House purchase annoyance

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We are currently living with my ILs after our previous house purchase fell through and we didn't want tonlose our buyers. We've been here for over 6 months now. Me, DH and 3 under 5s in one room which I find myself retreating to more and more often for some privacy. 90% of our belongings are in storage but we are still overflowing

At the end of August we found a lovely house to try and buy again. It took another month for the sellers to find somewhere to move bit they eventually found themselves somewhere chain free.

After much nagging our solicitor finally announced last week that we could complete at any point after Dec 1st. We are so desperate to have our own place before Christmas that I actually cries tears of joy.

Our solicitor has apparently been chasing theirs for the last week only for it to emerge yesterday afternoon that one of the sellers is working out of the country until the 13th December and they both then go on holiday on the 16th. They want to exchange in that tiny window and complete the second week of January. At no point did they feel the need to share this with us before yesterday. We upped our offer on the basis of a quick sale and now we have a delay of 5/6 weeks when everything is ready to go, they're just not around to sign the contracts.

I'm fuming and very sad.

You don't have to get around to sign the contracts. In fact, I would be surprised if they haven't already signed them and their solicitor is holding them in readiness. They just don't want to move until after Christmas when they are both around. Our sellers did something similar when we were hoping to complete just before Easter and we'd them have had the Easter weekend to get straight. Turned out they threw a leaving party at the house that weekend instead!

The only thing you can do is propose an earlier completion in January I would say. You could threaten to pull out if they won't budge, but be prepared to have to walk away.

We just had this, the sellers were dicking about with the date of entry that they had proposed in the first place. So we said either it’s the initial date they proposed or we pull out. Funnily enough we complete next week on that date.
Sorry you’re having such a shit time OP, I hope you can get it sorted.

We had this, sold as not to loose a buyer, moved in with family and purchased another property. The bloke worked away and so things were constantly delayed, there wasn’t much we could do except wait it out and push as much as possible. In hindsight he was stringing it out to minimise the gap between leaving that property and completing on his new place. I feel your pain!