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!

Multiple emails from our mortgage broker last night mean that we've basically got an offer subject to valuation!

We're being pushed to complete by mid-May - which is about a month before I was expecting, but that's fine

So after poking the solicitor, they’ve heard nothing from the other side. Phone the estate agent, house is not listed on land registry and although not mortgage for the last 20 years they don’t know where/ who has the deeds.......

Estate agent says bear with them 24 hours sellers sons and frantically looking for documents, contacting old mortgage company and then they will voluntarily register with land registry.....

This seems nuts and something you would need to know before putting your house on the market.

We exchanged yesterday!!!!!!!! Now packing in earnest and yet another trip to the tip! The EA was very because we used online conveyancers, but our solicitor was very efficient. Good luck everyone.

@QueenOfPain sounds like you know what you're doing. I have no idea what a flue actually is.

@cathybates I do hope you get there soon. It sounds like you are beset by idiots from all directions

@dotdotdotdash. Yay!!!

So we seem to be talking dates and hoping to exchange this week 🤞

How long do normal people take off work around their moving date? (Because we’re not going on holiday, I have tons of annual leave). Is the week before and the week after normal? Do I need less time or more on each side?

@dotdotdotdash Hah, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just things my dad and stepdad have mentioned from looking at the photographs of the property. However I did have a stint as a building claims handler prior to doing my nurse training so I’d like to believe I’ve some retained knowledge.

@Hmmph I think it depends on if you can I work in a school and get one day off if not during the holidays. Also depends on how packed you are and if you want to do lots of DIY before unpacking?

@dotdotdotdash congratulations hurrah gives the rest of us hope!

@Didicat That must make it really hard for you! I have pretty much freedom in taking time off thankfully. We haven’t packed yet but will have time to do so before completion and I’m not planning on DIY either! Just cleaning and unpacking, but I am not sure I can bear to leave the new house too soon!

Latest update: they are saying they are wanting to exchange end next week (great) but are apparently going back to my solicitors with yet ANOTHER fucking issue - estate agent couldn’t find where she’d written it down but something about the tenancy agreement and independent legal advice/a personal guarantee. WTAF. It is almost TWO WEEKS since my solicitors last heard from them. Why the fuck didn’t they go back on this in the time they were awaiting the structural survey?!

We have no wine.

Finally. We have exchanged and will complete/move on the 1st April.

Yay.

@cathybates are they going to complete on the same day as exchange?

@Bouledeneige congratulations! Fab news not long now

@Didicat no idea. I’d love to complete on 29th but by same token, it is my husbands day off and we want to spend it as a family so don’t really want to be stuck to my phone all day and on 26th we are moving so same.

Good to hear some happy news! Well done all who have moved forward today

Not so good here. We didn't get the house. Apparently they went with a lower offer, who I assume was able to move quicker than us. SO frustrating though.

Then. 10 mins after I spoke to the EA, I got a letter from him, via email, saying that our offer had been rejected but to let them know if we wanted to increase it?? WTAF. You've literally just told me they went with a lower one because 'money was not the main factor'??

I have given up trying to work out how to play this stupid bloody game. We're walking away; something else will come up I'm sure.

Well we went from celebrating to stressville within the space of an hour.

Had our mortgage appointment for the property we're buying, after 1.5 hours on the phone we've been approved. Yay 🥂

Literally 20 minutes later we got a long message from the FTBs buying our house to say that a valuation survey has been done on our house by Nationwide and it's been valued at £260k, £10k short of our agreed price. This surprises us on two levels- firstly, this has all been done entirely remotely and no-one has set foot in our property. (Most lenders we know of are back to doing visits when valuing). Secondly, our next door neighbour sold her house three weeks before us, their mortgage valuation was done by visit and it has indeed been valued at £270k. (We are terraced new builds, our house and next door are literally identical footprints of eachother).

We can't really afford to just drop £10k as we've stretched ourselves with the new property as it's a fixer upper so we need that money to go towards renovation. Plus we truly believe that it's unfair to produce a down valuation when they haven't even done a visit to the outside or inside of the property. Our agent agrees and is going to request that Nationwide agree to either visit our house or that they take next doors valuation into account. Urgggggghhh.

We've just set the ball rolling on a purchase. We completed our sale before Christmas and are buying a vacant property so completely chain free. Keeping my fingers crossed that there are no complications and we can complete before the stamp duty holiday ends.

Can join please?

I don't really know what to call myself - I owned a flat jointly with an ex a long time ago but after bad romantic and financial choices I have been renting for over 10 years.

Now I am finally in a position to buy thanks to an inheritance.

So not quite a FTB but certainly feel like it.

