Would anyone like an 'in a chain' support group? (3)

[Spickle]

Assuming all you lovely people in a chain still need a support group? Here it is......

Our contracts are arriving tonight and being dropped back at solicitors tomorrow. Mortgage valuer guy (for our buyer) said there won't be any problems on his side. After their valuation today.

Does anyone know how long it takes from the valuation to being ready to go? We're meant to be completing on 3rd July but I'm worried it won't happen. Relocating with two kids so if it doesn't work it'll be bedlam.

Our purchase is now ready to exchange, so we're just waiting on our buyer's mortgage and a couple of enquiries at the bottom.of the chain. Plus a FTB whose solicitor is going painfully slow.

This house buying/selling is so frustrating! It feels like we are the only ones in our chain that actually want to move.

We had an offer accepted on the property we are purchasing at the beginning of April. We accepted an offer on ours mid-May so the chain was complete. It seems both our sellers and buyers don't want to move until end of August! Seller is delaying sending us a contract, buyer isn't acknowledging the contract we've sent to them and won't start the conveyancing process at all!!

Is this normal? I thought most people wanted to get cracking and our solicitor told us it would be 6-8 weeks all things being well. I almost feel unreasonable for expecting things to be moving faster than this!

Feels like we're the only ones pushing ours too despite vendor wanting to exchange by 7 July!

Our valuation took 2 days to come through and mortgage offer confirmed the following day.

Probably not what you want to hear jenniferaerie but our valuations were done late April. And still not exchanged. I'm really surprised you have a completion date already. Has this been agreed with the solicitors? Ours won't even start talking completion dates until we are ready to exchange

We have a suggested completion date on the table of 1 August but exchange seems a distant hope right now. Maybe it'll all come together. It's a short chain with only 2 houses. I can only hope and chase weekly.

Just wanted to wish you all well with your house buying/selling journeys.

We completed on Friday 16th and our new build home is just fabulous - it's by a local builder and we love everything about it.

The process from offer to completion took 12 weeks with a chain of 5 (we were number 4). We had to do a significant amount of chasing ourselves, but our estate agents were bloody brilliant. Their sales progression efforts really kept things together with 3 of the 5 solicitors being absolutely useless.

We put our property on the market in Norfolk during the first week of January and had no viewings whatsoever until we switched agents at the beginning of March. We then had one viewing and went under offer within a week.

The market here is stagnant - almost all of the properties that went on to the market at the same time as us are still for sale. We were extremely fortunate that things worked out.

Best of luck to you all.

Well done thegoodwife great news. Enjoy your new home.

Woop. Email this morning from solicitor. Our selling side has now been passed to the completion team.

Fingers crossed everything comes together for everyone on here. The housing market seems to be so stagnant lately. We are in a chain of three, should have been so straight forward but was all off at one point. We were probably going to stay where we are if it fell through because there is just so little about.

I do envy the Scots and their house buying ways. Ours seem to cause so many problems. Our sellers are buying a newbuild which got delayed by a month and then our buyer pulled out only agreeing to stay in if we dropped 5k from the asking price..! Not affordable, we couldn't move if we did that as all the sums have been done with current figures. In the end the developer came back and said they can build it a bit faster so it's only a week late(!). Our buyer was on a proper power trip and we certainly won't be bending over backwards to be helpful to her now, she has the cheek to be having her post sent here already too and we don't move for another three weeks..!

We really thought ours was off but it did come back together. Hopefully the same will be true for everyone else, moving house is so stressful. Someone at work told me they love moving house, I think they're crackers...

Oh wow, your buyer was really taking the pi** how cheeky! A house is worth what's it's worth so no you don't get discounts for delays!

We're in that horrible stage of not hearing anything. I've emailed our solicitor to see if they've received what they're waiting for and I will call Friday if she doesn't reply (she seems better on phone than email). This waiting on others to do the easy bits is excruciating. I wish we had an online update system so everyone in the chain could see what's missing/holding it up!

I contacted the solicitors today and our buyers havent responded to the contracts going out on the 13th - trying not to see this as a bad sign but i'm full of doom atm

Silence is very frustrating! On our first purchase our seller vanished for over a week when we were ready to exchange. He was just 'busy' apparently but even his solicitor hadn't managed to get hold of him.

With our current one, both solicitors at the top and bottom of the chain were doing radio silence when we were ready to exchange. A relative does our conveyancing and so we know exactly what gets sent and when, but both sides sat their trying to blame our solicitor. I don't understand why people can't just act like adults and talk openly about it all. Really silly!

Some good news for us, no longer a chain of four, me seller has found an empty property so there is now no chain

SunshineAndSandyBeaches that's great news the shorter the better!!

Things are progressing, slowly but steadily. Our mortgage application has been submitted today and we also had a survey carried out on the new house, from speaking to the surveyor I don't think there are any issues. Our current house is being surveyed tomorrow, fingers crossed everything is ok! My replacement FENSA certificate for the windows has arrived and the receipt for the ground rent payment so they need to be sent across to the solicitors. Just waiting on the boiler one now.

I don't think our buyers/sellers (house swap) are so far progressed but they have time to catch up as they don't have a mortgage application to slow them down. Would love to move over the summer hols so fingers crossed.

m0therofdragons - spoke to soon about our lovely conveyancing...!

We're 3 weeks into what is supposed to be a 6-week exchange (which our vendors need for their newbuild). Our homebuyer's survey finally arrived today and is pretty good - couple of smallish items which we asked the vendors to fix, their solicitor came back with resounding 'F off" and that's fine, they're not huge items and we'll deal with them when we move in but we had to ask!

