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!

@Panda368 we are in almost the same boat. I’m trying not to contact my solicitor too much, so that when I do contact him he pays attention! Yeah I’d call yours though if you’ve not heard anything for a week.

It’s so stressful!!

@Gettingonabitnow it's definitely getting a bit stressful. In my head I cant see why we cant be done and in by mid June but it also feels like everything is hanging together by hairs.

Also without having a date set starting to pack feels risky - I don't want spend a month trying to keep my toddler out of all the boxes and losing our living room to storing all the 'not essential right now' stuff we need to pack first!

@Panda368 I feel the same about packing. We unexpectedly have next week off work and at home as DD1 has to isolate due to a Covid case in her class bubble so holiday cancelled. I’d love to use the time to start packing, but do feel like I might be tempting fate 😬

@Panda368 were in almost the exact situation as you. We’re waiting for our buyers’ solicitor to raise enquiries but we’re hoping they are straightforward and we can exchange in a week or two. Our purchase contract is signed and ready to go. I have been told everyone else in the chain (of five) is also ready to exchange.
It feels so close to the wire though and we are worried we won’t be able to secure a removal firm...we sold our house in February!!
Our solicitor is really good and we speak two or three times a week at the moment.

Yes please, can i join as well. I had a property fall through in March because vendor pulled out and had offer accepted on this new one in early April.

There is no chain either side and I already had mortgage in place so just needed to change the property. Therefore stamp duty deadline should have been doable, right?

New property was tenanted but is now empty and i am in rented so we are raring to go.

As far as I know we are just waiting for searches but EA said yesterday that he thinks solicitor doesn't have the mortgage offer, which is weird as it was issue by the lender over a month ago. I've asked solicitor and waiting on him to reply.

The whole thing is so frustrating...

Does anyone know of you physically go in to sign contracts etc with covid?

@Gettingonabitnow our solicitor posted ours to us and we got our neighbour to witness signatures. I dropped it back at the office as they’re local.

So down to 34 days people!

We have contracts being sent out to us to sign, I plan on driving them to the solicitors office to hand deliver them back - not that I’m paranoid much!

Feeling like going to drive by the house, anyone else do this on a regular basis?

The top of our chain are holding us up (chain of 3) - is it unreasonable for me to suggest they move in with family or a short term rental so myself and my seller can benefit from the Stamp duty saving? They have been waiting for their searches to come back for 2 months already and still no estimated timeframe on when these will come back!

Haha yes, ours isn't far so we drive pass regularly especially to kill time when ds is napping. So mentally ready to be in that house and it makes my blood boil that we don't know when!

@Ccoffee217 glad I’m not the only nutter that goes for drive bys just in case it has disappeared off the face of the earth.

@hopefully2021 we’ve been waiting 2 months for our searches with estimated date of the 14th so fingers crossed they come through soon. Have you checked that website that can give you estimated dates for searches?

I'm going to be pissed if we miss the deadline. We're ready, as far as I know our seller is ready, no ongoing chain on their purchase but the solicitors are being extremely slow to respond to emails. Theirs took a week to send ours a gas certificate and he took another two days to forward it to us. At this rate the back and forth to agree a date is going to take weeks. Two weeks ago I emailed to say we'd like to get a proposed date for exchange and completion asap. Still waiting...

Plus we need to give notice on our rental, we'd like a bit of overlap but only really a week, two at the most.

The length of time you are all talking about with searches is worrying me!! Our sellers are still waiting on theirs.

Me also! After a property falling through in Feb we only went for chain free properties. FTB renting and buying a chain free unoccupied house. Our end everything is fine, vendors solicitors are so slow and unresponsive and after accepting offer at the beginning of May have only JUST sent contracts and title deeds to my solicitor. Searches are back and search enquiriea dealt with. Now solicitor needs to read through title deeds and contract and raise enquiries. I email daily to see if anything I can do to help progression.

WILL WE EVER COMPLETE??!

