Buyers Sellers Roll Call 14

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New thread for anyone buying or selling houses at the moment - come join us!

The previous thread ran for about 10 weeks and in ordinary (non-stamp duty holiday) times, that's long enough to get a transaction through, so let's hope this thread sees lots of people finish!

Well done @Thingsthatgo and @Caroline147 with your respective achievements.

@InescapableDeath, @cathybates and @Wineandbooks I feel your pain. We’ve just discovered one of our chain wants 4 week between exchange and completion so wants to exchange on Thursday. Which would be great, but their solicitors haven’t given the contract to ours yet! And after 4 months there are still enquiries outstanding. And we keep discovering things in the chain that haven’t happened. Urgh! People!

Anyone know what time the all important stamp duty announcement will (hopefully) be confirmed tomorrow? We need it to take the pressure off, but also partly don’t want the pressure off or we might still be in the same position on June 2nd as we are today!

Sorry to hear about all the issues some of you are having - sounds like an absolute nightmare, can't believe how flawed the house buying process is in this country. All seems very unfair.

We are in the process of buying our first home, offer was accepted in January and today we have received confirmation from the solicitor that the searches are back and she will be sending documentation to sign in the next couple of days. She has also instructed us to close our HTB ISAs. Surely we can't be that far off now? I can't deal with the stress for much longer! This is the 3rd house we are attempting to buy, both previous vendors pulled out for different reasons

@Hmmph - daily fail says it’s happening (but not sure whether to believe!!). SO frustrating re outstanding enquiries. I’ve read some of the correspondence passing between my solicitors and the buyers solicitors. I’m a lawyer myself (not property or Uk) but I just don’t get this system/why they don’t just answer stuff straight. It’s like a big points scoring exercise.

I just want rid now. We sold our house end last year and moved into rented. Wanted to get rid of the flat which is causing all this grief just cos I’ve had enough (was an accidental landlord - bought a flat years ago, lost my job, moved away for work and rented it out) and was sick of all the responsibility that went with it. Struggling to find a house where we live for the cash we have (which is ridiculous!!) so DH and I decided we’d put proceeds from flat (or some of) towards a home. Been wedded to that idea since we decided and now it just feels like it’s never going through.

Can’t believe there are enquiries outstanding 4 months - WTF are these lawyers doing?! My lawyers don’t want the SD holiday to be extended as they are knackered and just wanted 31 March to arrive so normality would resume!!

Apparently the budget is at 12.30...

Cathy- it all seems to be secrets and lies and smokescreens to justify fees. If we were actually allowed to know what was going on, I’m sure the sales could progress much faster. Most of the work doesn’t need the solicitors anyway, it’s just an admin task of collating the questions from the buyer and sending them to the seller. Or requesting searches etc. For the fees they charge, they could employ a few more admin staff and speed the process up.

Having said all that, our solicitors are actually really good. It’s everyone else’s that are the problem (and the “move managers” at estate agents, but let’s not even get started on them...!)

We are still in limbo land. Huge chain and still waiting for the top of the chain to find a rental before they will commit to a date. It’s been a month-how can they have not found anywhere in a month?! 😩😩 I’m really worried that there is something else going on and the chain will fall apart.

It will be great if the stamp duty holiday is extended but our mortgage offer runs out at the end of March and as it’s already been extended once, I really don’t know if it will be extended again. This is just so stressful and frustrating. 😭

Only three days in and I'm already stressed about everything! The survey is booked for our house next week and I'm panicking it's going to come back saying something bad and they'll reduce their offer. DH thinks I'm mad!
Mortgage application going in today so keeping everything crossed

Still don't know if our sale is going ahead next week as expected. I have annual leave and removals booked to move into rented and I'm having serious collywobbles about the whole thing & if it's the right thing to do
A House that went in RM yesterday isn't accepting viewings as they have too much interest, even though we're cash buyers. It's insane.

Male sure to be registered direct with every estate agent , right Move is behind usually so you will miss out if things are going fast

Stamp duty extended! I updated another thread with what I wrote re our difficult buyer so will copy here:

Update!

I gave the solicitor/EA information about how you don't need to sign another six-month contract and buyer has agreed to talk to her letting agent. We have talked to EA about how we would potentially help with her rental costs if it comes to that. When he suggested putting the house back on the market, she said no please don't do that.

We found out the panic about the dates was because she wanted two weeks to put carpet down, so nearly broke the whole chain so she could get access on the 12th, then move on the 25th.

