Support thread - the countdown to June 30th.... will we /won’t we make it???

[Didicat]

So next week is June and the date is looming large! Wiltshire council are being particularly slow and searches not due back till 14th. Offer accepted early March.

36 days and counting between me moving house and a new kitchen and me moving house and saving hard to buy a kitchen in about 2 years time.

Anyone else being to feel the desperation kicking in just to all it all done and dusted!

@StrongTeaDropOfMilkNoSugar - it's an interventionist approach but any chance you can do some ringing round and find a removals firm with availability for the right day and then present that as an option?

@Gettingonabitnow I did very similar with last night's sleep pattern. It's becoming a stress-related habit. Wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a day of meetings ahead of me.

@Dinosauraddict same, trying to manage two under five, house sale from hell and a stressful job is too much. There are actually some really nice rentals on the market, I’m honestly really to abandon our purchase for now and just proceed with the sale!! x

5am here and similar kids/big job. I achieved nothing on the work from yesterday as I was tired/fretting all day. Friday is no longer cause for celebration but just angst at two days with no progress. No word from our buyer since they revealed they weren’t actually chain free earlier in the week.

Dp has called the estate agent this morning because we really have gone out of our way with the buyer. We got indemnity insurance for something ridiculous, we entertained him mortgage shopping and thus having multiple surveys. And when he is the one wanting to complete in June, it's his solicitors pissing about raising things they should have raised a few months ago.

We told the EA that any delay is totally in his court and he needs to consider the saving £15k vs us trying to answer some really stupid questions that are hard to prove (they think we have a shared driveway, we don't (there is a pedestrian right of way over the driveway and that's it) and are now asking for schedules of maintenance to prove that we don't have to maintain the shared bit, which isn't shared, that don't exist!).

Fingers crossed for you @NumbMind

I'm feeling marginally more zen now that I know 30th is unlikely.

Good luck to everyone hoping to exchange today! I did the final bank transfer over to our solicitors today to cover solicitor fees, EA
Fees, SDLT (which is still extortionate despite the saving) and an extra lump sum deposit. I think that all I need to do now is pack...!

Our toddler was pinged by nursery to isolate for 10 days yesterday (he gets out on the 20th)

We have both had first jabs now though mine was only last saturday so not too concerned but this got me thinking - what happens if you exchange on your house and then get instructed to isolate or worst case actually develop covid in the time between exchange/completion when everyone has agreed dates?

What the hell do you do in that situation? I guess you would just have to delay completion until the end of your isolation period?

Luckily we aren't likely to complete until 24th at the earliest so hopefully we wont have to make that decision and toddler stays symptom free...

🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼 for exchange today (and everyone else hoping for it to happen).
I'd be surprised though the way things have gone so far!
Removals issue I think is solved but is going to be hard work.
It'll all be worth it in the end .....

Good luck to everyone hoping to exchange today!

Just spoke to our EA. He received an email last night from our buyer claiming that we only provided their solicitor with documents last Friday. This is complete and utter BS. Everything was sent in mid-April! I am so angry and upset.

I’ve been lurking on here. I couldn’t bring myself to post as I’ve been so stressed by it all.
Just wanted to say I spoke to my solicitor today with regards to the 15th and she said that it was dependent on your mortgage lenders release of funds. Mine is 5 days between exchange and completion and my buyer has 3 I believe. That may be a bit of a glimmer of hope for someone out there.

Ours is running extremely close and I’m not sure we will make it but fingers crossed for everyone. It’s a really shit situation

It really is a shitty situation. I’ve just had a rant about how stupid this is from a Government policy situation at my seven year old (isolating 😣) and she now thinks I am crazy and is looking up who Rishi the idiot is.

I've also asked our solicitor about that date of the 15th

She says that the last date to request drawdown of mortgage in order to be able to complete by 30th is the 23rd as lenders are expecting such a high volume of requests.

