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!

Congrats @cathybates ! One less thing to worry about :)

@InescapableDeath thank you! We may well be popping the champers tonight

Joining this thread for some wisdom!

Finally accepted an offer on our property in January having been on the market for nearly 5 months, no chain either side as selling due to split, so really need gone.

Received enquiries from buyers solicitor a month ago and they also applied for searches, sent answers to enquiries back two weeks ago and now solicitor hasn’t heard anything from buyers solicitor.

Have never sold a property before, so just wondering if it’s normal to not hear for weeks?

Also when do you stop getting the impending sense of doom that it could fall apart at any moment.

@highashope I think they’ve all been massively under the kosh trying to meet the 31 March deadline. You probs need to get your solicitors to push theirs as he who shouts loudest and all that....

@cathybates Well that’s excellent news! Very pleased for you. I hope you get good news on the house front as well soon.

@highashope Make sure you chase through estate agents too!

@cathybates @Hmmph
Thank you both!
Now to just try and get my solicitor to answer the phone to me

We had our offer accepted on Monday on our next house. It’s end of chain and empty so our chain is complete.
Today has been spent sending emails - chasing for the Memorandum of Sale, getting a survey booked in, getting another viewing booked as we need to decide what renovations to do, getting all the mortgage paperwork in place.
Just found out the vendors solicitor is at the same firm as our solicitor, not a surprise as they are the main local firm. I’m hoping this won’t be a problem.
Aiming to move ASAP, lower down the chain is ready to go. Survey should be back by the end of the month, and searches are also fairly quick locally.
Second week of the Easter holidays too much to hope for?

Finally we are in.
6 months since we sold our house, we finally completed today.
But as the gift that keeps on giving, our seller kept us hanging on, even today. 🙄

Our removals came yesterday at 9am, packed all day yest and then for 3 hours this morning. At 11ish today we were done. We completed at 12 on our sale, and our purchase at 2pm. Then hung about in our cars abs their lorries at the new house for about 3 hours. finally got in at 4, because our seller was STILL moving her stuff out at 4pm. 🙄

Anyway, she was supposed to be taking the keys to her solicitor for us to collect, but our removal men convinced her to leave the keys so they could start unloading. What a palaver!!!! Anyway, we are in, finally!

Good luck to everyone else. I hope you all have a more straightforward move than we've had.

@ethelredonagoodday Yay for moving! Irritating your sellers still made you wait, even on moving day, but you’re in now and the house is yours. You don’t have to have anything more to do with them!

I have a question about exchanging contracts and deposits...

We almost in a position to exchange, just waiting on end of the chain to sort themselves out. When we do exchange, I think we have to give a deposit (10%?). How does this work? Does the person at the start of the chain give 10% cash deposit to their solicitors and then the next person give a full 10% of their purchase price to their solicitors or do they give the difference between their sale 10% and their purchase 10%?

When does all this money get transferred? Will the solicitors say “we’re exchanging tomorrow” and then we have to transfer a stack of cash to them that day?

Sorry- I am sure the solicitors will tell us the answers to all that when the time comes. I am just thinking about it all now in t excitement that it MIGHT actually happen!

(We have done this before, but it was a very long time ago and we can’t remember anything about it!)

Happy Friday I've not been around for a few days and it looks like I've plenty of posts to catch up on!

We have, thankfully, got a new buyer!!! Memo of sale is being sent to solicitors as I type. I'm hopeful that this person will be less hassle to deal with, our EA already said "I think this buyer will be a very different experience for you".

@Hmmph from what I understand, usually the person at the bottom pays their 10% deposit and then it gets transferred up the chain, so you only have to 'top up' the difference. Unless the rest of the chain have agreed they are happy to accept less than 10% in which case the deposit from the bottom of the chain just works it's way up. (This is only what I've gathered from reading on the internet, last time we weren't in a chain so it's all new to me too!).

Another week gone, still no nearer to exchange. Yet more enquiries raised, endless supply of things needed to satisfy a seemingly endless list of rules and regulations. Why do they drag this out, I really don’t understand why the solicitors didn’t ask for certificates, proof of purchase for this that and the other weeks ago when we answered enquiries raised initially??? Every time we think we’re done, we get another email with yet another list of things to answer/sort out. I am sick and tired of it. So much for completing next week 🙄 we won’t even be in by easter at this rate.

Wineandbooks you and me both. Though to be fair it all felt like it had all been done weeks ago. I got a call today at midday to say we were hoping to exchange on Monday and then within the hour another call to say its had to be moved back till later in the week. I've signed the contract for sale of my house but not the one for my purchase. to be fair my estate agents have worked so hard trying to coordinate and make it happen they have really earned their fee. My house went on the market in August.