Our upper vendor is nearly done (waiting on a land registry query about a garage), so as long as their query doesn't break the whole thing, we should actually be ready to move in early April.

Phew... until next time.

Good news (to a point) Re stamp duty.
It all depends, if it continues to inflate property prices as it is now, then what's the point!
I am hoping it'll bring a few more properties to the market though.
The gov.Uk site has been updated already but the actual calculator hadn't been as yet.
For us it will be a saving of 10k ish up to end of June and having to pay around £7k after.

@notinthestarsigns. It sounds like the market is flying where you are. Which area is it? Sorry, nosey me.

@Winterwaves have you had the viewing yet? Our buyers are bringing a builder round tomorrow and I'm similarly and hoping they are not looking for something where they can pick fault and either renegotiate or pull out. It's probably nothing but it's late in the day - I was hoping to exchange on Friday

@InescapableDeath your carpet-loving buyer sounds a bit daft to me. I hope it works out

The SDLT holiday extension takes the pressure off slightly but I'm looking forward to exchange as I'm too superstitious to start packing until we do!

Good luck everyone

I am so relieved about the stamp duty extension. Even though we are nearly there, the stress of a deadline is off.

Everything in moving forward a bit with us now- I think (hope) we are nearly at exchange. Everything is ready with our sale and purchase, just waiting on ftb end of the chain to sort himself out now. No idea why it is taking him the longest as we were the last in the chain to offer! His foot dragging makes me rather worried. Currently thinking up other abbreviations for ftb..

We are in the north west @dotdotdotdash. So hard with the market like this, means to even have a chance of getting a house you have got to get in straight away and no time to really think about it! Also don’t want to get involved in a bidding war and paying over the odds.

Our house went on the market just before 5pm. We had one viewing today and got another 6 for tomorrow. Have any of you done the viewings yourselves or have the agents done them? We did the one today ourselves and the ones tomorrow but thinking of getting the agents to take over if it doesn’t go after that.

Sorry that should have said 5pm yesterday!

@notinthestarsigns good luck with the viewings. I only did one viewing (EA did the other 36 ) and didn't enjoy it much. I try to be philosophical about house buying and selling and think you will find the right one at the right price, regardless of market hysteria! At least it helps calm my nerves.

I'm going into rented and hoping that the prices in South London will go down slightly when the SDLT holiday ends so I can actually afford something half decent!

Thanks @dotdotdotdash. Yeah I think it’s important to not get too carried away with it all isn’t it. That’s a pain having to go into rented but saves the stress of everything having to happen in one day. I can’t believe how much prices have gone up round here, can’t see them going down any time soon either, despite all the predictions.

We're in Wales, have sold our house but really struggling to find somewhere to buy as the market is dead and prices keep climbing due to buyer demand. Sadly the stamp duty holiday extension doesn't affect us but I really hope they extend our crappier deal here (our "free" limit is £250,000) just to bring more properties onto the market!

@Gyptian I wonder if they have the same issue we have? We've sold and had said we'd go into rented to stop a sale falling through, but the sales market is dead and the rental market is even 'deader'! Literally nothing to rent here plus we have a dog so will make it more tricky 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

@mummabubs -sorry to hear that you’re having trouble finding a rental. I’m not sure what the rental market is like where we are-we’re in a city, so I would have hoped it wouldn’t have taken them too long. They might be looking for something specific though. I think I would be more patient if it wasn’t for our mortgage offer expiring.

Still bloody waiting to exchange. I'm so ready. I'm downsizing and have reduced my house contents by 80 percent. One week passes after the next.....

It's really stressful isn't it when you have your own time pressures too @Gyptian. This is the first time we've had to be part of a proper chain aa last time we were FTBs and bought somewhere with no onward chain so completed in 9.5 weeks from the day we viewed... Very different this time around! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Hope your people find somewhere to rent - we actually live in one of the biggest cities in Wales and it's still dire!

I’m just not confident mine will go through. I honestly just can’t deal with all this stress any more. Since September, I have:

Sold one house;
Moved into one rental;
Had a baby (by c section!)
Had the flat in trying to sell go under offer;
Moving into another rental
Can’t find a house here
And today I’ll find out if I’ve got breast cancer! (I am suspecting not but it’s still been on my mind)

Just want the whole thing to fuck of so we can actually start enjoying our lives with our boys

@cathybates best of luck today- I really hope it is good news for you.

Thought we were about to exchange - now buyers solicitors have sent through more enquiries. Want to get started on the huge list of jobs once we exchange.

@Hmmph thank you! Just got back from consult and I’m all clear thank god!