Sellers/Buyers Roll Call 7

[MrBobLobLaw]

Stressed vendors and buyers alike: assemble here to moan about bloody solicitors!

Feel free to join at any point

Whoop! Exchanged today so moving on 7th January! Huge relief but a crazy afternoon - DH was doing all the phone calls with solicitors, insurance, removal firms etc while I was driving (going away for the weekend!).

Very best of luck to everyone else due to exchange soon.

@AlmaMartyr that’s fantastic news! How lovely to know where you are now, but lots to organise!

FTB joining here, offer down, sales letters accepted, mortgage pending - although after DIP it is now being referred to underwriters for final approval as is 90% LTV. Give me hope this is just a formality!? They have all docs, inc proof of employment, proof of deposit, solicitor instructed etc.

Any tips? Feel like it is the blind leading the blind and as it is just me buying, I could do with some advice!

Well after posting on here a few weeks ago about my hopes for a very short chain it seems that nothing is ever simple.

Apparently everything regarding the sale of our house is done and ready for exchange, but our sellers, who are going into rented, haven't responded to any queries from the solicitors in a month.

I'm not sure if I'm more annoyed at their lack of communication, or the fact that our solicitor only told us about it this afternoon, the Friday before Christmas. If they'd told us a week ago we could have had more discussions with the estate agent to try and move things along.

Anyone been in this situation before? Surely if you are selling a house you want to get on with it and respond to queries as they come in?

@MeMeMeYou yes, lots to do but at least it's us that has to do it, no more relying on someone else doing things for us It's going to be a weird Christmas!

@WhenYouCantRunYouCrawl that sounds so annoying! We were sending back answers to queries by return post. I hope your estate agent manages to get things going.

@WhatsThePassword22 not an expert but sounds like probably just a formality?

Our buyer’s survey is finally booked. One more hurdle! We don’t have anywhere to move to yet though.

We have finally exchanged!

There was a mad flurry of activity at the end of last week and whilst it was slightly disappointing not to have been in the new house for Christmas, after all the fading it was a massive relief to have exchanged. We complete on 9th January - 4.5 months after offer on a chain free (both sides) sale!

I hope we will stay there forever as I don't want to go through all this palaver again.

Good luck to everyone still waiting for the end to be in sight.

Congratulations Pilodown. What a relief for you!!!! A great start to the new year in your new home. We completed this hassle filled journey this year and have just had the first Christmas in our new home. I totally agree with you - never again!!!

Congratulations Pilodowan! Such a great feeling to exchange!

Congratulations Pilodowan!

My mortgage has just gone to the underwriters for final approval, just about to book my survey unsure whether to go for full structural or homebuyers report. House is circa 50 years old. Thoughts?

Will check in with my EA Monday, make sure sellers are getting a move on.

Quite excited FTB here!

@WhatsThePassword22 So 1960s/70s construction? It depends on the state of the property and how confident you are on your viewing prowess.

I'd prob go for home buyers report, I did take a while on my viewings and had prepared a checklist of things to look for.

Either way be prepared for the electrics, insulation and heating system to be highlighted as potential problems, they won't meet CURRENT regs (how could they without the builder having a crystal ball?). The roof even if it's visually OK will be flagged as it's old.

They'll recommend getting the electrics inspected by a qualified person. It will fail you need to be interested in how badly it fails, C1 needs fixing immediately, C2 should be done soon, C3 when you get round to it.

@pilodowan you may well be our buyers from what you've said! We've also exchanged just before Christmas and are completing on the 9th of January after everything seemingly dragging on for forever.

Hi 🙋, thought I'd come in here to chat. We're buying and selling and aiming to be in by mid Feb. Offers accepted on ours and the one we're buying on 3rd Dec. Mortgages accepted and valuations done on both sides and contracts in process of being drawn up. We're due to have full structural done on house we're buying on 7th Jan but today, had a phone call from our EA to say our buyers now want a home buyer's report done on our house. Alarm bells starting to ring a bit as thought they would have arranged that if they wanted one when the bank valuation was being done a week after offer was accepted. Obviously agreed to it and that's being done this Friday.

Any views on this sudden decision would be great. Bank valuation stated it was worth the sale price and no concerns were raised before Christmas.

They will have been talking to a pessimistic relative over Christmas!

@hawksmoth, yes reckon you're right. No major concerns about the survey, bizarrely it's the same surveyor who did it for me when I was buying it 14 yrs ago. Nothing major came up then and anything that was recommended to be done, I've carried out over the yrs. Still, it doesn't stop me being nervous as I know the survey on house we're buying is going to flag up some issues as it's old and needs work. Just worried that if ours gets knocked for a few things on top of what we'll need to spend renovating new house, it might bust the budget.