But, there is a woodburning stove which our surveyor said we must get the HETAS certficiate for, and that we must get the flue swept. This request went to their solicitor and he sent a stonker of a response (you could almost feel the spittle flying off the screen ) saying there is no HETAS certificate and that the stove has been there so long (bear in mind the house itself is only 8 years old) that any certificate would be meaningless anyway. Also says the sellers refuse to get the flue swept as it was done x years ago and isn't due until October this year (we're completing - at their request - in November).

For me this is a safety issue - just as we've asked for a gas safety inspection certificate, we want to know the stove and flue are safe. Am I being unreasonable to ask the vendor to help confirm its safety? And to ask them to sort out the flue when - by their own admission - it will be due to be cleaned before completion? I guess worst case scenario is we buy the house, move in, get a specialist around and he tells us the fire has to be pulled out and reinstalled or some such. But there's a part of me thinking 'why should I have to do that?'

I guess I'm not really clear how concerned I should be about the safety.

We also asked for an electrical inspection and said we would pay; their solicitor has stomped back and said 'fine but you organise it yourselves - and btw the vendor went on holiday yesterday for 2 weeks'.

Um........ so unclear how anything we've asked about can possibly be done before their own deadline. Well, it clearly can't be done as we can't even get access to the house. Which is why he's trying to shut us up and make us go away. Which is infuriating as the only people to have made any concessions whatsoever in this purchase, is us...

Happy to be told I'm over-reacting here (hard to keep things in perspective when they get emotional). How much of a fuss should we be making?

Oh FFS! The bloody solicitor still won't drop the contaminated land issue (despite me finding the geology report declaring the decontamination means it's ok) or the boundary line and path being drawn in the same place. The vendors even went and took photos of the fucking path running alongside the property not through it!!
And still no clue on when new buyer's buyer will be ready as no one seems to want to answer me! Our mortgage offer expires in less than 3 weeks!!! grrrr.
Should not have taken nearly 4 months to still not have the paperwork done!!!!
Rant over.

Oh no Xandersmum

I've had a plumber come and service/check our boiler this week. It cost £60. TBH we hadn't been asked for it but it's 14 years old so I just assumed they'd ask. I wouldn't really want to get electrics checked as there's no reason to. I'd think an 8 year old house wouldn't really need that but the wood burner definitely isn't unreasonable. I'd be pointing out that you're delaying completion to suit them and this is a very small request!
Our exchange is supposed to be 7 July moving early August but it's all so quiet I'm not convinced.

Oh and our vendor has removed all wired in fire alarms. Just why?

Solicitor has confirmed that at almost 3 weeks in she's still had no correspondence at all from vendor's solicitor. Vendor is the one asking for a 28 day exchange due to new build plot reservation yet nothing is coming. This isn't right is it?
I'm planning on calling the EA to find out what's going on and suggest we start looking at other properties unless he can convince me vendor is committed and give time lines as to when my solicitor will hear something.

How frustrating m0therofdragons. We've been struggling to get our vendor's solicitor to send us anything and this was after they accepted our offer on the basis of us moving quickly!! In the end they sent us a contract without property info form or inventory, so that's not a lot of use to anyone! I hope the EA can get to the bottom of it all!

We seem to have got to the bottom of our delays... turns out the end of the chain isn't the end of the chain at all, and I think the EA knew this but has been keeping quiet and getting everyone to drag their heels so the family at the end can make some progress in finding a property. It sounds like there's only one extra property though... until we find out they aren't really the end of the chain either, which would be just our luck. There's 5 in our chain now and it started out as just being 3!

Why do they lie so much?
Estate agent clearly rattled. I said either the solicitor was incompetent, vendor was delay or vendor was getting cold feet and I need to know which it is and whether we need to look at properties again. Made it clear we want this house and are committed but need answers. Ea thanked me for letting him know and giving him the chance to sort. He knows vendor has done the forms as he was their witness 2 weeks ago so looks like a crappy solicitor. He's already chased and spoken to the solicitor and apparently contract pack is going out today - what a coincidence! We will see.

Mortgage broker has just rung and said our application has been passed for full assessment, she seemed to think it was great and things are progressing quickly.

xandersmom2 your solicitor should be pressing for this information on your behalf but ultimately it all comes down to price. We are buying a heavily discounted property that is tired and dated so need quite a bit of work, I very much doubt we will get a electrical inspection cert but at some point we will be extending so we will sort the electrics properly ourselves. I think our offer takes into account the works that will need to be done therefore i'm a bit more relaxed.

If I was buying something 'done' i.e. well maintained, immaculate, extended, decorated like something out of beautiful homes then I would expect all the relevant certs to be in place as the amount I'm paying for the property would reflect the work done and I would want to ensure that there were no hidden extras to pay for when we moved in.

Only you can decide to push for the paperwork, knock money off or walk away. In regards to the wood burner I assume the cert is to prove it complies with building regs as its been fitted by a registered installer (bit like a FENSA certificate) another option for this might be an indemnity policy.

I'm sorry everyone is having such a hard time. We've had a completion date for everyone to work to from the beginning as ours is a relocation and dh obvs had to put in his notice at work etc. We've just been told the 3rd is looking unlikely. We had a contingency plan available that we could have actioned to borrow from in laws that was possible until Friday just gone. On Friday we were assured that the 3rd was still fine. I need gin. I don't want to live with family in between and drive 3 hours a day to take dd to school

I should add ^ this isn't due to mortgage offer as I think that's not sorted but down to a shared ownership property further down the chain.

Has anyone contacted their buyers solicitors for an update as to where they are at ? I've got on to my solicitors to chase them up as draft contracts were sent 13th and they've had nothing back, would it be rude of me to plead ignorance slightly and call them myself directly.