Would anyone like an 'in a chain' support group? (2)

[AnnaELC]

Seems we reached 1000 messages so I've started a new one!

Are you by any chance buying a flat on a road named after a saint?

CampervanLady I'm a conveyancing assistant. Sometimes buyers are hesitant to pay lots of money at the beginning of negotiations in case the valuation and/or survey result means they decide not to proceed. Searches cost around £177 for the compulsory ones.

Regarding the enquiries, how long ago did you send the Property Information Form and Fixtures & Contents forms back to your solicitors? Your solicitor needs these forms, plus up to date official title deeds from Land Registry and any other documents (Lease, Fensa, GasSafe Certificates, EPC etc) in order to send a "draft contract pack" to the buyer's solicitors. Once the buyer's solicitor receive this pack, they can start the process by ordering searches and raising enquiries. Most solicitors will not order searches until receipt of the draft contract pack.

Hi Spickle, thanks so much for your reply. Very much appreciated! This is our 4th attempt at selling so our solicitor is ready to go & has had all the paperwork ready for a while. We refreshed our fixtures & fitting forms a few weeks ago. She has definitely sent a draft contract pack. She confirmed this.

I reckon the buyers and their solicitors are just waiting for the bank to officially approve the (very tiny) mortgage before bothering with anything else which is fair enough!

Hopefully she'll received her mortgage offer early next week.

Searches here take 2 weeks. We're in no rush though. Just overly excited & I'm sure it'll get stressful in the next few weeks.

4th time Camper van lady! OMG, what happened???

oce

I know it's been a nightmare.

1st buyers : lied about not being in a chain, not requiring a mortgage & then tried to gazunder us significantly just before exchange of contracts.
2nd buyers : put in an offer then decided the house was too big
3rd buyers : not mortgageable.
4th buyer - in progress! Touch wood

Oh crikey, I am onto my 3rd lot and I thought that was bad!
1st buyers: lost their buyers, did not tell us for another month (at point of exchange)
2nd buyers: seemed fine until point of exchange, then gazundered by 15k and then pulled out anyway citing Brexit, Trump and marital problems.

Excellent.... 3rd time lucky?

If there are any EAs out there - is there anything that people like me and Campervanlady_can do differently to give our chains a better chance of success this time? It is hard just to wait on Lady Luck (again)

Not an EA, but a long time property junkie. I think the best thing you can do is to really research your buyers, their chain/situation etc and how well prepared they are.

Maybe you could consider a deposit to show they are serious buyers, but I think these are often frowned upon sometimes so you would need to check with your EA.

Unfortunately it does just sound like you have been very unlucky, what does your EA say?

They are known as pre contract deposits, there was an article about them in the Guardian last week -

www.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/04/estate-agents-ask-homebuyers-pay-up-pre-contract-deposit

"Until recently the code, which covers 95% of sales agents, told firms unequivocally that “you should not take pre-contract deposits” (though sales of newly built homes were exempt). But Guardian Money can reveal that late last year, in a little-noticed move, the ombudsman changed the wording of the code to allow agents to take them, provided conditions were met."

Of course a would be buyer might not agree, but it would show that they were a serious buyer.

Good question oce our solicitor said we were amongst the unluckiest sellers she's had!

I've been reading about those deposit thingies. I can totally see why they are frowned upon but I can also see why they could be a good thing. It's tricky. In other countries people pay a deposit to show they are serious & it's not an issue. But then in (some) other countries the conveyancing is much quicker.

I think also, you can tell a lot by how fast people organise searches/surveys etc and their communication with you/the EA.

We are currently buying (daren't even breathe as I am so scared it will all fall apart, so can't bear to post on this thread at the moment!) We have done things in a particular order this time, which could have looked to an outsider that we were delaying or not serious. However, to mitigate that we've been providing regular updates to the vendors directly and to the EA so that they know we are serious and committed.

