Buyers Sellers Roll Call 15

[MotherofHeathens]

Because we're nearly at the end of the other thread and still inflicting this torture on ourselves...!

@goodbyestranger it ran concurrently for us. But the legal stuff may need to be amended to accommodate any findings, iyswim?

@MaudBaileysGreenTurban how marvellous! Congratulations!

@Caroline147 she sounds quite bonkers 😂
I'd quite like that level of naivety in this process. Then you don't really worry

Valuation came good, and our buyer's mortgage has been approved. Provisional date for exchange next Friday. Here is hoping my name gets updated at the land registry ASAP! 😭😭

Well, another week gone and still absolutely nothing from sellers' solicitors... guess they are still hashing out the settlement... meantime we have submitted all our paperwork and done survey. I have sympathy for sellers but they really need to vote the bullet.

Does anyone have any insight into inheritance tax? We have been incredibly lucky to have been given some help with the initial costs (stamp duty, solicitors etc) and have just declared this on our solicitors forms. Am I right in understanding that should the person who had gifted the money above the 3000 a year allowance sadly pass within 7 years, we would techincally not be expected to repay 40% (or the tapered amount) ourselves, rather this would be included in the estate worth and taken from whatever is left prior to being distributed amongst recipients? Utterly utterly morbid question but I'm a bit confused with the details.

@meow1989 it's quite complicated but they will look at the gifts in the 7 years before death. As you rightly say they will apply the taper relief to the time period in which the gifts were paid in those 7 years. They will look at the threshold too - so they will look at the £325k threshold (anything below that is tax free) and the gifts are essentially calculated first (to apply the taper) and then the rest of the estate.

It's one of the areas in tax where you can't really predict it because you don't know when the giver of the gift will die (sorry for being morbid!)

And @meow1989 I didn't really answer your question because it really does depend on the state of the estate. If the allowance has been used up (so if gifts over £325k have been given in the last 7 years before death), you would be asked to find the % of the gift as IHT. Some people deal with this by having life insurance policies that pay the receiver an amount to cover the potential tax but that's usually with a large gift. It really does depend on the situation but it's prudent to plan for the fact that it might need to be paid.

Oh lord I'm so nervous. Just waiting to hear if our potential buyers actually want to buy our house or not. I've been relatively calm so far but I really really want to sell this one so we can move on and start looking for a new house. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but also trying not to get my hopes up to avoid disappointment.

Hahahahahahaha.

So our buyers who pulled out have come back with a much lower offer on the basis of the fact there is some work they would like to do on the house (it's very much a would "like" to do, and would have been evident at the time of their original offer).

Either she is very naive about what it means when an offer is accepted and the expense/hassle we've gone through or her parents (who are buying the property for her) are trying some very underhanded tactics knowing we've got a mortgage offer and therefore are slightly on the clock.

Not even going to reply to this one until at least Monday (mainly because if I reply today it will like be a very rude two word response....)

Hopefully one of the viewings today will make an offer and I can tell these buyers where to go.

Fingers crossed @Andthenanothercupoftea! How satisfying would it be to say no sorry we found someone better 🤣 and not so dickish!!!

We organised our survey this week, but realised we haven’t been contacted for access for one on our house yet.

Do you have to have a survey done?! Some surveyors were saying they couldn’t book us in 8th July 😱😱 that’s mental!!

I'm so frustrated.

We replied to all our questions, booked a boiler service for today as the last thing needed and they DIDNT BLOODY SHOW UP £96 to not even show up.

Then, our sellers still have 10 of our queries to respond to and seem in no great hurry. They dont even have their searches back yet and it's a 20 day wait!!

Literally all we need is a boiler service & we can then exchange (assuming our responses to buyer is fine) but why isnt our seller more eager given they originally floated the completion of 20th june! That's one month away, no chance now

Our buyers have just had their survey booked for 6th July - first date the surveyor could do a full structural survey.

@SpnBaby1967 Argh that sounds frustrating! Hope you can get it booked in soon. Has the company said why they didn't turn up?

Whoop! We have accepted an offer on our house. Yay. Onto the next confusing steps I suppose. Maybe we are finally allowed to view some houses now!

[quote BabyPotato]@SpnBaby1967 Argh that sounds frustrating! Hope you can get it booked in soon. Has the company said why they didn't turn up?

Whoop! We have accepted an offer on our house. Yay. Onto the next confusing steps I suppose. Maybe we are finally allowed to view some houses now![/quote]
@BabyPotato nope, not heard a single thing.

I know solicitors are extremely busy but both sides are taking 7+ days to return queries. Our buyer wants to complete by 30 June & I think we’ll get there, but I need to find a rental and really want to start talking about exchange dates. We believe our buyer’s mortgage is ready to go and she’s not in a chain.

