Pulling out of house sale???

[organisedmother]

I sold my house 1st August and purchased a house that is empty, the buyers of my house have sold their house to a first time buyer so nice short easy chain.

We thought we were exchanging Friday I have been waiting 2 weeks to confirm this and just found out buy the estate agent that the first time buyers are waiting for their searches to come back!!! This is confusing as my solicitor did not know about this and why one earth is this happening nearly 4months into a house sale!!! I’m thinking something isn’t adding up that I don’t know about, my buyers searches came back quickly and they are the same county I don’t understand what’s going on is someone just trying to buy some time!?

I’m so furious I’m considering pulling out and relisting to get a new buyer, I’m not sure I even believe their solicitor as he always tell my buyers he’s waiting for my solicitor to reply when he already has, my solicitor is very efficient if I email him his response time is about 30mins he doesn’t hang about as wants this house deal closed like everyone else!

I don’t see the point in hanging around any longer this should of been a speedy short move!

Unfortunately some solicitors move slow, especially with covid as an excuse, and it's not worth starting again. I'm sure the people moving into your house are getting just as frustrated and there's nothing they can do to speed it up, it would be unfair on them to pull out. I'd be devastated if I was in their position.

There's also no guarantee the checks needed for a new buyer would be any quicker.

OP I feel your pain. Our last purchase (about five years ago now) we waited five months (five months!!!) for the searches to come back. We were still waiting and our vendor was about to throw in the towel when our solicitor arranged for an agent to go into the Council in person and conduct the searches “manually” as it were. We exchanged that afternoon and completed the next day. That’s no help in your chain as I doubt councils are allowing agents into their offices at the moment.

I don’t know about your county, but ours has three different councils so it is possible they each have different backlogs.

Try to hang in there, it will still be quicker than relisting.

Ok a few things here:

1 - the FTB buyers solicitors won't have ordered searches until they received the Draft Contract Pack from the sellers solicitors. This could have been anything up to 4 - 6 weeks after the house actually sold.

2 - there are serious delays with some councils at the moment, which means the searches could still be outstanding. Results will vary dependent on the council they fall into and the type of search they ordered. They may also have had an issue with their mortgage as First Time Buyers (very common at the moment), and waited to order searches until after this was resolved as they are expensive.

3 - if you get new buyers, the process will start from the beginning and the average time to move has now gone up to 16-20 weeks after receiving the draft contract pack due to the pandemic.

Short and speedy moves are incredibly rare at the moment. It's really rubbish unfortunately but the way it will be for a while.

My searches are taking an AGE to come back. I paid for them to the solicitor immediately but he had to wait for the vendor’s solicitor to send something through before he could apply for them. Then the council have a huge delay and backlog. I’ve been as fast as I can!

I feel like I’m being so patient 😅 assuming my buyers their buyers are the same council (houses are down the road from each other) I don’t understand how it’s taking 4months!

I’m seriously thinking there is something else going on and so is my husband now, as they put an offer in mid July and now it’s mid November and their still waiting for searches!! That’s slow even for covid rate surely!!

How did we all get ours back months ago we’re all the same council, how is it when you buy a house in this country nobody knows where they stand when spending all this money and time.

I know I’m being dramatic but it’s 2020 I’m allowed to be 😂

We also put an offer in on a house in July and are still awaiting searches. The reason for this is that they were only ordered three weeks ago because the vendor’s solicitors are straight out of hell and took about 12 weeks to issue the draft contract pack. It might be nothing more than shoddy conveyancing rather than something else going on.

@Gyptian oh really wow that’s crazy, driving me mad! Anyone have any ideas how to get everybody on the fast train.... is it to risky to say somebody is going to throw in the towel!?

It could well be just shoddy conveyancing as pp stated. Our buyer’s conveyancer appeared to be totally incompetent. I contacted our buyer’s firm and told them what was happening ( or not happening) and asked the senior partner to investigate. I know you shouldn’t communicate with the other party but it worked! Their conveyancer was sacked and we finally exchanged the next day after a ten month process.

The last time we bought there were a few things that flagged as potential issues in the standard searches and our solicitor offered to do some 'enhanced' searches to make sure we knew all the facts so it could be that they've had the original searches and have had to do that.

Any chance they are using an online solicitor? The one in our chain did everything about 2 months after the rest of the chain.

I'm of the philosophy the squeaky wheel gets the most oil. Keep on chasing, emailing, calling. When we bought this place the seller was like a rottweiler pushing things along. She rang me every day, she rang our conveyancer every day, she rang her solicitor every day. It was October when we agreed the purchase and thought no way would we be in by Xmas. We moved in on Dec 1st. It was a real lesson to me of how to get things done.

Also, is the first property in the chain a flat or could it be a leasehold house? When we've had a flat in the chain before they've had to wait months for the leasehold pack from the land owner before they could do anything. And they may well have waited until the chain was complete before they started work - a lot of people recommend waiting until the chain is complete before you start spending money on searches etc.

No it’s not leasehold, so I just need to be more annoying than I am already lol!! Got it my vendor seem extra annoyed this morning as we thought exchange was tomorrow and now we are nowhere near 😬

I wonder if your buyer didn't have a buyer when you accepted their offer? OR, Perhaps their original buyer pulled out and they didnt tell you and had to find another buyer who is now at the start of the buying process. (This happened to us)

They had a set of first time buyers and I did keep checking to make sure there house wasn’t back on the market and I didn’t see it, It will be 4months soon and I’m over it I had 25 viewings lined up to view my property lots of first time buyers but my ea said they were great purchasers 🙄

Our last sale we were told by our solicitor that our buyers solicitors were awful.

They employed juniors to do basic jobs on a tread mill and rather than say do x y and a they would do x and then wait for x to be sorted then more in to y and wait for it to be sorted

It was painful.

Have you exchanged phone numbers with your buyers? If so you could try asking them directly as often you can find out a lot more than via the estate agent or solicitors as to the status of the sale.

I think given it's so close, give them the benefit of the doubt for now - but keep chasing. Everything is moving crazily slowly at the moment.
We offered end of August and our searches came back on Wednesday (and they were ordered right at the start). If they're FTB they've probably had a huge slog getting the mortgage application through, especially if they're with Nationwide who have really struggled (according to our Broker). So even if they are in the same area, you might find they were a few weeks behind on applying for searches because of waiting for the mortgage and then when searches were applied for they hit the particularly busy month of September, where the boom in property sales has created a huge backlog.

According to our Broker, EA and Solicitor all bets are currently off on how long things are taking. Made worse now my everyone desperately rushing to try and exchange and complete by Christmas. all services are overwhelmed.

If searches have been applied for like they say, they will come back at some point in the not too distant future and then it should all be quick moving. Relisting would put you right back at the start of the queue.

It's just insane how long the house buying process is in this country! The only people benefiting seems to be the solicitors.

I cannot believe how long our buyers are taking. We accepted their offer in June and we still haven't exchanged. There have been times when I've really wanted to tell them where to shove it and start again, but then we would be back to square one.

Every week for the past month we have been told "we are definitely exchanging this week" then nothing happens.

The whole experience has been (and continues to be) horrific.

@DeeplyMovingExperience that is the worst getting your hopes up to be let down, this house sale consumes my mind all the time I’m thinking about putting the Xmas decs UK next weekend to get in my head I prob won’t move this year 🙄

@Lurchermom my nationwide mortgage took 8 weeks too, now with Xmas Rush about to start feel like I have zero hope, at least we sold our houses in 2020 rite 😂