I understand that to mean you have to be exchanged ahead of this date to be able to request to draw the mortgage funds ?

@Panda368 yeah I reckon

😩 no exchange today sadly

But our solicitor had not heard there was a delay obtains funds from lenders for completion. So that's a bit of a weight off my mind.

I was supposed to complete on my sale today, having exchanged two weeks ago. I would have
Ave preferred next Friday,but buyers were pushing fir an even easier date so today was the compromise. We'll, it ain't gonna happen. My buyer's buyer'smortgage funds were not released in time.
I vacated my cleaned house by 12.30, left a bunch of roses and a bottle of wine. I am now in a hotel. And my house will be mine until Monday it seems. Yet the buyers still asked if they could have the keys anyway! As it may not happen Monday either, and I'm now paying for a hotel instead if staying in my nice home with a pool, no chance!

Pushing for earlier date, obviously!

Forgive me if this has been covered already - but for those who haven't yet exchanged, what are you planning to do about removals firms? We originally had a firm booked for May but we've had delays. I contacted them today and they are fully booked for the rest of this month. I imagine other firms will be similar. Options, as far as I can see them, are:

• See if there's any availability on Luton vans and move it all ourselves.
• Beg our buyers (who are moving from rented, so more flexible) to let us rent informally for a couple of days once the stamp duty deadline has passed and booking pressure is lower (issue is going against likely mortgage T&Cs).
• Delay completion until July (which will cost us £12.5k, plus potential financial knock-on for others in the chain).

None of these are ideal - the first option seems most feasible, especially if we rope in kind friends, but I imagine vans may be booked too by the time we know our completion date. I'm stumped. Are there any solutions I've missed?

@wolfwalk deffo rent your own van id say, hard work but then it’s done x

Van rental I would say. I think there are legal barriers to renting back your old house even forms few days due to vacant possession rules if I recall correctly.

After a really shitty week on the house sale front DH has topped it all off by going for a run and causing himself an injury which has him in A&E and likely off his feet for a good long while. This happened a couple of hours after the removal company called to say they’d need to release the dates and I compromised by keeping a (random as no one is talking dates) date, Monday 28, for the move but I had to release the packers.

Meanwhile, having been accused by our buyers of failing to provide the information I actually provided in April, I wrote a long email cataloguing what we have done (I.e. everything including contract signed and witnessed) and stressing that their solicitor has been completely unresponsive. Sent via the EA but unlikely to do any good.

We are planning to start moving boxes to the in-laws spare room this weekend. With an aim that we can rent our own van to move the bigger furniture when we actually complete. Or beg and borrow a mates van if it comes down to it!

But we 'shouldn't' complete on our house sale on the same day as our purchase. That was the plan, anyway. But our purchase is delayed and our buyers are more ready than us, so it's looking more likely now. Squeaky bum time!

I've finally secured removals today but only for 1 date so if we miss that we are screwed! Rang about 30 companies - got laughed at a few times - all totally booked up til July. Found one on recommendation in the end.
Other than that we were going to hire 'man with a van'. We've a lot to move and I'm not physically well - the stress of removals has been almost as bad as our buyers and their uncommunicative solicitor!

Other ideas we had were hiring a storage unit and moving as much as we could there over a week (they are all booked up - seems other people had this idea too!). Or beg/borrow spare rooms and garages to store boxes.

We exchanged today!

From feeling like we were in the depths of despair last night, we heard from our seller this morning that he’d sorted a new removal company last night and we were back on track. He was so lovely about it and apologetic for inadvertently making us fear the worst.

We complete on the 22nd, and have had to extend our Airbnb a few days to tide us over because our own storage/removals company is booked up around 22nd, but so relieved we’ve got this over the line.

Good luck everyone else for next week!

Thanks for the thoughts on removals. I'll probably book a van for the end of the month on a gamble - it's worth it if we can avoid pushing completion into July.

Congratulations @StrongTeaDropOfMilkNoSugar 🍾