Buyers Sellers Roll Call - 13

[lachy]

Staring a new thread!

Come and say hi 👋

We recieved some fantastic news on Friday, our buyers who were refused a mortgage (our house has single skin) to fund their loft conversion, got into contact with our estate agent to say they will proceed with the sale!! I have felt constantly sick with anxiety for weeks and weeks about this, so the relief is incredible. Hoping to exchange in the next two weeks and then I really can relax.

@FGSWhatNow I'm also a stressed seller/purchaser and it's all dragging on.
I was informed the extension on my house had no sign off (we were told it had when we bought it 20yrs ago).
I emailed the council at 11:30pm and by the next afternoon I had the certificate by email. You'd expect your sellers to have it if it was only last year, obviously, but it might be worth getting them to contact the council as it could be as easy to solve as mine was.
Our purchase don't seem to have their building regs either and we've been waiting weeks for it to be provided.

Thanks catfeets, that's reassuring. Hopefully ours can be sorted just as easily! Why do these things always happen at the weekend when you can't get in touch with anyone!?

Oh my. I am not the case study you want to hear about. First put my house on the market in August. My first sale fell through in October (they couldn't sell their flat as it was in a building with Grenfell style cladding). My purchase fell through and the property I wanted to buy went back on the market. My current offer came in but was initially way too low. With some very hard bargaining it was negotiated up and the vendors of the place I wanted to buy were negotiated down and finally accepted a reduced offer. they met in the middle. We are now at the final stages of surveys and legal searches, looking at completing in early March (cross fingers). So I'm busy pushing on the admin, keeping my solicitor on track, some final investigation reports on the property I'm buying, getting quotes from removal companies and selling furniture (I'm downsizing).

Plus side its keeping me busy during boring lockdown days - it has been very stressful though. I have a future to look forward to - a place to decorate and furnish. A new start. The first place I ever bought on my own at 56 and the last financial conditions of my 12 year ago divorce settled. And hopefully we get through under the wire for the stamp duty holiday - which otherwise would cost me £15K more. Crossing fingers everything stays on track....

Just a little update on our building regs panic. I spoke to our solicitor this morning and asked him about the local search, which said that our vendors don't have the building regs completion certificate for an extension. Apparently when the vendors returned their property information form, they'd marked it as "pending", but have since supplied the cert to the solicitor. It seems like it was only recently obtained, so the solicitor thinks the online records haven't caught up, hence not being found in the search. So it looks like we're all good (thank goodnes).

Now the hurdle of our survey to get over next!

Ugh, our buyer's solicitor still hasn't got searches back :(. They offered in late November I think (we found somewhere early Dec). So frustrated. Our solicitor paid for expedited searches (this is all the same town) and got info back in a week.

The buyer is the only one unaffected by stamp duty...

Can I join?

We accepted an offer on our house on Saturday, just waiting for the EA to get all the financial stuff from the buyer before the house comes off the market.

Not sold before so it's all new territory! Thankfully we are already in our new home, and our buyers are FTB, so hoping it's as uncomplicated a scenario as it can be. Not too worried about delays, just want it all to go through so that we aren't paying 2 mortgages every month!

Hoping buyers have factored in stamp duty... 🙏 would be a miracle for it to all go through before the deadline so surely people making offers now will recognise that? When I instructed our solicitor this morning she was shocked I wasn't concerned when she made it clear they couldn't guarantee completion before the deadline... I'm perhaps being naïve and it'll end up being what loses us the sale 😓

We exchanged today!! Moving on Friday!

Still feels a dream... We've been in the process since September.

All the best everyone... hang in there.

@ANewDawnANewDay many congrats, amazing news.

I wish it was me! Still waiting to exchange. So fed up with it now.

New joiner, longtime lurker! Sold our house back in September and it fell through last week at the point of exchange. 😫

Sold again today which means we still get our original onward purchase (dream home) and our new buyers are keen to move ASAP as the chain below them is all ready to exchange they've just waiting on them to find a new property after their original purchase fell through as issues with chain above. I am top of the chain now.

So happy we managed to get a new buyer so fast, but won't relax until we exchange, well not even then - until we get the keys!

25 weeks today since we first put the house on the market. 🤯

So after a stressful couple of weeks we are exchanging on Thursday and completing next Friday! Just crossing everything that there’s no issues!

