In a Chain Support Thread Nov2017

[YogaDrone]

Congrats to those who have exchanged and are moving soon.

Fingers crossed to those hoping to exchange soon.

Come vent your property chain based frustrations and joys here.

Previous thread is HERE

OMG Yoga I'd be telling them to fuck off and breaking the contract right now!! How dare they!! I can't believe it - after every hoop that you have been jumping through and they haven't even bothered to update the bloody listing

Muss if you can contact the vendor without talking to the estate agent maybe you could try that first? If the vendor is sympathetic they could talk to the EA in favour of keeping it off the market.

Fingers crossed Olivia your buyer will have the cash tomorrow!

Serial I second lazy. Get your ea on their case. Can't believe they've got the nerve to start renegotiating at this point!

Sell I wish everyone thought like you. I think that's so considerate thinking you don't want to mess the sale up plus surely it'll benefit you in the future as you'll have less of a chain to deal with then.

Yoga I think that sounds like a good plan. Your ea sounds rubbish. I'd be really annoyed if there were any viewings with no feedback and you've had 7!!! If you went with the vendors EA that part exchange might be easier to arrange too.

Thanks for the advice Ann, Yoga and Lazy. I've contacted the EA and said we won't pay. I've offered to give the name and the contact details of the people that carried out the work but said I can't do much more. EA has now spoken to her and she won't budge. Her solicitor has said we are being totally unreasonable and so she won't budge now. Our EA is saying if we are saying we won't budge we risk her pulling out. It's so much worse because me and our buyer have been exchanging really friendly messages and she's seemed lovely. And now she's unable to see that we have lost 10k because of her and still she thinks we should pay more. I'm fuming!! Really just want to say she can stuff it but thinking we should just pay the 200 not to lose the buyer. I'm so angry with her though and don't feel guilty about her getting the horrible neighbours now. Why can't people just be nice..

Had a weep this afternoon. After being told yesterday our buyers' buyer would be paying deposit today it turns out his deposit is equity from his Dad's house which the BS haven't released funds for as yet. Supposedly it was requested on Monday and takes 5 full working days, but there's been so much fuckwittery from this part of the chain I'm panicking they've assumed they can access the equity and it isn't guaranteed. I wish our buyers had given us a fuller picture of the status of this individual (they have 2 properties to sell) as we would have insisted on completion of one of them before accepting the offer.

Reading all of your woeful experiences and struggling with ours I do genuinely think there needs to be far more regulation and mandatory timescales in this field. I've texted our buyer saying we're going to struggle if we can't complete on the agreed date - me and DH are police and we're moving rapidly to the season of an excess of idiots getting pissed, fighting and generally making for a bloody busy time. 'boss, I need time off to move' doesn't tend to get a brilliant response.

Would you possibly go halves on the certificates stormy ? Just trying to see the way through the mire. Maybe speak to her direct if things have been OK between you up till now?

Well, we're at the wire for exchange tomorrow. I made a concession I can live with so all good, buyers deposit sent but, wait for it, contracts needed to be posted! How was that ever going to work with tomorrow's deadline??????????
Anyway, I gave barked a few alternative solutions so that the contract would be there for solicitor in the morning and that prompted a bit of action. We shall find out tomorrow!

Fx Serial!

Fx Serial.

Serial how frustrating. Rumour has it that our top of chain people are having contracts posted to them. I am trying and failing not to be pissed off about the fact that in 2017 we are still reliant on bloody Royal Mail because you're looking at a week by the time you've gone through the posting out, getting them signed and witnessed and then posted back... FX that exchange happens for you tomorrow

Stormy oh what a bloody cheek - and their solicitor can fuck off as well. TBH I would grit my teeth, get it booked in and sorted. But I would be asking the EA to make it clear that you are only doing this so that the sale can progress and that you are unhappy given that she's already had a substantial reduction. But if you have to spend a couple of hundred quid to get things done then so be it. I'd be removing every bloody item that's not on the fixtures and fittings list though!

Bunny they can pay a fee and get the funds released sooner. I checked this last week because we had a slightly similar query about notice periods - and basically unless you are using HSBC (who are notoriously slow and 'quick' for them is 4 days!) then you can get funds released in as little as 24 hours, but often the BS will charge a fee of £20-£30. Lean on your solicitor and get them to lean on their solicitor - hard. I'd also get your EA involved and ask them to contact the buyers directly to put a rocket up them.

