Sellers/Buyers Roll Call 8 and still going

[Fern204]

Hope it's ok to start a new thread.
Bottom of our chain should exchange on Monday and then the top will hopefully exchange a week later. I dont quite understand, something to do with a charge on our buyers house which needs to be released first.
Aiming to complete on 15th July, so hopefully not much longer.
I will never move again, and definitely not in a chain of 10!

A reasonable day for us - our buyer has had verbal confirmation that the mortgage valuation is fine - which is a big relief!

She is having the home buyers survey tomorrow - she is going to try and get a verbal briefing tomorrow so she can move ahead with the searches - so at least she seems keen! Just fx'd no big horrors in the survey - it's an old property!

Just checked the lender’s tracker and it has today’s date against ‘date case underwritten’ 👍🏻 Yay! Progress! The valuation is still pending though, which was supposedly done last Friday - the estate agent when she rang for a progress update yesterday said that valuers have to give the valuation to the lender within 2-3 days of the survey? Anyone know anything more about that? I don’t actually have confirmation that the survey happened. Will be pestering my broker in the morning to pester the lender.

I'm sure that none of you on here will remember me. But just to give anyone hope. Today we finally exchanged. We sold our house at the end of January and this is the third time, both times before we got to just before exchange and everything fell through.

We can't even celebrate as it's honestly not sunk in. Hopefully we complete tomorrow. The buyers removals are booked. We are in a rental as we moved in March to break the chain so have been paying for two properties for months. We can't find anything to buy yet but at least our limbo is finally over.

@BeauticianNotMagician81 congratulations! What a relief for you, I'm sure your new home will feel all the sweeter.

Congratulations 🥳

Can I join. Had an offer accepted for our sale and purchase just before lockdown. Sellers hadn't found anywhere then so has to wait until after lockdown. Chain finally completed beginning of June. Mortgage offers all in, just going through the solicitors now. Hoping to move mid Aug but still not had any update regarding enquiry results and our buyers hadn't raised any yet last I'd heard. Does anyone know how long it usually takes after enquires? We haven't been sent details on fixtures and fitting that are being left etc. Just all feels so slow

Full Mortgage application went on for 2hrs. So now the paperwork is going to be another 4-5 days where we shall check it, sign it and return with pay slips and bank statements for underwriting. Advisor did say 6-8wks to mortgage offer. We also decided to get the Building survey completed by the banks surveyor as it turned out to be cheaper rather than send in our own surveyor.

We also viewed the house again yesterday as our vendor was suggesting to leave a lot of furniture so we decided to go check it out and see which ones we wanted to keep. We can then also leave the equivalent of them for our buyers.

I think I will also get an update from our solicitor tomorrow. Our buyers should have received their home buyers survey yesterday so I hope no communication is good?

We've submitted our mortgage application with our broker yesterday. Don't think there will be any problems as it's quite a small mortgage compared to the value of the house. We decided not to get a homebuyers report as it didn't seem to cover anything internal and was quite expensive?! Not sure if we should look into some sort of independent survey that might look at the boiler/electrics/check the loft.....but not even sure if this exists?

@houseofrabbits always get an independent survey done. Ask around the area for goof surveyors. They should check things like the electrics, damp,. Roof damagez subsistence etc

@Bells3032 thanks for the advice. Do you know how much we might expect to pay for this? The house is 4 bed detached built in the early 2000's if that makes a difference!

Hi all, I posted on the house sale thread but thought I should post on here now that our house is sold STC.

To cut a long story short we have been trying to move for the past two years in an incredibly slow market, with several disappointments along the way. But now the government stamp duty cut has stimulated the market and its made an incredible difference.

We are buying what I can describe as my dream home and I quite honestly feel sick every day thinking something might go wrong with the process.

We applied for a mortgage yesterday, following a panicked email from broker saying the rate we were looking at would be withdrawn same day, so am waiting to hear back on that. It's something extremely low like 1.4%. Because we've been trying to move for two years and our mortgage term expired, we're on a standard variable rate of 4.49%!! We couldn't fix as we thought he would be moving imminently all the time. So 1.4 will be a big difference.

Also going through paperwork with solicitor. So much. It's times like these I wish my printer worked!

Looking forward to going on the (hopefully good news for all) journey with everyone.

BeauticianNotMagician81 - wow that must feel surreal after the previous issues twice before. But fantastic to hear third time lucky - hopefully more will come on the market shortly.

@houseofrabbits

A basic survey costs around £400. For that they do a quick look round, don’t move furniture or anything but should pick up major issues. For an in depth survey that takes all day and they move furniture and examine everything it cost around £1000. But for this one they should catch minor stuff too.

Key points for you to look for are: any diagonal cracks that go in a step pattern on the outside of the building. If you see ANY cracks above the doorways get them investigated immediately as they are often first signs of house movement, also internal doors sticking (same reason). Any cracks that you could fit a penny in should obv be investigated. If there are any trees on the property close to the house beware of roots which could cause issues to structure over time. Also, wouldn’t hurt to get the drains checked if you want to go fully secure. I’d check what the foundations are too- if clay, be aware this will expand when wet and then contract in heat and “can” cause foundation issues over time. Chalk is an excellent foundation as it’s very solid usually.

