Buyers Sellers Roll Call - 13

[lachy]

Staring a new thread!

Come and say hi 👋

Radio silence - not alone!

Our solicitor and EA reckon we are still exchanging today

I suspect we will be joining the theoretically exchanging and completing tomorrow club soon.

At least the trend has gone from always next week, to always tomorrow to always next hour.

Hurrah @BrieAndChilli hope it all goes to plan for you, and everyone else supposed to be exchanging tomorrow. @Silkiechickscat massively crossing my fingers for you too!

We’ve not had any update from the EA - buyer was supposed to respond by 9am today...is she just keeping us hanging on to be a PITA? Or has she pulled out and the EA is trying to persuaded her not too... All I know is I’m getting through my stash of Rescue Remedy to try and control my anxiety, probably should consider buying shares at this point!

@Silkiechickscat fingers crossed for you for tomorrow too!

It looks like our chain has collapsed. If we can’t exchange tomorrow (which we can’t) then our buyers have lost their buyer due to mortgage offers expiring. First we heard of it.

I’ve fallen out of love with the house we are buying, so I think this may be a blessing in disguise.

Just had message from our buyers saying too late for tonight but will exchange and complete tomorrow and everything is in place for everyone. So I've just got parking permits for our buyers for next few days and hopefully all going through finally.

Good luck to BrieAndChilli, Mother and anyone else exchanging / completing tomorrow. I'm feeling more confident but got DH's phone to do an address change and saw he had a message about a hospital stay review and found out he'ld had a patch of what doctors thinks skin cancer removed so on to the next thing to worry about. But house sale will help so much. DD told him he needs to live the next 24 hours so we get house sale money.

Congratulations to those who have exchanged!! We were supposed to have completed by the end of Jan but still hanging on for an exchange date. We've been ready to go for 6 weeks now. Only in a chain of 3. Constantly refreshing my emails to see if there's any news and phoning the EA and Solicitor daily. Both other buyers wanted to exchange tomorrow so I don't know where its going wrong/slow

I thought it was all going too well. The searches on our house were due back tomorrow. The estate agent got in touch to say that the searches were now not going to be back until 10th June!!! Our buyers are going to look into an indemnity policy instead but I don't know what the outcome will be. If we don't complete by 31st March then we won't be moving.

@JustCheesz

I thought it was all going too well. The searches on our house were due back tomorrow. The estate agent got in touch to say that the searches were now not going to be back until 10th June!!! Our buyers are going to look into an indemnity policy instead but I don't know what the outcome will be. If we don't complete by 31st March then we won't be moving.

June?! How can that be?!

Good luck for tomorrow, @BrieAndChilli, @Silkiechickscat and @Winterwaves! Hope you get some info soon, @MotherofHeathens. I wouldn't be able to cope with the suspense!

@LaMariposa - I know you have mixed feelings anyway, but mortgage offers can usually be extended in that situation.

@JustCheesz - Wow - how can it slip from 5 Feb to 10 June?! I think indemnity policies are quite popular at the moment because of the stamp duty deadline, so fingers crossed that all works out for you!

My own update: heard today that our buyer wants to exchange next week. Fine with us! But this is dependent on...

• Our buyers' sale being ready. It's almost ready. It's been almost ready since October...

• The searches on our house coming back next week. They're due 9th Feb. They were previously due 15th Jan...

• The searches not throwing up any further enquiries. No ideaa on the likelihood of that one.

I'm not holding out much hope!

It's just a never ending cycle of stress! Good to hear so many of you are nearing completion. Not really sure if we're anywhere near!

Just spoke to solicitor and he filled me in on a few restrictive covenants on the house we are buying, which we're ok with. He has some further queries on the property and we are waiting for the search results. Our buyer is still waiting for the search results on our house and we're sending our answers over shortly.

Surveys complete and mortgage valuations done too. Hope to complete before end of March. Do we sound anywhere close to exchanging?

Yay @BrieAndChilli I’ve been checking for your updates! Fingers crossed all goes well tomorrow

I spoke too soon.
Our buyer is insisting on a boiler service prior to exchange. The same exchange that is meant to happen tomorrow in order for us to give enough notice to move our stuff into storage!

Aaaarrgghhhh.

Sorry to everyone who is being held up as well!

I wish I knew. Its states on the Council website that you can't contact them regarding searches as they are too busy.

The estate agent thinks it is because the Council are prioritizing search requests that have gone directly to them and that our buyers solicitors requested searches via a third party, so have been put to the bottom of the pile.

It makes no sense to me! But I was pleased to read that indemnity policies are quite popular at the moment, so thank you @PowerslidePanda - perhaps all is not lost!

@ldnirish

I spoke too soon. Our buyer is insisting on a boiler service prior to exchange. The same exchange that is meant to happen tomorrow in order for us to give enough notice to move our stuff into storage!

Aaaarrgghhhh.

Sorry to everyone who is being held up as well!

Can you agree that you pay for the service tomorrow even if it happens next week?

@midgedude that is a good shout! Thank you. I wonder if our buyer will go for that. At this point, we'll throw money at him to complete the sale. Six months and counting - a 3 person chain!

We've heard today our purchase is almost ready. One enquiry left. Our buyer (bottom of the chain) hasn't made their enquiries yet. SIGH.

Also, I know they will ask about the boiler/electrics and frankly I don't want to get either done right now

a) I don't think there's time before stamp duty to rectify anything that might come up
b) covid
c) let's say we need a new boiler - what's the point of us choosing one when the buyer might prefer to choose their own? It's an old house with an old boiler that they were specifically shown by my husband, it shouldn't come as a surprise to them.

Has anyone ever successfully said no to getting the boiler/electrics checked?

@JustCheesz

I thought it was all going too well. The searches on our house were due back tomorrow. The estate agent got in touch to say that the searches were now not going to be back until 10th June!!! Our buyers are going to look into an indemnity policy instead but I don't know what the outcome will be. If we don't complete by 31st March then we won't be moving.

June??

Must be Hackney

@InescapableDeath you're defo right to be worried about having someone in to look at the boiler while covid is ongoing.
Our buyer asked us to get ours serviced and the bloke had no gloves, no mask, leaned on and touched a ridiculous amount of things then went and used the toilet (peed all over the seat). I spent bloody ages sanitising afterwards. He'd been banging on about how busy he'd been and how he'd had so many customers - I was quite worried for a while in case he'd caught it somewhere.

I was expecting our buyer to ask for money off as the boiler is over 10yrs old and they didn't want to look at it when they viewed, but they were fine as long as it was working ok.
The house we're buying has a 30yr old boiler and we're not asking to reduce as we saw it when we viewed.
Our seller did refuse to have the electrics checked though and we've just had to accept it. The surveyor was worried it was dangerous.

We have an old house and old boiler and did get it serviced, and it passed and was about £160. I think our buyers are planning on changing it just wanted to know there was heating on arrival. It didn't take too long to get done, maybe a week and was quite covid safe but we knew the guy and also our house is empty. EICR we also paid for and rectifying work - total c£1500 in all which was more than I anticipated and about a month for both. Most people say no to EICR so I doubt that will be an issue.

Waiting to exchange / complete today.

We were told searches would be 6 weeks but came back much faster in a couple of weeks though about the only thing that went faster than expected in these covid times, everything else was cancelled about 3 times.

Our council also said don't contact them but I e-mailed and they replied by return.

We have exchanged, awaiting completion but exchange is already amazing.

@Silkiechickscat

We have exchanged, awaiting completion but exchange is already amazing.

Hurrah!! So pleased to see this update, I was just checking in to see if you'd had any news today!.