Worried - come to a grinding halt on our house purchase

[DaphneduM]

Hi everyone - I'm posting for some advice here as my husband and I are now getting very nervous and tearing our hair out over our situation. We have exchanged contracts for the sale of our house and have to be out by the end of July. Everything seemed to be going fine with our purchase so we thought we would have adequate time to exchange contracts and tie in completion date. The completion date was agreed in principle by our vendors. For the last three weeks, despite our solicitor pushing their solicitor several times, and us speaking to the estate agent, who has assured us their client will be chasing up their solicitor, things have come to a grinding halt. Only two very minor matters to be sorted, according to our solicitor. We are getting absolutely nowhere here, apparently according to the estate agents these local country solicitors are notorious for being very slow. But - obviously we are now reading more into this. As I said, we are freaking out as we have cats to consider as well, if we need to go into rented. I don't want to lose this house, but don't want to be taken for a fool either. What do you think we should do? And although obviously we can't exchange and complete in time on another property, should we maybe start looking at other houses. With our circumstances, we are cash buyers as we don't need a mortgage. Any advice much appreciated. I'm getting so stressed here!!!

Get on the phone to everyone you can. Both estate agent and solicitor. Chase, chase, chase, first thing in the morning and then again at lunchtime!

I bloody hate solicitors, I have no idea how everything takes so long. (sorry to any solicitors, I'm happy to be enlightened)

Thanks, Doje. I think you're absolutely spot on here - I chased last week, but am going to get my husband on the case - as everyone involved seems to operate in the dark ages, maybe they'll take more notice of him rather than a mere woman!!!!! Weirdly everyone who needed to be contacted was supposedly on holiday last week!!!! So frustrating. It does make you wonder what we all pay these 'professionals' for.

Why did the solicitor not exchange the contracts for your sale and purchase simultaneously? If it was the two minor issues outstanding why did they not wait for this to resolve?

Hope it gets sorted 💐

Chase everyone every single day. On the phone.

You need to find out what these two issues are. Once you know, post it on here and you should get a better indication of timescales.

Why did you agree to let your sale go independent from your purchase, if this is not really what you wanted? If you don't have to be out until the end of July, surely this should be enough time to sort out the two issues and tie in completion to the same day?

By the way, if you chase, chase and chase every day, rest assured your solicitor will struggle to actually do the work.

Most people under estimate how long it takes to do the conveyancing. There is a lot of work to be covered, reviewing legal documents, obtaining information from the Council, Lender, Management Company, the Client, raising enquiries from the documents provided, checking the responses, repeating the enquiries not satisfactorily answered. Making sure money laundering ID checks are passed, obtaining funds from clients to start work, additional work might be liaising with third parties i.e. Help to Buy Equity Loan provider, Matrimonial Lawyers (in divorce cases), Equitable Charge companies (if there are charges on the title other than the mortgage), Land Registry, dealing with Gifted Deposits and obtaining ID from the giftor, making the lender aware of the gift etc. Not to mention the daily calls from every single client and EA all wanting updates because 'their case is urgent', just like everyone else's. I could go on, but no-one actually seems to want to understand that the chain only moves as quickly as the slowest responder. While the internet has speeded up response times, it has also meant that everyone seems to think that responses should be instant. I reply to emails as quickly as I can, but as soon as I have responded, the clients send in another email with yet more questions. People think nothing of reducing the price after survey results without thinking that the mortgage offer may need to be amended, the contract and transfer need to be amended, so while it doesn't take long, it does stop me from doing something else equally as urgent. Also many clients do not understand the process very well, or think they do and try to micro manage it. We get clients who think they are doing our work but actually in most cases it's just a hindrance.

Why didn't you all exchange at the same time? Then there would have been penalties in place if a party then pulled out.

We had a similar situation and exchanged on our property before the property we were purchasing to avoid losing our buyers. We set a really long completion date to try to make sure we would have somewhere to move into. We were aware of the risk and rang every day. We would ring our estate agents every morning. They would give us the number of the other estate agents, who we would sometimes also ring in the afternoon. Then we would round things off with an email to our solicitor. We then started to view other properties with the estate agent our vendor was with to try to put the pressure on. This was the only thing that did the trick - the threat to pull out - and finally we exchanged on the property we were buying with a couple of weeks to spare.

This is the problem with splitting the chain.

And considering the work solicitors have to do and the fact that fees haven't increased in 20 odd years nor have wages it annoys me when people are so disparaging.

Nowadays people don't want to pay for a proper job so solicitors are overloaded. If you have 80 /100 on going matters and each one of them calls for an update every day how are you expected to get any actual work done?

Hi everyone, thank you for your comments on here. We exchanged for our sale so as not to lose our buyers, who were in a very favourable position. We have a long completion date, but even so the time is going by now. I'm happy to say that due to me relaying all your comments about chasing, chasing, chasing my husband got on the case yesterday and things are moving again. Have had updates via our solicitor from vendor's solicitor and they are now finally pulling their finger out. Regarding being disparaging, our solicitor has been excellent and professional - the other solicitors not so, many avoidable basic mistakes including sending an e-mail to a wrong address.