I had my offer accepted beginning a January. Initially it felt like things were progressing well but now it seems everything has stalled. There's no chain either side but I haven't heard a thing from the vendors for a while. Before the stamp duty deadline I had enquired about their timelines for moving via the estate agent and the response was that the vendors wanted to discuss these matters via their solicitors. So I re-enquired via my solicitor and nearly a month on there is still no response.
I've had zero communication from the estate agent other than the above & since the offer was agreed - is this normal?

Felling a little nervous about it all!

Joining thread.

'10 Yellow Tulips'....'is this normal ?', you ask.
Certainly not abnormal. My situation - a mirror of yours - offer accepted early January, cash buyer, no chain either side (How difficult can it be ?).
Since when, 'zero communication' from estate agent/conveyancer.

The estate agent has really not been in touch at all since the offer, other than to briefly respond to my messages. I seem to recall from my previous purchase that they were in touch regularly with updates and questions etc.
I've not hear anything new from the vendors side for a month or so, my solicitor has sent a couple of chasers but no response.

Losing my shit. My lawyers have now had yet another letter from their useless lawyers. They have only now, after having had a copy of the policy for over 4 weeks, raised the issue of the excess on the indemnity policy and asking us to get an alternative. Four fucking weeks.

And they’re also bloody raising yet another issue re the tenancy and the deposit. Basically the property has been let to the same tenants since 2012. However, it was let by my then letting agent who took the deposit and told me it had been put into one of the deposit protection schemes (as required by law). It was only when the agent stopped returning my calls early 2019 and shut up shop I realised that they had not protected the deposit!! No joy in getting it back from them so paid the deposit into the scheme from my own money.

The buyer now saying this is an issue because technically, the tenants could sue for the fact I didn’t comply with the law. My answer to that is that yes, that’s technically correct but you have to ask what mischief that law was passed to prevent. That law was passed to prevent rogue landlords pocketing the deposit or taking from it unreasonably. The very fact that I’ve paid that into the scheme out of my own money shows I’m not a rogue landlord and am in fact a good one and therefore any court is not going to punish me for this.

But no, they are being stupid and not practical! Plus one tenant has gone already and the other goes 28 April so if it wss as an issue they’d have raised it by now!

@cathybates - that's incredibly frustrating, I'm sure that they're just making sure that the tenants will actually leave!

We've had our mortgage approved subject to valuation!

I do need to arrange to go and see the property again as I've got it all in my head and I've made it so much smaller (in my head) - is this a normal thing to be doing (we've not bought before only rented), I'd like to do some measuring?

@cathybates what the heck? There's an understandable amount of nitty gritty involved with the house buying process, but you'd think they'd want it done and sorted as much as you by now!

@ItemOneInYourFolder Yay for mortgage approval. I do the same thing with dimensions (but then I'm generally rubbish at predicting distance/size). Luckily for me a neighbouring house has also just sold and has a 360 video tour, and is unfurnished, so every so often I look at that just to remind myself!

@10YellowTulips that is unusually slow I think. I would be tempted to give them a deadline

Can I join the thread too? We're currently selling our house and will be moving to a much more expensive city in another country. We're in USA so the process is quite different from the UK, but i think annoying agents and buyers are universal!

Last week one of the viewings asked to have an extra 15 minutes in the house during their appointment. I thought, great, that means they're interested. But instead they spent that extra time making a list of all the complaints they had about my house so they could use it to try to suggest we drop our price by 80k+! One of their reasons we should do that was, their agent said, "your master bedroom is smaller than they wanted".

@10YellowTulips your estate agent would hate me I’ve spoken to the sellers estate agent at least twice a week post sale for updates. I’d ring them up and ask them to phone the sellers solicitors and phone you back with an update ASAP. They want you to buy the house because they want their commission.

Good news re mortgage offer has now come through, survey tomorrow- still nothing come through from the sellers solicitors so annoying as I know the searches are particularly slow in this country.

Three weeks in and I'm pulling my hair out!
Our mortgage was approved yesterday which is one worry out the way but literally 10 minutes later got the enquiries from our buyer.

My husband, who's a builder removed an internal wall two years ago and didn't get building regs. Nothing untoward just completely forgot and is now getting retrospective sign off 😅
I didn't realise there are also covenants in the deeds going back to when the council sold the house circa 30 years ago stating we need permission to make any alternations 🤦‍♀️ we never got permission even though the council signing off the building regs are the same council!
Anyway solicitor advised just to get indemnity but I'm panicking that will put our buyer off.

To top it off our buyer had a survey last week and the surveyor told me we had a roof leak. DH has been up on the loft every day checking for the leak and can't find one...
What are the chances the buyer will reduce his offer or pull out completely with all of that?