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

Still no word from anyone. Now feeling like something very fishy is going on. Shit hits the fan tomorrow

@therealreason we've managed to persuade everyone it's not a flying freehold, our solicitor has settled on encroachment. Apparently the vendors will need to correct the title plans by way of a transfer of part before we can proceed. Sadly we will probably need to break the chain and go into short term rental as I can't see it being sorted in the time we have available.

Lazy I hope your situation improves very soon

Sorry I joined the thread then disappeared! I managed to sort out the survey of my flat in the end (after being insistent that their surveyors only worked between 9 and 2 they called a week later saying one could come at 4pm. He's been this evening so that is done and dusted. My mortgage got agreed subject to survey on Friday 😁 I called the EA this morning and they said they have booked the mortgage survey for tomorrow so I have now booked my full building survey, hopefully he'll be able to get in this week as well.

I will be so relieved to get the building survey done, I know there is a lot of work to be done but I just have fingers crossed that there is nothing major that I haven't considered. I'm not sure I have the strength to give up on a house I have been dreaming about for 3.5 months if it turns out to be a bad idea 😢

Zoe se really are in similar situations.. three and a half months since offers accepted and we're chain free both ends too. In fact our sellers have already moved out and buyers rental contract ended a week ago.. really hoping you won't have to pull out though!!

Fx for some movement for Mollieben, Artus, frescoed, pixie

Egremont that reply was like the ultimate p*take. :/

MrsJW I've been trying to hold off planning decorating too but failing big time. I'm constantly on Pinterest. Have stopped dreaming of lovely Christmas decorations now though in case we won't be there for Christmas.

Raaraa frustrating!! They sound pretty rubbish. As do lazys. Holiday without letting you know. Whaaaaattttt?!?!

Honey that sounds amazing.. keep it moving at that speed!!

Tentative we're with NatWest. I thought the whole title problem was going to be a total nightmare but it doesn't look quite as complicated at the moment..

We've got some slight progress!!! Vendors have drawn a new map for the title with their solicitor and neighbours. We've accepted it today and they are now just getting them all to sign it and then sending it to the land registry. Apparently with expedition it should be ready within a couple of days and then we'd be ready to exchange.. I believe it when I see it but it all seems more positive than I thought.

And hugs to lazy. I've had to take a couple of quick breaks from here too when I've felt like coming here has just reminded me how we're not going anywhere and just couldn't take it anymore. We'll all get there eventually. But it is pretty shit in the meantime.

Stormy how long has the title stuff taken? Our solicitor doesn't think it's likely we can get it sorted in time to keep the chain together, but I would love it if we could.

Thanks the real reason. That does make sense. I’ll definitely mention it in my feedback when all of this is done.

tentative the title stuff has been ongoing for a while. But only because we didn't do it the right way straight away. We sent my FIL around to the house to draw a map of the land (he's an ex land surveyor). The solicitor then sent the corrections to the land registry. They admitted to having made a mistake and made a correction where part of the house and about a foot inside the fencing line looked to belong to the neighbours. There was an area around the entrance gate where neighbour seemed to own an area inside the fencing and then our property seemed to continue onto the neighbours field. The land registry claimed that bit was correct and refused to correct it. This information came from the land registry some time last week I think. I managed to dig the information out of my solicitor on Friday and she'd then communicated to the sellers who arranged to meet with their solicitor and the neighbours the next day to draw the final map. That was sent to us yesterday then back to the sellers solicitor who has now got the transfer of title written up and he's chasing everyone's signatures which should hopefully only take a day or two. Then it'll be sent to the land registry and expedited. The solicitor said a couple of days or so - I'm trying to be realistic so thinking probably a week. So thinking if all goes really really well and the sellers solicitor is totally on the ball we could be exchanging in two weeks time. Trying not to get my hopes up though. So in total it's been about six weeks since we first flagged up the issue with borders. Your solicitor needs to have a good plan of action and get on with it swiftly!

almost want to cry yesterday, but I think we have to pull out now. Our seller came clean yesterday, after we threaten him that either we receive information from the freeholder by COB today, or the offer is off the table. The seller came back said that he's only aware of this yesterday (I don't trust a bit), saying that the freeholder said the seller has an outstanding balance of £3K to pay, hence he won't sign or do anything until this amount is paid. We even thought about rent it out short term until this is sorted. Our solicitor is fully against it now, and said in this case, she will have to report to our lender (she's also acting as lender's solicitor), and she believes it will affect the value price of the property, and not sure if this is lendable. So I think our solution is to look for something to buy ASAP, continue our lease (hopefully still ok), or find somewhere to rent.
I'm going to call our Buyer Insurance Qdos to see if we will be covered in this case, and what is required? Has anyone had similar experience?

