioritised over another, except that priority is given to transactions that have reached exchange and completion stage (i.e. all searches/enquiries/mortgage offers received and satisfactory).

North that is insane! Can you find out who the estate agent involved is and give them a poke? Ours is pretty good at nudging solicitors, after all they're waiting on the sale going through too.

Dolly what sort of survey is being done? We had a mid-range building survey done on our purchase as it is very old and has a very damp basement, and that picked up a lot, but none of it unexpected so we are proceeding. Our previous buyer had a homebuyers survey and they used a damp meter on all the walls and picked up elevated levels of damp, but have explained that as us having some stuff against the outside of that wall. The current buyer has only booked a valuation, so not sure how indepth that will be, but I'm still running the dehumidifier!!

Anna I have no idea how it takes so long to get a mortgage offer, we are both self employed so, more complicated than others, and we still managed it in a couple of weeks. Mind you we did have a really on it mortgage broker who gave us a massive list of documentation we would have to provide before we even applied! I wish he was our solicitor!

I have to say everyone else we've dealt with in the process, council, surveyors, estate agents, mortgage broker, removals firm,they ALL email a copy of whatever they have done for us, and THEN post it, so it speeds the whole thing up marvelously. It is no wonder people are turning to "online" conveyancing, even tho I don't think they are getting the same quality service. Unless solicitors catch up, they will soon lose this sort of work, I suspect they will end up having to drop their costs further until they have to up their workload so much they're not worth the bother.

spickle are you currently in a chain? I get that you are in the industry but as it's a support thread for those in a chain, I suggest you either support us or enlighten us with your tales of woe. If we wanted help we would post on a different thread, we are actually here to vent. Please don't poke the very stressed out bear. (that's the metaphorical bear, not actual bear, but now I think of it, that too)

Spickle I appreciate what you're saying, and I'm sure it makes sense. However, a lot of people on this thread are having a shitty time, spending a lot of money, and through no fault of their own being let down. It is so stressful and this is our sounding board. 500+ posts and a lot of it about stress, incompetence, lies, deception and poor service. Dare I say that if you're averse to a bit of solicitor bashing (and estate agent bashing) then this probably isn't the thread for you. This thread has been my lifeline the last few weeks and it's our safe place to vocalise the frustrations and upsets that we're all going through. Yes I am sure there's a valid reason for the delays, the lack of communication and the slow service, but that only partly relieves the anxiety. I know myself that I would prefer my representative to contact me to say x,y,z delay is occurring and we're doing a,b,c to resolve it rather than me having to chase them. We have communicated almost entirely via snail mail and first class arrives the next day, so I'm not sure how valid that is- and it's just as much the other parties on the chain as it is the legal rep, but then we're not allowed to communicate with the other people due to the outdated system that dictates we use legal representatives for all communications.
My solicitor is brilliant, but then we have specifically chosen the law firm of the year to do this process purely because of our previous experience with conveyancing secretaries and the like.

Morning All,

Our buyer had a MIP as we wouldn't accept the offer without it. Me and DH are both self employed (I work in Law but not conveyancing), and our offer came before the survey was even done.

The EA is chasing on our behalf, to be honest she has pushed them quite hard - I think I will see where she gets today with them. Its all such a mess, why would they be asking all these stupid questions about the oven and light fittings with no f**king mortgage offer! I think I said it before, but the first we heard of this was when our solicitor spoke to theirs on Thursday with a view to exchanging last Friday (the rest of the chain is now ready)

Bear fab idea! Someone I know through work had an attended exchange and they exchanged in 4 weeks, completed in 6.

bear Imagine the whole conveyancing process if estate agents still only used newspapers to advertise, no email, no scanning docs, barely a telephone call.

At least they ditched the typewriters.

Good luck everyone!

Collie now imagine that.

I have done my daily harassing chasing of EA and updating our solicitor, no feedback as of yet and I'm not holding out much hope. I am the master of chasing people and getting things done - but one thing I can't do is get our buyers mortgage offer sorted.

Really feeling down today with it all and its too early for wine/gin. The person I do the most work (i'm sort of self employed) for has been very understanding about all of this, but I fully understand that they need to replace me - so I'm interviewing for my own job tomorrow. Lets hope this house sale goes through soon, or I will be (partly) jobless as well as a nervous wreck.

Bear is so right - I wouldn't have coped half so well with all of this without this thread - it is keeping me sane!

OK all things have come back now and our Sols are happy.

We talking about dates now, just waiting, thinking complete 11th Exchange this friday, just waiting to hear from Sol to see if our sellers are happy with that date we in a chain!

Feeling positive.

soph thats amazing news - so good to hear some good news. Keep us updated!

soph it's lovely to read some positive news! Good luck

I will keep you all posted! Im feeling positive,

We put offer on August 13th so its not been too long to say a chain of 4/5

Thanks all just worrying about the packing now lol!

Soph that's excellent news. Fingers crossed for Friday!

Our movers are here and I have a 3/4 empty house. I can finally get excited. The cats have gone to the cattery for a couple of days. DH and I are both finished work. It's all go. We will have no Internet until the 7th and MN sucks the life out of my mobile data so I will be out of contact for a few days but will check in next week.

I hope there will be lots of positive news

We have updates! Our vendor has said the earliest she can move is the 16th Nov. So 2 weeks tomorrow. eA just ringing around to clear that date with our buyers and the top of the chain, then hopefully we will be able to exchange this week or early next week with a completion date of 16th.