I just wrote a mega post, didn't quite finish it, had my app restarted darn.

Marking my place and re-writing

Oh Bunny, when I read your post it reminded me of our situation - we were meant to be exchanging/completing end of August until we found out our "cash" buyer had their money tied up in investments and we're STILL waiting for her to get them back - but it should be all sorted tomorrow. I wish we'd walked away sooner, but it sounds like yours will sorted fairly quickly.

Stormy I agree with the others - for the sake of a couple of hundred quid, I would just get the safety check done. It's not worth losing your sale over in the grand scheme of things.

FX for Serial and everyone else, and thanks for all the good wishes too. Hopefully tomorrow will see an end to our hell...

Spent ages writing a post and it just disappeared so haven't got the energy to do it all again.. DH totally refusing to give in. So we're going to tell our buyer tomorrow we're definitely not getting the certificates done and she can take it or leave it. Can't make him change his mind. Feel slightly sick. I hope she's just bluffing.. I know she's packed her whole house in boxes ready to move and has her heart set on our house but then you never know..

Stormy, what's your DH's thinking for saying no? Does he realise it'll only cos you a couple of hundred versus the potential thousands you could lose putting the house back on the market now? With everything slowing down, you might not get even the price now your buyer is willing to pay.

Cost, no cos!

stormy if your buyer needs a mortgage it will be the solicitor being unable to sign off the certificate to the bank saying that everything is hunky dory that is stopping her proceeding not just her being awkward! Just get the boiler serviced and and electrical check done by an electrician who can provide a certificate saying it complies with all current regs. To be fair if your relatives were fully qualified and capable of issuing the correct certificates they could have done so which lends me to think that they don't have the up to date training or insurance that would allow them to issue the certification and consequently there could be something dodgy about the works they have done.

He does realise it. But that's the trouble. If he was bothered about the money he would just pay it. He's just really annoyed about how mean she's being. We've dropped the price, we've gone to her with a list saying would you like us to leave you our (lovely) playhouse, what about bookshelves etc. And she's said yes please to everything. And now asking more money.. it's just the principle and the meanness of it that's making him feel like he doesn't care how much money we lose but he doesn't want to give in. I'm trying to soften the situation and will ring the people who did the work in the first place tomorrow. There's a slight chance they'd be able to provide a certificate as they know it's been done according to regulations and will hopefully have a record of it. I'll leave our buyer to wait over the weekend. If we can't get the certificates we'll offer to pay for the boiler one with it being cheaper but don't think we'll agree on paying for both.

Hi all. still none the effing wiser here

Don't know what the actual reason was for our buyer pulling out - not for sure anyway.

Once we know then we can maybe look at various ways to break the chain IF that was the issue.. or if there's anything else we can do if it was something else.

The person we need to speak to was unavailable literally all day so another night of nail-biting uncertainty.

In the meantime we have gone back on the market and have two viewings lined up. May as well try that too while we think shit through and try to uncover WTF the buyers problem is

Stormy It does sound like she's already getting a great deal out of you, so I can see where your DH is coming from. Fingers crossed you can find a middle ground.

Hope you get to the bottom of why your buyer pulled out Lubey. Chances are it's nothing to do with your house though, and just the buyer having change of heart/circumstances. Good luck with the viewings.

I feel sick with nerves. If our buyer doesn't have the money in her account by the end of today we can't complete on Monday morning and our vendor will walk away. Wish us luck!

Lots of luck Olivia 🤞🏻

On tenterhooks here too. We need to exchange in the next few days to complete by the 10th. Seller’s EA is trying to negotiate a compromise between 9th and 10th. Fuck knows what that would be

Serial, Stormy and Bunny - as usual I agree with everything Lazy says!

Stormy we had a stand off much like yours over a certificate with our buyer last time we moved. She had mucked up the chain for months, forced us to take lower offers all through the chain as she lost her buyer and only got a lower offer second time around and everyone was moving on a certain date because she demanded it, so, like your DH, demanding we pay for some poxy certificate for which they had the electronic confirmation from the central database was the final straw. Eventually the EA paid! This is the same EA we're currently using. It's odd because last time they were so good and that's the main reason we went back to them this time

The details look okay on RM and on the EA's website Lazy. It's just an issue if you click to download a brochure. It seems that the brochure hasn't been updated. Makes me wonder what they are giving out to our viewers

Anyway, my termination email clearly focussed their minds a little and we have a viewing on Saturday lunchtime and they collated some feedback from previous viewings. The feedback is all so positive it's depressing in a way because so many are things like - "it was between X and Y but we went with Y because it's closer to work/on my bus route/closer to the kids school/2 mins walk from my mum's" you know - just coin toss stuff really.

