So many queries from buyer's solicitor. Is this normal?

[MrMenAndLittleMiss]

We are selling our standard build, 1980s three bed detached house. It is extremely well maintained (new kitchen, bathrooms, boiler, windows, carpets etc all less than five years old) Everything professionally installed, no diy jobs.
We accepted an offer within two weeks of going to market. All well and good.
Three months on and our buyers/buyer's solicitor are still raising questions. Everything that has been raised (whether important or not) has been dealt with very quickly and at our expense. But tbh, it's starting to get an my nerves as it's just been one thing after another.
They are now asking for the 'faulty' boiler to be repaired. (faulty boiler is a five year old, regularly serviced, top notch Worcester Bosch). The 'fault' is that one small element of its electrics is not up to current regs. The certificate says no action required. Similarly we have been asked for a guarantee for the cavity wall insulation. We didn't even install this, so it is over ten years old. The list goes on....
We are a small chain and our house is (imo ) the best maintened of them all so I really didn't expect to be the ones holding everything up.
This is the first house I have sold (and last, ha!) so maybe this is normal?

My MiL's buyer's solicitor (we were dealing with lots of the admin as she was ill at the time) sent questions like 'when was the hall decorated' which is clearly OTT. I would send a response on the boiler that 'last service indicated that no action was required' and send a copy of the certificate (again!) if you can. Cavity wall insulation - if you didn't get it done you would probably not have a certificate - send the appropriate response which indicates that the house does have it but there is no certificate available.

The thing with queries is that you don't have to have an answer for everything or provide everyone requested. The buyer then had to make a judgment. Was the boiler to regs when installed? If so, that's your answer and leave it at that. Buyers, especially inexperienced ones, don't always understand that not to current regs doesn't equal unsafe or about to fail. On the cavity wall insulation - that is usually guaranteed for 25 years so you should have the certificate or be able to obtain a copy as I'm pretty sure there's a central register.

Oh I didn't realise that re cavity. Thanks Wow. Will have a look.

Our last buyers solicitor was not this bad but asked a few questions and stalled on a couple of things. We said they had until noon the next day to proceed or else we were going back on the market. Everything was fine after that.

That's where I'm heading to too PiffPaff. Dh is a little more chilled about it.

Oh yes op I feel your pain on this but the other way round. I'm buying a house and 17 enquiries raised. The solicitor/ seller just keep dodging answers so it's been back and forth since mid may. As of this morning there are still 3 points they STILL haven't answered e.g.

Does the property has a water meter? This was left blank on the property info form, my solicitor ask them to answer they say the buyer should rely on her own survey...HAS IT GOT A METER OR NOT?!!! Simple question so wtf not answer it!!

One covenant is illegible (it is ive seen it). Sellers solicitor insists they can read it mine say well if you can send us ayour dictation of it. They answer no we can read it so you sort it out.

Building regs for new boiler has been requested on 3 occasions. Sellers solicitor just keeps sending a copy of the guarantee then gets arsey as mine keep asking for a necessary document. Ffs if you don't have it you offer to buy the indemnity

There's loads more I won't bore you with & So we go on and on and on. I cannot believe what shambles the system is. It's flipping crazy!!!!

Time to play hardball.

No to 'fixing' the boiler, the inspection report said no action.
Cavity wall guarantee not available.

We exchange by [x] or we go back to market (you idiots).

Our buyer raised 31 points and has just come back with a few more.

When I sold a house some years ago, just a standard new-build 3 bed semi, with the usual small garden, I was asked how long it took to mow the lawn Well that depended on whether it was me with my dodgy knees and back or my fell-runner DP that was doing the mowing . Sorry, I know that's not helpful.

There does come a point where enough's enough and you then tell them they must exchange by a specific date or you put the house back on the market. Tell all the others in the chain too of your intention so they can also put pressure on your buyers.

Nervous first-time or first-time-investor buyers are The Worst. We had to get completely unnecessary indemnity insurance for our loft conversion that was built fully legally under permitted development, because the buyers wanted us to have a certificate from the council that it didn't need planning permission!!! PD is based on a set of verifiable measurements, for heaven's sake. They didn't accept either our building regs or their surveyor's report that it was all right and proper as satisfactory.

That was just the icing on the cake. They were so thick.

Our vendors are saying they haven't done any work (hence don't have any building regs or guarantees for anything) while the house ad and the EA are selling it as newly refurbished! No building control sign off /completion certs for anything (including rooms knocked together, new bathroom and kitchen and chimney breasts removed), and survey simply points this out and says should get further surveys. WWYD?

messerish your solicitor will compare the sales particulars received from the EA with the answers given in the forms by the vendor and will realise that there is disparity between the two. Also the local authority search should show any planning applications or building regulations, so your solicitor will most certainly raise enquiries on all of the information they have been provided with. You could also query it yourself to your solicitor as a kind of heads up. This is why solicitors do wait until most of the documentation is in before they raise enquiries because they need to have the full picture.

Thanks Spickle - very helpful points you make. Unfortunately our solicitor didn't pick this up at all (I'll check that she's actually seen the particulars) and because none of the work was declared, there's nothing on the searches about it. The vendors have been asked to redo the property information form, as the first one was nonsense.

messerish sometimes EAs don't send the particulars to the solicitor which is not helpful, particularly as solicitors don't visit the property. However, a good solicitor would always look up the property on rightmove if they are doing their job properly.

I had a ridiculous exchange when first time buyers bought my Victorian maisonette as they wanted all sorts of information about the floorboards - how installed, type of wood etc. As far as anyone knew, they were the original floorboards so there was no paperwork at all relating to them. I had answered their other questions to the nth degree, taken out various bits of probably unnecessary indemnity insurance and just told them that I knew nothing beyond what I had originally told them in respect of the floorboards. They did buy it in the end.

BrandNewHouse, I'm getting inclined to agree with you. Is there anything in particular that makes you say this?

Taking out chimney breasts and combining rooms could well require building regs and appropriate RSJs - if they've not done it properly you could be in for problems in the future.

mistlethrush, yes - i agree. Particular trouble with this one is that that work might have been done historically ie twenty years ago. With the vendors not being transparent on the work that they've done we don't know whether they bought it that way or not.