My biggest anxiety is that I've not been able to book a removal firm till I have a date for completion so even if we get the date 2 weeks after exchange I may have a lot of frantic phoning round to try and find someone to pack up and move my stuff. Such is the demand built up to get in before the stamp duty deadline (as was) they are not taking any tentative bookings - to book a date you have to pay straight away. I know my preferred remover does not have availability now. And then of course there will be all the utilities calls to do. My biggest concern about that is internet connection.

Still I'm all done on my downsizing and sorting. I have reduced the contents of my house by 60-70 percent, just have 2 more cupboards to do in the kitchen and then I'm ready. Fridge cleaned and de-frosted...

Thank you @MotherofHeathens!

@Wineandbooks -exactly the same here. We have now pre-emoted some of the enquiries which have been asked by buyer but not formally through her solicitors. When will these blasted enquiries end?!

They completed on the property they were selling on Thursday so I am hoping they want to move to exchange and completion on mine soon.

I’ve had so much stress in the last 6 months that I just want to get my money.

We worked out that if this goes through, in the last 4 years we will have sold 4 properties (my house pre-marriage, DH’s flat pre-marriage, our marital home and this accidental BTL flat now under offer), bought one (our marital home - still looking for another to buy!) and moved 4 times by the time we’ve bought another house. Oh and got married and had 2 kids and a miscarriage - WTF?!

Well the estate agents were right about the market in our area. We went on the market at 5pm Tuesday and by 3pm Thursday had an offer at full asking price! Just need to find a house to move to now. Viewing one today which has been extended and so has an amazing open plan kitchen diner but it looks like upstairs is still quite small. It’s so hard as we’ll have to make some compromises wherever we go and difficult to decide what on!

@Bouledeneige
@cathybates
I really hope you get sorted very soon. Once this goes through I am not putting myself through all this again! Just hope my new neighbours are nice...

For me, it’s the not knowing either way. Our solicitors are ready and suggested 12 March to our buyer and seller, have heard nothing either way. The one we are (hopefully) buying is already empty so I can’t see there being an issue there, but as for our buyer - who knows? If they’d just say yay or nay either way, as I’m in limbo half packed and half not, sorting annual leave ‘just in case’, plus having to sort out for back to school on Monday. Could really do to know either way!!

Our solicitor said all along they aim for 5 days in between exchange and completion and DH remains confident that we will still exchange on Monday, so much so that he has a booked time off work, has a van booked for Friday (doesn’t want to pay for removers) and has cancelled sky etc. I wish I shared his optimism at this point!!

Good luck wineandbooks I hope it works out this week. We are also looking at 12th for exchange but for no obvious reason have to wait 2 weeks to complete.

I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would move fairly frequently - it's such a drawn out process when there's a chain. And weeks just keep rolling by. I've not had any queries in more than a month. I will be so relieved when it's done.

@notinthestarsigns

Well the estate agents were right about the market in our area. We went on the market at 5pm Tuesday and by 3pm Thursday had an offer at full asking price! Just need to find a house to move to now. Viewing one today which has been extended and so has an amazing open plan kitchen diner but it looks like upstairs is still quite small. It’s so hard as we’ll have to make some compromises wherever we go and difficult to decide what on!

We're in the same position - sold on the first day of viewings two weeks ago and are now struggling to find somewhere to move to. Very little on the market around us, we viewed one property yesterday and three today, two weren't appropriate and the other two were ok but came with a fair few (different!) compromises.

So after a week of faffing and us upping our off £1k we have had our offer accepted! After not going through with our last purchase due to structural issues. I can’t seem to get the excitement this time. Lovely family house, nice feel to it, nice village, ticks all the boxes apart from direction of garden....

Now we are in a race with Rishi to beat June 30th!

Is anyone else waiting on a land registry query at the moment? Apparently our seller has a query there about a garage on their purchase and it's the last outstanding query. I'm desperate to get an exchange date so this thing may actually happen!

Hmmph re deposits I think motherofheathens explained it right. But if you check out other recent threads on this Property/DIY board there has been quite a lot of discussion and explanation of this question.

The deposit goes up the chain with top ups. My buyer is not quite fully able to provide the full 10 percent but I've agreed to it as its sufficient for my purchase as I am down-sizing.

It’s hard isn’t it @mummabubs. The one we viewed yesterday was no good for us, there is literally nothing else on the market near us worth viewing now. The decent ones that do come on the market do seem to get snapped up very quickly though so I think we just have to be ready for when one does come up and at least we are in a good position with having an offer on our house.

So after our purchase fell through, we lined up loads of properties to view yesterday. Found one we fell in love with, put in an offer and it was accepted. Vendor has already found their new home which is chain free so hopefully this will move without issue 🤞

Oddly, it was the smallest, and most impractical of the lot but it just felt like coming home.

Fingers crossed for us both @notinthestarsigns! 🤞🏻 Good luck x