I think I will ask for weekly updates from our EA about the state of the whole chain. They maintain they "didn't have a clue" that there were any problems the previous two times

I am in Scotland now where you don't normally bid until the money is in the bank and a bid is seen as morally binding - it is very, very rare for anyone to back out. It seems a much better system, but if course I can't offer on a thing until my English sale goes through, which is frustrating.

I did consider a deposit user but they are still so unusual that I concluded the buyers might think we are trying to rip them off/paranoid/hiding something about the property. So I left it. But it really is torture, waiting to hear if the chain will hold this time. And there will be weeks and weeks of waiting. I am not sure what else I can do other that keep tabs on where everything is up to and raise concern if things aren't moving along promptly...

Fingers crossed for progress today I'm strangely calm....

oce - We're buying a house on a road named after a city, although I feel like I need the patient of a saint! the sellers were very pissy about our needing a month's notice, really put pressure as they wanted to be done by the end of Feb, we rallied quickly got everything done early feb and it turned out they need more time, so end of March it is, if we don't exchange before the end of the month we'll have to go for end of April which is when our mortgage offer expires. I'm refreshing my email like a mad person.

I hope everyone gets some positive updates this week!

Oce - keep nagging the estate agents for updates, they need to keep everyone in the loop, waiting is just the worst!

Hi All

It seems like things are on a go slow for everyone doesn't it?!
Not much happened here, still no survey done on our house for our buyer, found out the EA had lied to the Sales Agent on our new build development and said the survey was booked! - if it is they haven't bothered to tell us or check it's convenient!.
Buyers solicitor finally got back to ours, said searches due back on the 22nd and they will raise any enquiries then.
Also our buyers only saw their IFA on Friday, nearly 4 weeks passed and they've only just applied for their mortgage..... what have they been doing?
So slow.....

I keep hoping things will speed up soon, good luck to you all.

It is the waiting that is hardest to deal with, I find. Waiting for a mortgage offer, waiting for searches, waiting for surveys etc. Occasionally there seems to be a bit of post and a bit of a flurry of activity and then it goes quiet again! I don't want to wish time away but I wish it didn't take so long!

No updates today :( we are waiting for the buyers mortgage offer to come in.

Then her solicitor will probably start doing the legal stuff.

I feel sick because of our previous bad experience.

I feel for you CamperVanLady, until we have all exchanged I have that awful feeling of someone crashing the chain. We've forked out nearly 4K so far, a lot of money to lose if it all goes *s up!

I've got everything crossed for you campervan We have exchanged today. Phone call just before 5 from the solicitor to confirm. It's taken 3 months to do and there was only us in the chain as vendor selling us a now empty property. Won't complete for another 4 weeks as giving notice on rental but thank goodness we are all tied in now. Hopefully good news for others this week will follow.

It's quite un-nerving reading some of the experiences on here. I asked my solicitor for an update today. The legal packs have been sent off to buyer and onward purchase so hopefully searches come next. The only blot on my horizon was the valuation highlighting what the surveyor thought was historic movement. I've instructed a surveyor to do a full building survey to make sure. It's my dream home (needs modernising) so I will be gutted if the movement is deemed ongoing. I have budgeted for rewiring and dampcoursing but not a lot left in the pot for much else (if we want to eat that is)

Congratulations to Arsenic! That must be a great feeling. Thanks to all of those who sympathised about The Wait. We are waiting this week for a. The results of the survey on our buyers' house (really hope their buyers don't try and renegotiate) and b. To hear if our buyers did what they promised and applied for a mortgage straight away. And yes, me too Camper, that horrid sick feeling the whole time. In theory, everyone has agreed to complete by the end of March but ...what if??? I don't think I could face all of this a 4th time!

arsenic amazing news!!! Really chuffed for you.

I can't wait until I'm the one saying that! Haha

Let's see what progress tomorrow brings

Arsenic Congratulations! That's fantastic news!