The paralegal helpfully told me that no agent will consider us for rental until we have one, right after he defensively explained he took 10 days to get the buyer’s (relatively simple) queries to us because he took 2 days annual leave.

This was after 3 emails over 5 days went unanswered and I ended up leaving a passive aggressive voicemail explaining in my best authoritative voice that I would like a response today and that therefore I would expect to hear from him by close of play that day.

I haven’t got much experience with house buying/selling in the UK but it is a case of squeaky wheels get the grease? I’ve been checking in about once a week til now, should I start emailing every day/second day?

@Porridgeislife I am experiencing similar time frames.

We've made no progress as yet as solicitor has failed to send us something in order to verify our ID and we have been going round in circles for weeks now with them saying "we sent it" and us saying "still not received". This plus a couple of other issues all point to tech issues on their end. Called to try and discuss over the phone and were just told people who are completing within the next ten days are prioritised so not sure whether I should just wait now or keep pestering them...

Eurgh we're on the market but only had two viewings in four weeks, and we're in London. It's a flat, of course.

This is so miserable. We've got agents who know we're moving sending us lovely things to view but we can't proceed and they're flying off the shelves

Strapping in for another rollercoaster week.

We signed the contract on our sale last week and have hopefully now responded to all of our buyers’ solicitor’s enquiries, although her solicitor is very slow so there may be more I guess.

We have the survey on our purchase but are breaking the chain and moving in with family so less pressure than would be the norm.

Good luck everyone! May the conveyancing gods be with you.

Yuko my sympathies. I'm in Surrey and saw hardly any viewers the first few weeks and I'm fed up of looking at properties only to watch them disappear.

I had two viewings on Saturday - fingers crossed.

We've been told that searches are done and that our solicitors now have the contract pack, still waiting to hear from the mortgage company and the results of the structural survey. At least things seem to be happening now though.

I think I probably know the answer to this but I really wanted to canvas some opinions because I am very inexperienced. We put our flat on the market in April and had a few viewings, then dropped the price and got some more viewings but the only offer has been from the same buyer who initially came in much too low but now has raised offer. BUT the offer wasn't so much the problem. The problem was that they were adamant they wanted to complete before 30 June even though I made it very clear to the estate agent that we couldn't guarantee that and I'm not sure anyone would. Have gone back saying that we've spoken to our solicitor and will make best efforts to complete by 31 July (which I still think would be a miracle from reading this thread).
I veer between thinking yay, we have a buyer and lining up viewings and thinking that the buyer will still want 30 June and might pull out and is it worth holding out for another offer?

@Notquitefeelingit I think your buyer is a bit deluded if they think they can complete on ANYTHING before the 30th June and you need to ask your Agents to make that clear to them.

It's late may - the average time to complete is 9-11 weeks so if they go pulling out on anything they would be starting allover again. I don't think any property they would offer on could guarantee to complete in time.

There is still a stamp duty reduction until October so as long as you complete before then there is still some kind of saving - depending on what their offer is.

Exactly! I've been saying this for weeks to them because they came in far too low and then wasted time. It's so frustrating because they really like the flat (they say) and are currently renting so if we can agree more realistic timescale I'd hope that would speed things up.

If they pull out, they’re putting themselves even further behind surely!?

Our homebuyers survey and mortgage survey are booked for tomorrow.

Feels like things are slowly progressing

Yes, you're right. Or they could ask for a price reduction, at which point I would refuse I think.

@Newhousehope fingers crossed you get the results quickly!

@Wrongsideofhistorymyarse Did you get an offer? We've just agreed to drop our asking price quite a lot

@Notquitefeelingit I feel for you!

We actually have something related happening. Our buyer swooped in with a full price asking offer within a couple of days of us listing. We accepted as we were really keen to move on, and they presented to the EA as first time buyers in a rental who were happy to wait for us to find a property and would go "as fast or slow as we wanted." After we accepted, it later transpired they actually need to sell an investment property to fund their purchase, and they want to complete by 30th June. I told the EA that seemed very optimistic to me, but I'd do my best to make it work.

So I've been pressing on, our purchase is going full steam ahead and we've done almost everything necessary to reach exchange (our solicitor is amazing). I spoke to the EA this weekend and she says the buyer's solicitor hasn't even instructed their searches to be done (and was very arsey with the EA emailing to see how it was progressing, sending a very unprofessional email in response). Our searches were back over two weeks ago. I feel really weird about it all as they were desperate to complete ASAP and have paid for the survey, but now I don't know if they're stalling or their solicitor is just useless. The EA said they'd call the buyer to fill them in, she said it's possible they don't realise that they need to keep on top of the solicitor. I feel so lucky as ours even emails us on Sunday if there's an update.