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

@Karcheer We had our booked in at the start of lockdown and it was done on the 8th June. Most places are doing paper valuations but if they need physical valuation it could be as much as 4-6 weeks according to our broker. There seem to be a shortage of valuers physically working too as ours came to the south west from York!

@Bigoldwimp viewings have mainly been first time buyers new to the market looking to move out of London with no clear idea yet as to where in the commuter belt they want to be. Too early in the process to commit / realise how little they get for their money round here. Just have to wait and keep fingers crossed people see it’s value soon.

Just heard from the estate agent that the mortgage survey is Monday and our full structural survey on Tuesday.

So our buyer has a verbal start date (of just 4 weeks away) so hoping the formal letter will come soon.

He hasn't actioned his solicitors, I've asked that he do ASAP as I don't want to wait for a mortgage offer with how long that could take at the moment with the valuation backlog. Waiting for a response...if he declines I will question his commitment to the sale.

@noheragain4 - doesn't he have a probation period?

@Karcheer possibly? Lots of lenders don't expect you to have passed a probationary period though. Nationwide don't, they allow a change in job that's happening within 3 months with a letter from the employer. His lender has told him they just need formal notification of his start date.

[quote notheragain4]@Karcheer possibly? Lots of lenders don't expect you to have passed a probationary period though. Nationwide don't, they allow a change in job that's happening within 3 months with a letter from the employer. His lender has told him they just need formal notification of his start date.[/quote]
thats good!

I’m so impatient. Once you were on the market what did you receive from your agent? Would be nice to see if it’s had any rightmove enquiries as I assume the EA can see all the stats

@Bigoldwimp we only really spoke to our EA when a viewing was booked in. Sometimes got a weekly update with a load of gumpf about the market. Didn't get rightmove stats (but didn't ask for them tbh)

Quick question here if anyone could help please.

We were told that there is a deposit of 2.3% of the purchase value needed before contract exchange, we didnt prepare for this. We were only preparing for the stamp duty and estate agent fee. However there will be redundant cash between the sale of our home and buying the new house which should cover for all cost. Does it mean, we pay the deposit now then contract exchanged, our buyer will pay the value of the house, our mortgage provider will transfer the mortgage amount. Our solicitor will transfer the value of the house that we are buying, he will then pay all fees including stamp duty etc with the redundant cash in the pot. Then any money left over he will send back to us?

Many thanks,

@Newhome321 - yup, I do believe thats what happens.

@Newhome321

I'm wondering this too. We need to exchange in July, apparently we need to pay 5%, but we need the money from our house sale. Obviously we will all exchange the same day, so does our buyer's deposit go towards ours...? To complicate things further we are using different solicitors for purchase and sale and will be completing sale a few weeks after exchange, and the purchase a few months after that!

Everyone pays their deposit at exchange, this is held by solicitors and cannot be accessed by anyone else until the sale completes. When you have your original paperwork from the solicitor is should have given you a breakdown of when and how much needs paying by you. Deposits are never taken from a sale unless that sale completes before you exchange on the new property.

So just to confirm, we dont need to prepare for stamp duty or any fee BECAUSE there is redundant cash left in the pot to cover fir stamp duty and all fees, the only cash we have to pay extra now is the deposits( apologies, the last time I bought my house was more than 10 years ago and I couldnt remember what happen). If indeed we have to pay stamp duty separately and only receive the left over money from the pot later then we are £40k short as we didnt plan for the deposit.

Oh notheragain4, I dont know how you handle it all, I am so nervous and struggling emotionally especially we are moving to an upper fixer and the current house has been loved for many years and super comfy. We could wait until after the exchange and to receive the cash statement but didnt prepare for the deposit and now short of this £40k because we only have enough fund for stamp duty and fees. However the pot should cover it all if it works that way.

Regarding deposits as I understand it the buyer at the bottom of the chain pays their deposit and this deposit passes up the chain. Everything balances out at completion using funds from sale.

Funnily enough my DH and i were talking about this as we couldn't remember how the deposit thing worked.

@Newhome321 we are the same, we did an extension here and it's been all lovely and finished for about 4 years. We didn't want another project and were buying a perfect new house... then lockdown happened so we didn't exchange, and we changed our minds... so now we too... are buying a dooer upper - guess ill see you on another chat soon!

I've just gone on the market on Monday. I have 5 viewings scheduled for Saturday. I have my mortgage offer in principle and I have a house I really want to buy. My friend said I should make an offer now but I want to see what I get for my house before I'm confident about offering. And I assumed the estate agent wouldn't take me seriously if I offered with no offer on mine.

Happy to take advice on that. .

I'm feeling very nervy and edgy. Its just me and the kids so its a big decision to make on my own - we've been here 19 years so it will be very emotional to go. But my ex has a charge on the property which I have to discharge within 3 years now. I'm nervy because I've only been in my job for a year... Oh well I'm just anxious.

@Bouledeneige it definitely helps to have an offer first, it will depend as to whether it would be accepted without, we couldn't offer last year on a house we wanted when we weren't proceedable, the EA wasn't interested. This year when we got a lower offer than we liked we offered on two properties before accepting the offer explaining we'd had an offer but it was a bit lower, would they consider X then we could decide if we'd go back and accept.

I would wait until you have an offer, you'll always be on the back foot without one.

Karcheer: fingers crossed we will get there, we always wanted an upper fixer though but there are also other boxes to tick.

Just had th 2nd man round to give an estimate for the removals, they seem to think we have loads of stuff... i really think we didn't :/

We've just had our paperwork through for exchange - I have printed nearly 400 sheets of paper! I know you don't need to but I like to have hard copies of all paperwork incase my email explodes and eats everything! Sent all signed papers back and deposit sent too. Looks like this may actually happen!

Congrats @GherkinsOnToast!

@Karcheer, we've just been told the same thing about backlogs in valuations. We were hoping to get our mortgage offer through this week so that's frustrating. We'll need to time it all carefully because we don't want our structural survey to go ahead until we've received our mortgage offer.

Spoke to our solicitors today they've received all searches back and apparently are ready to schedule an exchange date once our mortgage offer comes through. We only instructed them 3.5 weeks ago, so I'm a bit Is it possible that it could be so quick and easy? Not sure whether it's because our seller was about to exchange when her previous buyer pulled out - she/her solicitor might have had all the paperwork already sorted?

400 pages oh my word! I like to have hard copies of important documents to read too. But starting to think my smart conference-clipboard style folder isn’t going to be enough and I’ll need a lever arch file by the end

I’m thinking I’m going to backtrack on the solicitor after mortgage offer plan though - as broker has just said the average time from application to mortgage offer is 32 days with the lender we’re going to go with, with some industry average being 72 days at the moment due to covid delays/extra workload after lockdown - this is according to broker, no idea how reliable that would be. From my conversation with the Halifax advisor he was giving a 5-7 day timescale with online valuation, but then they didn’t call me back for our booked follow-up appointment today, so how reliable that was I don’t know. Anyway, broker thinks our mortgage is very straightforward and can’t foresee any issues, so that gives me a bit more confidence to move on with the other things simultaneously.

@TaleOfTheContinents @lemonylemony we've everything running simultaneously, the thing that seems most behind is the searches - they were requested a week ago. The Mortgage survey is Monday and the Structural one on Tuesday.
When we applied for a Mortgage on the NewBuild before lock-down the mortgage approval came a couple of days after the survey.
The Surveyor has said he'll get the structural survey report done by the 30th...
So i suspect it'll be the searches we are waiting on...