After nearly 5 months, we have completed today! As we are moving from rented we have this week to move in all the stuff.

I’m still here. Unfortunately!

Our vendor is refusing / delaying / fibbing about answering further enquiries

So lovely to see some exchanges and completions. Congratulations to all those who are at/over the final hurdles - enjoy your new homes!

We're just waiting on things, waiting on enquiry responses from our vendors, waiting for our electrician to be available to do an inspection (normally the buyer would pay but we've said we'll do it so we can arrange it with someone we trust/at a time that's convenient for us), waiting to see if our buyer has enquires post survey and visit with her builder...
Have at least made progress sorting and packing bits, taking stuff to the tip has been the highlight of entertainment recently!

Congratulations to all who reached the end of this process!

We're still here, still waiting to exchange... our buyers are holding the whole chain up as they are still waiting for pension funds to arrive. Everyone else ready for exchange for past 2+ weeks and we were originally supposed to complete yesterday!

We kept our removals booking for yesterday (all very booked up here at the moment and didn't want to risk not being able to get another booking so late in the day!) so now 75% of our possessions are in storage and we are 'camping out' in our empty, echoey house while we wait.

Buyers emailed agent today to say funds should be there tomorrow, so fingers crossed we will exchange tomorrow and complete on the 3rd February...

I am never moving again, this is the most stressful thing I have ever been through!

Still here, and also still waiting to exchange, although we have now signed contracts for both our sale, and yesterday, our purchase.
Top link in the chain is awaiting confirmation of their mortgage, and then hopefully we may be near to exchanging... 22 weeks since we sold ours... 🤦🏼‍♀️

Got my mortgage offer and valuation through and all the legal paper work. Looking at first week of March for completion.

Interested to note from the fixtures and fitting firm fir my new home - no burglar alarm, no cable TV currently (though cabling fir virgin is there as had it before). Also leaving the washing machine. No dryer or built in microwave.

I will definitely need cable Tv and to get a washer dryer. I can't do with washing drying all over the place. I have a burger alarm on my current house but if I'm honest don't really use it.

Still not exchanged, I will post when we do 🤞

The e-petition to extend SDLT holiday for 6 mths after 31 March 21, is going to be debated 1 Feb 21 @ 4.30. I had an email this morning, so check your mailbox or junk if you want to watch the debate.

Still not got close to exchange as far as I can tell ( started September , just selling our house, no probate or anything )

However a huge success... their solicitor has sent questions to ours based on the searches

This ends the standoff of their solicitor asking for a response and ours asking for the questions first

What sort of things get raised at this point ? What should I expect ? I have never sold before so am a bit clueless . And when I bought it was during divorce when I was like a zombie through the whole process.

Well after accepting an offer on ours last October we have finally found a property ourselves. Had the offer accepted today.
We are ( most likely) still going to move into a friends rental for a few weeks as we had agreed with our buyers.
Our vendors are moving into rented and we'll be cash buyers. Our solicitor is ace and says she'll do her best to get it through by 31st March.
Searches are taking 5-8 days. I just hope vendors solicitor is decent. We shall see!

Ooh does anyone know, can the vendor use the same solicitor as us as long as it's a different branch? I have that in my head from purchasing last time.....

whyamidoingthistomyself the questions usually focus on things like:

• evidence of last service of the boiler
• any building consents/approvals for previous work - eg. extensions, removals of supporting walls, installation of new doors and windows (if planning related)
• any other legal issues re party wall agreements, rights of way etc

Thanks

We've exchanged! We are completing next Wednesday, 3 months to the day since our offer was accepted on the house we're buying! It already feels very surreal and a little bit odd to no longer be chasing and speaking to/emailing multiple people every day!

Ooh great news notso@DisappointedOfNorfolk

I'm worried we may have hit a stumbling block already and we only had our offer accepted yesterday! The attic has been converted and includes a ( minuscule) shower room. I booked a surveyor this morning who said it (attic and en-suite) will have needed building regs cert.
On the council website it only shows the status as 'work started in 2002'
No further info at all 🤷🏻‍♀️
Could it just be that it hadn't been updated?
We have asked their agent and cc'd in our solicitor.
Agent has swerved the question and just said they have given the surveyor the vendors details.

Our solicitors could just log into a council portal and download the building regs cert. vendor didn’t have it and couldn’t remember getting one but thankfully it turned out it had been done!