That’s good news Usually, fingers crossed the survey holds no surprises and the mortgage company sign it off.
So you could still exchange this week Stormy, excellent. Fingers crossed for you!
That’s horrible Zoe why on earth did the seller not think that his arrears wouldn’t come to light? Did s/he think that they would clear the arrears from the sale of the property?

I hope you can find another property quickly

My news is tedious compared to everyone elses: we’ve had the memorandum of sale for both our sale and our purchase and our purchaser's mortgage valuation will, hopefully, happen within the next week. All three parties in our chain want to move quickly. We've already got our mortgage, survey and searches done. I am aiming for Christmas, but realise that’s probably unachievable.

Steady progress is steady progress Yoga, here's hoping the rest of the conveyancing will be equally boring! Who knows, you might make it before Christmas! You too Usually, another hurdle done! So sorry to hear about your news Zoe that's completely rubbish. If the seller pays up, would that solve the problem? Given that this will come up whenever he tries to sell, perhaps he'll find a way to meet the payment. for you Lazy. Fx for white smoke today Raa.

Glad to hear you've found a way through Stormy fx exchange is coming your way really soon! I hope you can get yours over the finishing line too Tentative. We're still waiting for our vendors to come back on the unregistered land at the end of the garden (I've had verbal chapter and verse, but their sols seem rather slow) and therefore to find out if this is going to turn into a long process or not...

A possible way through the building control stuff emerged yesterday, so we've communicated that to our buyers and we're just waiting now to see if that's okay. I think they'll need to check with solicitors, and perhaps with the lender, so I'm trying not to assume we'll hear today, and still crossing my fingers it'll all be acceptable. Ho hum, all the stress makes me never want to move again.

Finally got the memorandum of sale from our buyer and our solicitor said that they've opened files and are getting moving. The purchaser didn't come over yesterday (we asked them not to) and still waiting to hear if they want to come today/the rest of the week. Yoga hopefully you are right and it's just a standard request to look again at what we've bought! I'm still nervous about paying the product fee for our mortgage until I know what's going on.

Our vendor is superkeen, however, and we've already had a request to discuss what fixtures and fittings we want left.
Stormy I am endlessly on pinterest! I am trying to resist though. I know we wont be in by Christmas, but lots of other things to mentally decorate.

Lazy hope you are ok.

Usually that sounds like good progress.

Zoe that sounds rubbish. No chance that the vendor could pay up and get things going again?

Fingers crossed for you Frescoed!

My fingers are crossed for an utterly boring and uneventful conveyancing process Frescoed

My EA has just rung me and said that our purchasers have asked for a second viewing to "do some measuring up". Sounds positive. I'm sure your purchasers are just doing the same MrsJW but I don't blame you wanting to wait before you pay the fee.

Apologies for going AWOL on you all! Still have a broken chain at our end. We’ve had several viewings but have had people putting in extremely low offers (apparently people are known to do this if/when a property comes back on the market) which we just can’t accept. I also finally found the courage last week to inform our vendor’s horrible EA about our situation and then went to see our vendor to talk to her in person too. She’s been nothing short of lovely but is keen to move on and has said she’d give us until this weekend before she relists her property which is totally understandable. I’m absolutely gutted as we have no viable options left and cannot move without our property selling. I’m at that stage now where I’m telling myself it wasn’t meant to be and that we should be grateful for what we have (a spacious flat in a good part of town with good schools) and make the most of it. It kills me though to acknowledge that we’ve lost out on so much money- conveyancing costs, building Survey, etc. More than that though is the mental energy we’ve invested in the whole process which has come to nothing.

Fx for the rest of you to have a smooth sale/purchase process and exchange and complete ASAP.

I understand muss. This was exactly the position we were in after our buyer pulled out. It is absolutely horrible. I was doing exactly as you are - trying to think about how lucky we were already and that even if we didn't sell it wasn't the end of the world etc..

Even if your vendor does re-list her house there is nothing to say that you can't offer on it again when (not if) you get an offer.

We ended up taking a much lower offer this time, but this has been mitigated by our Lovely Vendor (TM) also reducing the asking price by a similar amount.

My fingers are firmly crossed for you

Do you have more viewings booked in?

Rather typically our shiny new purchaser has chosen today (when I'm in the office and the house is in a state post weekend birthday party) to do a second viewing - argh!