Happy New Year everyone. Have tried to have a break over Christmas and New Year and not to think too much about the progress (or lack of it) being made on our house sale/purchase.
Hopefully now that solicitors and estate agents are back at work, we will have dates for exchange/completion soon.

Good luck @Catndogslife, hope you get some news soon!

@MissLemon18 I wouldn't be too worried, it does sound like someone's been talking to them. Tbh, it it sensible to have some kind of survey done other than the valuation. Our structural survey came back with a couple of issues but we didn't request any reduction: I'm fairly sure our buyers survey raised some issues but they also didn't request a reduction.

We're due to complete next week on 7th so all feeling very weird here! Decluttering and cleaning atm.

Hi, can I join please?

Been a lurker for a long time, but was reluctant to join until we had sold and bought

As of today, we have!

We sold over a month ago to BTL investors and were very keen to buy asap, as knew they weren't going to wait forever.

The vendors of our (hopefully) new house are yet to find, so anxious about that. We had seen a lot of chain free properties, but they just didn't tick enough boxes. I think we assumed we'd find another chain free property and forgot that that's not the 'norm'.

Anyway, have a child free evening, so feel like we should celebrate, but DP says we shouldn't celebrate until we're in. Sigh....I get it but yeah......sigh.

@MissLemon18 we had this - our buyer said they weren’t having a survey (cash buyer via their equity) but much further down line near exchange they suddenly were which we wondered as to why. I think someone poss solicitor suggested they should. Tbh I can’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t have some sort of survey.

@Pilodowan congrats on exchanging!

@catndogslife I felt the same way over Xmas, enjoyed having headspace from worrying and waiting.

We were pretty sure it was all going down the pan as there was problem after problem at bottom of chain every time we thought we were about to exchange, then they said they needed simultaneous exchange completion which no one else wanted. Xmas happened, the on 2nd Jan suddenly bottom of chain were ready to exchange and no longer needed this simultaneous exchange completion. Unfort we didn’t exchange as lots of the solicitors in the chain weren’t about, but hoping for Monday and possibly complete 17th.

With all the false starts I’ll believe it when I see it but it’s more hopeful than it has been before. Coming up for 6 months since we had offer on our house and were accepted on the one we are buying...

Thought I'd rejoin this group, I've been on several of the previous threads, but our previous purchase fell through the day before exchange.

So far everything has gone along as it should for this one, but obviously Christmas slowed things. Mortgage approved, initial enquiries made, some searches back, structural survey being done Tues 7th. EA called to advise vendor has been in to sign docs at their solicitor, but is now away for 5 weeks - all of Jan basically. Assuming not much will be done until they are back.

Can I join!

Tried to sell our house 3 years ago and couldn’t.
Spent years saving ready to start again and are planing to remarket this month.

Found a house we love, hopefully we can sell in time to be in with a chance but I won’t hold my breath!

@AlmaMartyr and @MeMeMeYou thanks for the replies! I agree that it's prudent for anyone to get a survey done, I defo wouldn't buy a house without one.

Just felt like we had gone a bit backwards in the process from where we were with our buyers. Survey was done on Friday, surveyor gave us verbal feedback that there's nothing overly serious to be concerned about, we expect red on the central heating boiler as we haven't renewed contract as we didn't see point as moving and thought we had gone past inspection stage.

Now got engineer from BG coming Tues to service for current cert.

Hoping to hear from our buyers tomorrow to confirm they are happy to proceed and fill structural on house we're buying is on Tues. Keeping fingers and toes crossed!

Feel like I have been here forever. 3rd thread I have followed since starting marketing.
We had a good few offers which were either not procedable or from time wasters until Oct 2017 when we changed agents. Accepted offer Feb 2018 but sadly one of the couple passed away just before exchange. We waited for partner to get finances sorted but then offer was reduced and meant we couldn't go ahead with our purchase.
Started process again and got another buyer who had pulled out of previous purchase for ours to find they pulled out of ours months later.
So back to viewings and all that crap! Do have a 2nd viewing happening soon so fingers crossed 3rd serious time lucky.

Can I join? I'm on Oz though so the process seems to be different. We are FTB (in this country anyway) and we had our offer accepted on Dec. 7th. We then promptly went on holiday so our mortgage application didn't go in until the 23rd, which has slowed things up a bit as the banks don't process applications over Xmas. Got a call today asking for clarification about a long cancelled credit card, but looks like we will get approval by the end of the week. Which means we go into settlement phase which apparently only takes 3 weeks. So fingers crossed we will be in early Feb! We are renting and our vendor is moving in with her partner, so fingers crossed there are no disasters! At least we can't be gazumped, its not allowed thank god.