Buyers sellers roll call 12

[Bells3032]

New thread. Hopefully the last one for us!!

Really hoping this week brings good news for everyone.

We signed the contracts for exchange over the weekend and I drove them over to drop at our solicitors office today. I know we can be as ready as we like but it depends on the others in our chain. It still feels like we're doing something productive by doing it that way.

Had a removal quote come through, to include packing and was pleasantly surprised. Nice to actually have a quote come in less than we were expecting so we're going to have them pack everything for us too....far less hassle!

@thewinehasgonetomyhead No we haven't exchanged. We were meant to receive the contract today but still haven't. The frustrating thing is we know we can't get this over the line for Friday, but nobody is talking about another date yet, so have no idea when it will happen! Our developer is constantly (and rightly) asking what is going on and I'm embarrassed to tell them that I just don't know as soIicitor isn't responding!

We’re towards the top of the chain and everyone is ready to go, but the bottom are dragging their feet and putting the whole move at risk. So much is hinging on exchanging this week and they aren’t getting the urgency. I’m so stressed, I haven’t slept for the last two weeks.

@thewinehasgonetomyhead Sorry, another question. Have you transferred your deposit and has your solicitor called down the funds from the mortgage company?

@fourmonthstogo we are with Santander and they’re being quite slow for us. Says 24 days on their website - is that from application to offer?

We’ve waited 10 days for the phone call with the underwriters or whatever it’s called. Then it’s time to book the valuation.

The housing market is very quiet here so hoping the surveyors are a little freed up now

We had our initial mortgage discussion on the 7th October, the full appointment on the 15th. That was approved by the underwriters just a couple of days later but it was a long wait for the valuation- 4 weeks. It was rearranged once without telling us! When the valuer went we heard the same day it was approved and it took a few days for the written offer to arrive. Not sure what period they count for their 24 day time scale.

Hope they progress yours quickly @badgerbadger22

No progress here today. Solicitor ignored my phone call on Friday (I was told they would phone back, they did not). I emailed over the weekend. No reply. I just want to know what’s happening! Communication should NOT be like this.

I’m shocked at how long it took! @fourmonthstogo I’m dreading it now!

@Maybenexttime08 we are in a slightly different position as we are in military housing, so don’t need to purchase/sell at the same time. We are in the process of buying our house, but the vendor needs to get probate first so that will be a while so no deposit etc needed yet.

@thewinehasgonetomyhead we accepted an offer on ours and had an offer accepted on the house we're buying end of Septembers. Only three of us in the chain, we're the only ones needing a mortgage which has been approved. Only things outstanding now are searches on the property we're selling, should be back next Thursday at the latest, all the enquiries for that and the final enquiries for the house we're buying.

@RAINSh0wers oh how stressful for you. I know how you feel, the anxiety is getting to me now.

@Tomatoandbasil I totally agree with you regarding the lack of communication from solicitors. We emailed over the weekend (responses to some extra enquiries) then again this morning (to say I'd dropped off paperwork at the office) and no reply. I know that they're really busy but even just a "received and will process" would be better than silence. Hopefully it's because they're too busy actually getting things sorted in the background.

@Pepperwand it's honestly impossible to reply to every email the same day it's received at the moment with how mental the housing market is, I have well over 100 transactions ongoing at any one time and we get emails from estate agents, other solicitors and mortgage brokers as well as clients. It's just not physically possible to have time to do the actual legal work and respond to all emails the same day unfortunately, these really are extraordinary times. Also, if you've handed documents in at the office you know they've been received safely.

Basically just wanted to say bear with your solicitor, because we're all doing our best and the profession is really tough at the moment. I hate not being able to get back to clients straight away and I'm sure others feel the same feel like a career change to be completely honest!

We're still hanging around waiting to hear about our buyers mortgage. We're also waiting to hear if our lender is ok with me running my small business from home after I've answered their queries. 🙄 I'm amazed they had a condition in the mortgage report that we not do that. It's 2020, the year of working from home!! We've signed our part of the contract and handed it to solicitors. Very tired of waiting to settle down. Weary of living surrounded by boxes and wondering when it'll all happen. Very tempted to just give in and unpack everything again, I miss having some stability.