Hope all going well for everyone...
Things are moving along now. Just got our contract pack at last for the house we are buying. All good except for the sellers want us to buy the fitted oven and microwave for £1000. Um, no thanks - you can take it! It never occurred to me to charge our buyers for our fitted oven.... All going back signed (except for the condition!) tomorrow.

I posted off our transfer and contract today. Not had a date for their survey yet, however our buyer knocked on my door this afternoon to give me her number and to let me know that everything is progressing with the sale of her property. But she also wanted to let us know that should the worst happen and her sale falls through, she is in a position to proceed with the purchase of ours regardless. Trying not to get too excited.

Finally after threatening letter from our sol, the vendors sol has responded. Apparently they are waiting for some outstanding queries and confirmation re a valuation issue. Neither of which the estate agent mentioned when we had an update from him today. Apparently exchange not possible this week despite the agent saying exactly that about an hour ago...

Misinformation and inaction continues

So sorry for not updating before. We moved house on Friday 😬

Everything went really smoothly, removal men finished loading at 11am, giving us time to finish the cleaning before we completed just before midday. We were in the new house by 1pm and I was able to WALK to collect DS from school for the first time ever. Was lovely.

Knackered now though after a busy weekend

It’s such a relief to be out the other side. I hope you all are very soon. Thank you all for letting me share the fun for a few months!

So please for you Anne. We're week 2 in our new house and the year of conveyancing torture seems like it was ages ago. Most boxes are unpacked (I didn't want to lose momentum) and the major things ordered. It was so worth it.

Congratulations Ann, hooray! I'm glad it was all fairly smooth, thankyou for letting us all know the other side exists! Sounds like you're pretty settled in Serial well done for powering through.

and muss that's soul destroying. All the to you Raa it all sounds pretty ridiculous. I hope that next week will be your week! What a lovely buyer time that's very reassuring. Good news that others are chugging along too.

Well, our buyer seems lovely and very sensible so has done what building control required, and DH is then going to join the dots - hopefully we will have our certificate in the next few days and our sale should be on the point of exchange. No news on the unregistered land, I still feel a bit like that might be where 'here be dragons'....

AnnPerkins so pleased for you. Hopefully we can, one day..., move into our house
mussinboots hope things will turn out for you.
YogaDrone Frescoed MrsJW15 My DH and I suspect the seller knew from the start but he was trying to cover and thought he can get through it his way (and he's still thinking the same). He went into management company (just a company with directors being tenants living in the building), set up himself as director, and provided the information to our solicitor as if he's the managing company. Our solicitor insisted multiple times (as well as us) that this is not acceptable. He then claimed the freeholder was away, and not able to contact, he is a old man doesn't have a phone number. So we were waiting, waiting, until few days ago, we said either provide information within 2 days or we walk away. If we knew there was problem, we wouldn't commit this far ahead. Feeling angry even just remember about it now.
Anyway, my DH took a day off yesterday, went to see a few properties for rent (we are hoping to get 1 year lease, with 6 months break clause). My DH managed to talk to the freeholder directly (we should have done this long time ago, but my solicitor told us not to do this). My DH's impression of him is a very gentle guy, very polite and understanding our situation (opposite to the vendor's solicitor and the seller claims of him). He gave us his home phone number (mind you the seller claimed he doesn't have a phone number), but he doesn't want to discuss about the dispute between him and the seller now. He will talk to his solicitor, and talk to us in couple days. We talked to our solicitor, she said she can talk to the freeholder's solicitor if she has the contact details. We checked our buyers insurance policy, if we pull out now, we loose, no cover, so since we are now not in the rush anymore (we intend to rent somewhere else regardless)& we have paid almost all the costs except for deposit, we will wait and see. I'm now hoping if the seller pull out from our offer in the next 3 months then we can claim back from insurance . Alternatively, if we can see what the dispute is then we may try to if there is a way to make it works. (maybe split 3 ways for the dispute costs, if our solicitor thinks it's valid). However, My DH and I totally don't trust the seller and his solicitor a word anymore. If there is a way we can prove his solicitor is full of sh*t, then we would make a claim.
In the meantime, continue viewing. Hopefully the rental application we submitted yesterday will be accepted.

Frescoed our solicitor said depends on what the dispute is, and she will need it in writing from the freeholder or the freeholder's solicitor, and if the dispute is sorted out within our mortgage expiry timeframe, then it may work because if she doesn't satisfy, she will need to report to the lender because it will affect the re-sale value. I don't really understand exactly (our solicitor has a talent of answering questions without actual answering them) , but I guess that if it is a valid dispute and the fault is indeed the seller (didn't make monthly payment as per contract, or didn't contribute as he should), then it's ok. We will need to get more information from the freeholder.