Id be so annoyed if we miss deadline by a week or so esp as ita all down to sellers solicitors. It will cost us 6k and ruin the joy/mood.

I'm so glad I've found this thread as I'm getting so stressed in my little bubble at the moment. A cash buyer is buying ours, and we're buying a new build which is already complete and vacant. Chain has agreed an estimated completion date of 18 June and our buyer is ready to exchange. All searches are back on our purchase. We're spent every day this week trying to get responses to enquiries from vendor's solicitor. Yesterday was progress - when I woke up there were 7 left (2 major) and when I went to bed there were 2 left (neither of the major ones). But honest to God I just want to bloody exchange!!

We are due to exchange today but yesterday became a nightmare so may not happen.

Buyers solicitor decided to wait until the day before exchange to raise an issue on historic ground rent charges which show on the land registry. These date from 1905, 70 years before my house was built and living here almost 20 years we have never had to pay them and it certainly never came up when we bought it.

Anyway, our solicitor sorted out an indemnity for £180 but now we have to wait to find out if the buyer agrees to this. Why.....WHY leave this to the DAY BEFORE!! We knew about these issues weeks ago and I know our solicitor raised it with the buyer as I spoke to our buyer about it.

So now it's unlikely we'll exchange today, hopefully next week and we're on course for an agreed completion of 25th June which is uncomfortably close to the cut off 😳

I finally heard back from our solicitor last night and apparently she is now waiting for some further documents from our vendors solicitor... I had thought that we now had everything in for our purchase....

So I've looped back to the vendors agents to ask him to give the solicitors a prod to try and shift things along. Our sellers were apparently super keen to wrap everything up ASAP but it feels like its all coming through in dribs and drabs.
I suppose it can't be helped that they don't have easy access to everything as they are selling under power of attorney as the owner has gone into a care home after living in the house since the early 60s but the constant "just one more document" narrative is making me really nervous.

Everything from lower down the chain has gone silent too.... I'm concerned our buyer is going to spring some surprise second viewing at a really difficult time when the house is a total shithole. I still can believe they haven't asked to come measure things up and have seen the house once for probs less than 10 min.

I just want this done now so I can stop emailing sodding estate agents.

Good luck everyone.
Back in March us and our vendors got fed up with solicitors being slow so we were messaging each other most days and calling solicitors if we knew the other side was waiting for something from them... Magically it all got a lot quicker then! (Still took 6 months total... October-Easter, no chain!)

Sorry I meant March not May. We were given an estimated timeframe of 8 weeks which was a bit ambitious but not entirely doable based on things so far if the sellers solicitors were more responsive.

@SpnBaby1967 can I ask why is it taking a whole month to exchange and complete? In my head I was hoping for two weeks to do that, but maybe I’m being far too ambitious! We should hear if our buyer gets her mortgage today, i feel physically sick 🤢 x

[quote Gettingonabitnow]@SpnBaby1967 can I ask why is it taking a whole month to exchange and complete? In my head I was hoping for two weeks to do that, but maybe I’m being far too ambitious! We should hear if our buyer gets her mortgage today, i feel physically sick 🤢 x[/quote]
I believe 4 weeks in the "usual" length of time between exchanging and completing. It can be done shorter, this house we exchanged and completed on the same day.

No exchange today. Sellers cant find the warranty documents for the house, buyers are quibbling over the indemnity.

Feel very deflated

@SpnBaby1967 sorry to hear your bad news fingers crossed for next week

Ffs after thinking all paper work was sorted.
We now need a FENSA certificate for our back door that we don’t have for our sale or to offer an indemnity on it 😒

We also needed some docs for the house we are buying which our solicitor told me she had requested last week one of which she cannot exchange without and had been chasing this week....- after I did some chasing up with the sellers agent for this she had apparently only sent the request at lunchtime today! 😡

Beyond pissed off.

God, I feel for you both. Our buyer didn’t hear on her mortgage either. I wish I could bury my head in a bottle of wine but the baby will have me up at 4am 🤦‍♀️