@jujuball I understand somewhat but the solicitor should not have taken on so much work. I’m still paying a full fee for bad service! Therefore it’s hard to have sympathy when I’m paying in full for a service that might see me lose money when my sale or purchase falls through because of terrible communication.

@Tomatoandbasil my post wasn't directed at you, contact from Friday should certainly have been returned by now, I was talking about emails not necessarily being able to be replied to the same day they're received at the moment

@jujuball your post has been helpful thank you.

This whole thing is making me so miserable. I’ve just been reading another forum and the Santander delays are ridiculous.

I wish they’d do desktop valuations like Halifax and NatWest are doing for some applications...

Feeling very teary about it all.

We have exchanged. Our fantastic EA told our buyers from hell where to stick their price reduction, so we called their bluff and they backed down.

The stupid thing is that we live in a very small close-knit community and now everybody knows that they are shitty people who tried to screw us over.

They have caused such a lot of upset and been an absolutely nightmare messing us about for over 6 months. I hope it was worth the good will it has cost them.

@DeeplyMovingExperience that's great news, thank goodness they backed down!

@jujuball thanks for the background info, I do appreciate it must be really hectic for solicitors at the moment. I've been nothing but polite to her but do need to vent a bit elsewhere, particularly after last week when she was spectacularly unhelpful. Please don't take any offence, you must be all run ragged.

I do sort of agree with @Tomatoandbasil though that they really should not take on the work if they then can't maintain service levels. It's such an emotive subject though isn't it when it's a major, usually stressful time in people's lives.

Some things I have learned through this...

DO YOUR RESEARCH - particularly with solicitors. Some of them are beyond useless. Cheap conveyancing services (they're not solicitors normally) are nearly always crap.

Make sure your estate agent carries out financial checks on any potential buyers BEFORE they are allowed to view your house. We had so many people interested who couldn't afford the price tag. They just assumed they would be able to make a cheeky offer. We didn't even let them through the door.

Think about putting some of your stuff into storage before you show your house. Viewers get easily distracted and overwhelmed by contents. The house needs to be as empty as possible.

Find an independent removal firm registered with BAR (British Association of Removals companies). There is also lots of useful info on the BAR website. Packing and unpacking services are worth their weight in gold.

Never underestimate how long it will take to clear and pack your house. Be completely ruthless about getting rid of stuff you don't need.

Get quotes and make potential bookings at least 1 month ahead - more if you can. Good removals firms get booked up way in advance, but once you are "on their books" they are massively helpful and flexible.

Congratulations @DeeplyMovingExperience! So glad you didn’t have to give into your buyers to save the move.

We’ve actually got nothing but praise for our solicitors. We’ve been kept updated all the way along and they reply quickly. Our estate agents on the other hand are completely awful. They don’t reply for days on end, and for anything to happen we have to get angry. It’s so frustrating, I hate that we’ll be paying so much to them at the end of it (if we ever get there!)

@DeeplyMovingExperience I am absolutely thrilled for you.

Congratulations @DeeplyMovingExperience

So we still haven't been told officially by our solicitor that we aren't completing on Friday, though the developer still thinks we are.

Unlikely as we haven't received our ATE, contracts, paid the deposit etc.. any chance this can be turned around in 3 days??

I'm so frustrated with our buyers solicitors, looks like they lied to everyone when they said they'd applied for the searches back at the beginning of October. On top of that they seem incapable of actually replying to our solicitor.
Buyers want a service on the boiler doing as we've no crept over the 1 year mark but this info came to us through the estate agent vs solicitor which seems a little odd. We've always arranged through our solicitor in the past.
After our existing mortgage company told us they were running on a 12 week timescale from DIP to offer we applied somewhere else too. They gave us a mortgage offer 1 week on from application.