Obviously not all cracks are worrying and some are very normal but particularly around doors and windows they should be checked as it “could” be a sign the house is/has moved hence why the doors and windows show cracks.

@Wherewhatwhy I completely empathise, we too are buying our dream home and it's awful living on a knife edge not knowing if it's going to be taken from us at any moment! My fingers are crossed for you.

So it's now officially been over a month since I accepted the offer. It is a completely chain free BTL purchase. Spoke to my lawyer today and they said all they've heard from the buyers solicitor is that they are representing and no confirmation of the mortgage or anything. The Mortgage survey was on Monday, am I being a unreasonable to think things should be moving a little faster.

We took the offer on the basis this would be a quick purchase as we want it sold before we start looking for new house for ourselves. This whole process is a nightmare

Bank has booked in a valuation of the property!! They asked for clarification of my salary from my mortgage advisor on Tuesday but have moved to do a valuation, feels like a good step!

@Russellbrandshair thank you for sharing all that information, it's really useful! This is only the second property we've purchased and our first one was a new build off plan so I don't think we had any surveys done! Also our first time having a mortgage so we feel very out of our depth at the moment.

I got my first removal quote through and was much better than I expected. Mainly because I've read some horror stories about how much they have charged!

Me and the husband are a bit confused. We have a mortgage in principle and have been booked in with an appointment with the bank on Monday. It seems they have asked the same affordability questions as before. So we are hoping they haven't booked us in for the wrong thing.

I am also in the boat of others that we are attempting to buy our dream house and we are so worried it won't go through.

@Baldatbirth an agreement in principle is quite frankly nothing concrete. I find it weird that people show off about having one when they don't really mean anything. They will ask you the same questions as with an AIP but this time you will need to prove - ie in the AIP will be "What's your salary" in the mortgage interview it will be "please can we see your payslips to prove that is the case". They will run through a lot of the same questions but more detailed and will sometimes come up with an entirely different estimate to the AIP if you have additional debts and expenses that you didn't go into on the AIP. If you have nothing additional and your salaries are what you say they are then it'll be the same but not necessarily. I don't mean to scare you or anything but i know a lot of people who got caught out this way.

@houseofrabbits we just paid £580 for a level 3 full building survey for a 4 bed semi (loft conversion) with detached garage. We could have paid extra for a drone survey of the roof but didn’t feel that was value for money for us.

@Lemonylemony that seems remarkably cheap for a building survey! We are getting quotes for that for a homebuyers survey!

My building survey is quoted at just under £600 for a one bed flat in london

@houseofrabbits Our quotes for homebuyers are also coming back between £500-600.

I'm unsure of what we are supposed to be doing now. It feels like we are just waiting for everyone else to do things in the process now. We are planning to pack things ourselves but use a removal company for the move - at what point should we start packing?

@SunshineAndSand20

Paid £430 for a homebuyers survey.
Have tried to start a thread to get ideas for packing/ stuff to do but no one's replied....yet

@Wherewhatwhy welcome to the thread. Yes to lots of paperwork. This is why we actually bought a printer last week. We have been getting our PIL to do our printing but once we saw what the bank wanted from us, we decided to not abuse their kindness any further. At least now I can print out worksheets for DD to scribble on as she is very keen to start writing her letters and numbers (silver lining and all).

@Bells3032 why an independent surveyor? We are having a Building Survey on the house we are buying and are having the bank's surveyor complete it at same time as valuation for £730. They turned out to be the cheaper as getting an independent one would have cost us £650 and then pay the £275 for the bank's valuation survey. We are in Kent.

@Lemonylemony that is a very good price for your survey.

@AmateurHour that looks like a really good step forward. Fingers crossed for you.

@Baldatbirth yes to what @Bells3032 has said above. Not to scare you but this is exactly what our bank have just done. We got an AIP from them on how much we could borrow extra to top up the amount we are porting. Our situation hasn't changed since we got our mortgage with them 1.5 years. At full application yesterday, the amount they offered to lend us was 40% less than the AIP figure. Luckily we were borrowing 75% of the new lower figure so all ok on that front. Imagine if we had actually offered on more expensive house and offered closer to the AIP figure; we dismissed these houses because they had tiny gardens and on slightly busier roads. The house we are buying came back on the market which is a good thing as it is at the cheaper end of the houses we have been viewing.

@SunshineAndSand20 We also plan to pack ourselves and maybe movers. We are still sort of at the beginning of the process but I have packed about 4 boxes now. I need to feel like I'm doing something while we wait for others to do what they need to do. They are things that I'm sure we wont need for a very long time. One has a pestle and mortar and 3 large pie dishes. I have left myself with two smaller pie dishes if needed. Also we are decluttering as and when we can. We did the loft last week. These are things that needed to be done anyway just put off before but now we shall have to do them for the move.