Buyers Sellers Roll Call - 13

[lachy]

Staring a new thread!

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How long did it take to get your report back from solicitor after all searches and enquiries were completed on property you're purchasing?

No exchange here today 🤬

We're about to ring the removals company to let them know.

I am so thoroughly fed up. At least now we know we'll be here for Christmas so we can at least get ready for a Christmas in a very sparse house!

E-mailed the solicitor to let them know buyers survey had been done but no results yet and electrics being done today and will send certificate over next week. CC'd estate agent who replied that they had heard back from our buyer and had told them to take or leave current price and had sent whole survey in and it just contained 3 urgent things. You would have thought EA would have mentioned this before.

I've managed to establish what the 3 urgent things are - 1 they mentioned before so should have been in their offer, 2nd one will cost around £1k and is only urgent if you are a surveyor and 3rd one should cost around 2k but be split 50-50 with neighbour so probably 2k of work they weren't expecting. We are paying £1k for electrics which they probably wouldn't have expected us to pay. So hopefully they will be OK with the EA hardline, they got 9% off original asking price after 5 weeks. Hoping he's told them about electrics.DH tried to phone him and got I'll put you through then sorry EA isn't there he's just on a viewing, there are 3 of them in a small office - he then e-mailed me 2 mins later. They need to improve their lying

We are getting so fed up blooming solicitors ours and vendors are beyond slow I don't think we will be moving before Christmas now and what's worse is our buyer's have now had Mail re directed to ours 🤷‍♀️ so I have that added stress now of making sure any mail comes to put it aside I don't know what possessed them to do that without an actual confirmed moving date.
I think like us they are fed up and just want to be in new home.

So rang the solicitors today to find out how things are going along and they are still waiting for the vendors solicitors to send them the contract pack!!! Unfortunately the vendors are using the cheap solicitors in town that we were warned off as very slow and useless!!!!

We've found out our house valued at agreed price.

Our solicitor has a message on e-mails saying all messages will be ignored unless completing today and saying they are beyond busy - guess its those trying to complete pre Xmas. Not much going on with ours atm luckily, searches won't be back until Jan.

We got our valuation of our vendor's property back today too - all good! And now our mortgage is fully approved. That was five days from mortgage application to full approval!

Still no solicitor movement of course... Guess that will be the new year now! I'm expecting it to all fall apart somewhere but least the mortgage bit has gone okay.

We're thinking about issuing a bit of an ultimatum to our buyers - if we don't hear from your solicitor before the end of next week we'll assume you're no longer interested. Had no response to any emails or calls since the 24th November.

We've just heard from EA that Asbestos Man has been and said house is fine and buyers are accepting price as is after survey and last search due back on 14th December. They want to exchange pre Christmas and complete mid January, both great with us.

We need to get contract and transfer deed signed and witnessed asap - I presume they need both those pre exchange though DS is self-isolating until 17th. Looks like govt just changed rules to end that on 14th and we are allowed out anyway before then though trying to minimise leaving house. Very relieved.

Is there anyone self employed here? Wondering how long it took you to get mortgage offer through? My buyer’s mortgage is taking quite a while due to one half of the couple being self employed and the underwriters keep coming back with more q’s re covid impact... I’m getting myself worked up that it’ll be rejected.

I've FINALLY had my mortgage valuation done, 3wks after the keys left the estate agent!
Our surveyor is possibly changing our full survey date from next week to the week after so it feels like this will just drag on forever.

We finally got our keys to new house today- offered in august, no chain, vendors already had a second home and took us 16 weeks. We relocated to another part of Uk and have been living with family for 5 weeks. Furniture doesn't arrive until next week so we're camping out in the living room. God it feels great though! Good luck everyone

@lollypop345 I'm part time self employed/ work paye part time also. Took 14 weeks in total. So much back and forth with underwriters. I think I was unusual though as I'm a high earned but not long done my self employed bit.

Radio silence since Wednesday so I have no idea if my chain has fallen apart or if the bottom buyer is willing to wait until after Christmas. It’s so frustrating.

@Mumbum2011 oh wow that's a long time. We are 10 weeks in but they applied for mortgage 3 weeks ago... all is ready with my purchase just waiting on buyers mortgage, the stress I'm feeling is horrid!

@Mumbum2011 what lender did you use? X

Writing here for a bit of solidarity hopefully! Today am feeling really anxious about the whole thing and quite tearful. Weve had an LPE1 form through and I don't understand a load of the questions. We have also been asked to get an electrical certificate (EICR) which I'm worried is going to end up costing us a bomb (all faults have to be fixed before the certificate is issued). Our place is in good condition, but it is Victorian so not everything is going to be perfect.

My husband is sick of my worrying about it, but I'm the one doing the forms and setting everything up.

@lollypop345 I used Halifax

Offer accepted in September everything completed. Survey came back overvalued renegotiated moving date set for January now.

Oaklion We paid for an EICR for our buyers but there's no obligation to - buy-to-let need a pass to rent out now but they can pay for it themselves. If it fails which most houses do if electrics pre 2018 which is what its tested against the standards for you don't have to get a pass - you get a certificate with the faults listed by urgency and then an seperate quote of how much to rectify. In our case we did it and paid for a pass and it cost £288 for certificate incl vat and £1150 for works including vat for a Victorian house so was quite a bit but we did that and said we won't pay for issues after survey. Buyers have accepted that and going through really fast atm. But you are under no obligation to pay for certificate, get a pass or pay for works - its all up to you. Only thing is if you get a fail (likely) then you get a list of cost of work and also it may cause issues if you have an insurance claim due to an electrical fault not rectified.

So I would vere towards paying and doing work or refusing totally. I used a NIECIC contractor listed on website who had Trustmark as well and they were excellent but it does take it over and above are my electrics safe which is what I wanted. I originally got it as we had electrical work done before by an NIECIC contractor but he never issued an electrical certificate and so I wanted to prove electrics were safe. The other form would ask your solicitor about if you don't understand it. Could you do the form with your DH? I led on the forms but anything complicated I checked with DH what he thought and anything not a clue I asked solicitor if couldn't find answer online.

@SilkiesnowchicksandXmastreecat Thanks for your reply. Were you selling your place as a BTL? I'll call up the progression agent on Monday and see if the buyers actually want it done, or if it's just been suggested by the solicitor. We gave our buyers a good price so I'm not too keen with one thing after another...

No its to people who will live there but it was completely my idea and buyers didn't ask for it. I think its quite rare for people to do this and our EA said most houses come back as fail and not to worry if it does. If I'ld known the cost involved and that it took it to a much higher standard than safe I'm not sure I would have bothered. However, we used it to bargain against us paying for any survey faults so worked out in the end as those where higher for the urgent (around £4,000) and gave me piece of mind about electrics.

@SilkiesnowchicksandXmastreecat did you have the electrics done first or the survey? My instinct was to agree to it but then say we won't pay for any survey faults but I worry that they won't keep their word...

Survey done first then they gave report with fail and list and some photos of issues with a quote for work to get it up to a pass. Once that work is done they issue a new report with satisfactory (pass on) for free - all done with same electrician.

@BrieAndChilli how long have you been waiting for the contract pack? I'm getting antsy about this but genuinely don't know if I'm being impatient. I read on another forum that the solicitors often get the blame for this when it can actually be that the vendors haven't filled in their forms yet!