Buyers sellers roll call 12

[Bells3032]

New thread. Hopefully the last one for us!!

@Soulstirring our removal company wouldn't book us in until we'd exchanged so it might be that?

We got our mortgage offer today! Very pleased. It’s just those damn searches now.

So we’ve officially sold our house 🥳 seeing the money in our account was a tad surreal, but it’s now tucked safely away in our savings account.

We also had another bit of luck, the surveyor doing our valuation is now working overtime so they’ve slotted us in tomorrow morning instead which means we could exchange as early as next week

for all that have exchanged/completed this week or are dealing with the back and forth of trying to buy or sell

Hi @PointyMcguire
If it's over the limit protected by the compensation scheme (£80K or double if a joint account), remember to spread the money around!! Particularly with Brexit coming.

@newhousenewme I think proceeds from a house sale are additionally protected for a certain length of time

www.fscs.org.uk/how-we-work/claims-process/temporary-high-balances/

wow @Bells3032 I didn't know that - thank you - I've been angsting about how to transfer money on the day of sale into different savings accounts, thought I was going to have to drive to the next town to do a CHAPS transfer! (no branch of my bank in my town)

@dinglethedragon glad I could be of service

Congratulations to all who have exchanged and/or completed this week. We were within touching distance of exchange today but the top of the chain, who have been aggressively chasing and threatening to pull out, failed to communicate and then the solicitors all seemed to go home at half past three We now hope to exchange Monday and complete Friday. Here's hoping my removal company will honour the ever-changing pencilled-in date! for me tonight!
The comments and stories here are most definitely helping me through this stressful time, thank you everyone x

After a very very stressful week, its looking like we will exchange early next week and complete somewhere between 25th and 30th November.

I'm still not holding my breath, but I am going to crack on with packing the house this weekend. I need to keep busy!

Still no exchange and for some reason our vendor has put up the price of the oil left in his tank! It's only by £25 but given we agreed the previous price it seems very cheeky. I'm all for standing our ground (what's he going to do, suck it out with a straw?) But DH just wants to pay and get it sorted.
Still waiting on an indemnity quotation for solicitor. Hopefully Monday.

We've all agreed a completion date so long as we can exchange in time!

I didn't know that either @Bells3032!!!
That's a neat rule!

Oh wow that’s remarkably quick!! @jujuball I am green with envy! How on earth did you make it go so quickly?

Tell me your secret

Congrats @jujuball on exchange!

@Badgerbadger22 I suppose since I'm a solicitor and the buyer's sister is a mortgage broker we may have had an unfair advantage

To be honest we've just been lucky that the house is straightforward enquiry-wise and the buyers' mortgage offer came through pretty quickly. We really didn't chase them at all (and they didn't chase us) until we chased a bit because wanted to propose a date about a week and a half ago.

We had honestly probably about 40 odd viewings all in all, lockdown in the middle and only this 1 offer, so maybe the universe thought they'd give us an easy ride with the conveyancing process after the stress of trying to shift it initially at some points I felt like it would never happen!

Good luck everyone, you will get there! Just praying our purchase makes it over the line now!

@NewHouseNewMe thank you! I'll probably have a little cry tomorrow 😂 our lovely neighbours have passed on (at a distance!) a card and a gift bless them, we'll miss them! This was our first home and we've had a very happy few years here.

@jujuball this is good news because my new vendor is a solicitor. She has every tiny piece of paper we could ever need. This is the most boring house we’ve ever bought (from a legal point of view!).

I’m so happy for you! I saw my old neighbours earlier and had a little cry. I miss them.

Enjoy everything and soak in all the positivity & excitement you deserve it x

Another quick question - how long does it take for the solicitor to draw down the mortgage? I know lenders might differ but on average?? I need to count backwards from 27th November to see if it is all possible!

Congrats @jujuball! Definitely sounds like universe has given a helping hand. Ours is the same, we had ridiculously entitled/demanding buyers and 4 months of being messed about with the previous house we offered on before it all fell apart. Current sellers are absolutely lovely and everything seems to be slotting into place quite nicely.

Congratulations everyone who made progress last week!

We had progress of a sort, in that our searches came back, but it's leaving me a bit conflicted. The con29dw search shows the new house has both foul water and surface water running through the back garden. We don't think we'd extend out, so that's not such a problem, but I am really concerned about things putting off buyers in the future.

The other problem is that the environmental search came back with a significant risk of flooding from surface water. Looking into the flood risk maps on gov.uk further seems to show it is the garden rather than the house, which is less concerning, but obviously the flood risk is getting worse over time with climate change. The sellers say they've never had any flooding, and an online quotation for insurance was a perfectly reasonable price.
I don't want a property we'd struggle to sell!

Has anyone any thoughts on this? There are plenty of houses that one or both of these will apply to, but is it really a risk?

We've had the mortgage report to sign only one of the terms of that we can't run any kind of business from the house. I WFH self-employed, so need to be able to run my business from home, so have had to ask solicitor to clarify that with the bank first.

Still waiting to hear whether the buyer's lender wants to give them a mortgage yet.

Soooo bored of waiting around and so fed up of being surrounded by boxes and bags. Feels worse when it's lockdown and the weather is miserable and can't get away from the house.

As quickly as I joined this thread I'm leaving it. We lost out on the house we bid on- annoyingly we were the higher, stronger bid but they picked the people they had met! As a result our buyer has pulled out, so we are going to come off the market because certainly where we are everything seems to have gone very quiet. May try again in the spring, who knows. Feel absolutely gutted. Our current house isn't horrible but it doesn't meet our families needs at all anymore and it's in the wrong area for the school commute.

How sad @EnglishRose1320. Never say never - I dipped out of the thread 2 weeks ago and came back in a stronger position which I never thought was possible

Is anyone else attempting to get exchange and completion before Christmas? Are there any covid issues to consider?

Hello, I've been here before but our buyer pulled out due to covid.

We had a viewing today and an offer about half an hour later. Since we've been back on the market, our absolute dream house came back on too. They had an offer just below asking and gave us until yesterday (AND checked with me at the end of yesterday) to become proceedable.

We became proceedable today :(

We have rung and offered asking and now just waiting to hear. The seller is quite principled and didn't want a bidding war before.

I'll be so sad if we've missed out by a few hours :(.