Something else they did yesterday that I rather lost my rag over was that they contacted our ex-purchaser to see if they are still looking! Holy shit - how dare they? What the hell makes them think I would even entertain an offer from them after they pulled out? Apparently they said they are still looking, still really like the house but not the price. FFS, it's been dropped by £50k since they offered on it So 1) they are flaky as fuck 2) appear to have wanted to gazunder us should the chain have progressed and 3) clearly lied about needing a quick purchase as they were about to complete on theirs.

I've been up since 5am pacing and swearing. I realise my reaction is totally OTT but I'm really pissed off with the EA for stirring this up again.

Good luck Lubey and you too Olivia , Lazy and Ann - fingers crossed for positive progress today.

And Giz - moving day - Awesome! Hope all goes smoothly

Good luck for today Giz!!!

Stormy I absolutely get where your DH is coming from. It's not about the money - it's about the principle. And it really does stick in the throat to have to roll over again and again. But Red is right - this isn't personal; her solicitor will simply be working to a checklist that the lender needs. Her solicitor won't back down because she can't - from a professional negligence point of view, she'd leave herself wide open if she did. I suspect the way she sees it is that this is simply part and parcel of your responsibility when selling the property.

I'd honestly just get it done and tell your DH that for the sake of a couple of hundred quid - and a job that will take a couple of hours to get both wiring and boiler certified - it's not worth this amount of headspace. Try and treat it as one of those frustrating but necessary things you have to do when selling!!

Yoga FX for the viewing and is it worth letting the EA know that hell would have to freeze over before you'd sell to twat-face again?!

Morning all! I am standing sitting by my phone.

FX Olivia

Stormy: Hope you can find a resolution. It is galling to give more when you have given so much but a year down the line you won't care about £200. I hated having to cough up again but I have already shelled out so much trying to get this done and spent a year of my life in house-selling hell - I don't want to start again for a third time and another £1k on surveys and searches and showing people round. I would pay the £200 and dump all the things you were going to leave your buyer. Bet all that comes to more than £200. But then I am not feeling particularly mature at the moment!

Lubey I feel your pain. FX you can find out what happened to either fix the chain or avoid a repeat.

Ann FX

I am waiting for all the expletives to leave my system before I ring the EA Lazy I don't want to shock them, they think I'm respectable

Hope that phone rings soon Serial!

Morning all! Can I ask for some positive exchange vibes from everyone today?!
Everything is in place on our sale and purchase, apparently the only thing we're waiting for is the go ahead from Mr Vendor's vendors. Who are the people who neeeeed all this to happen so quickly because they're off on a 6 week jolly after next week. And when they get back Mr Vendors mortgage offer will have expired and he'll have to re-apply. So why they're fucking about I'm not entirely sure

Serial FX for you today too!!

Stormy - I think you've been more than fair, there comes a point when you need to put your foot down, and given the massive reduction plus freebies, it does feel like your buyer is pushing their luck. I hope it works out! We asked our vendors to provide Certs or a service in exactly this situation (trade friends had installed so no building regs cert and no recent service) but I was more than prepared to pay for them myself if necessary (they sorted it without me having to in the end though).

Lubey Yet another example of the system being broken - how can there be no one to communicate the issue to you?! Why are there no notes! I hope it's something that can be resolved and they haven't permanently taken their bat and ball home...

Lazy Don't lose heart, you're very very nearly there Just Royal Mail in the way now!!

Bunny How bloody frustrating I hope your solicitors/EA can find out more and the money can be moved in time. We had to provide proof of liquid funds for our non-mortgage/sale bit weeks ago, so I don't get how your guys are only releasing these funds now!*

Yoga* That is some serious negligence by your agents there It's weeks since you dropped your price, who the hell is responsible for updating their site? Idiots. Thank god once again for your understanding vendor!

Sell it's great that you're able to be flexible and go in to rented, it will remove some stress for you and you can find a home at leisure!

Ann I hope your EA kicked some arse for you yesterday! Sympathy on the unexpected cleaning!!

Hope I've not missed anyone...

Ffs bold fail! I'm using the app too, not sure how I did that?

So removals company are here and I am a bit of a spare part..nothing yet from solicitor but guess that will be mid morning