Buyers Sellers Roll Call 16

[Househunting21]

Because the last thread is nearly full and I for one very much appreciate the space to vent

Good luck to everyone hoping to exchange and/or complete this week!

Good luck newhousehope! Do you know what the issue is - are you still waiting on buyer’s funds?

I think that was the case

But… solicitor just emailed - we’ve exchanged 🥳

@Newhousehope oh well done! 🤗

😭 Lucked out again! The house sold to a cash buyer. I’m consoling myself with the fact that we won’t have to deal with the nightmare divorcing couple who took 4 days to decide which offer to accept because they would only communicate through the EA. I imagine the sale will be slow and messy, as the non-resident partner is the one pushing for the sale.

Oh, and it needed a new roof, so that is someone else’s problem now too.

It was beautiful though.

That sounds like a horrific position to be in as a buyer @umbel - definitely a positive you’re not going through it!

Well done newhousehope! Now packing starts in earnest

Commiserations umbel, but agree that sounds like it could have got really messy. Hopefully a house in a better position is just round the corner - the market by us seems to be picking up again this week.

We're taking the children to see the new house at the weekend - am a bit nervous to raise their hopes in case it falls through again, but we're away for the three weekends after that and it could all move quite quickly once the queries at the top are answered. Interested to know how anyone else is managing kids' expectations - ours are 5, 3 and 2, so kind of get the moving idea but not really how variable it can be!

Congrats newhouse!

@umbel sorry you missed out but as already said divorcing couples can be a problem especially if one doesn’t want to move.
I tried to view a property 3 times but each time cancelled just before viewing as the partner still living in the property was being forced to sell it and didn’t want to move. It’s now showing as under offer so someone was luckier than me (or not).
I am actually now buying from a divorcing couple but she has already moved out with the children and he wants to move to another city, it’s taking ages to get info and they are very disinterested in the sale, my solicitor has had to re request the sellers info 3 times now as they did them separately, so don’t say the same thing, the latest version isn’t signed by either party!
At the moment we don’t mind as we are having to get a bespoke mortgage (due to living out of UK) which is taking longer than normal, but I’m really glad we aren’t in a chain as it would have made things much more pressurised.
Congratulations to those that have exchanged.

Househunting21 I took the children to see the house, they were really excited, but they are 21 & 23 both at university and very happy that we are moving back to London again, not quite the same thing 😂

When we’ve moved before (when they were younger) they were just interested in which bedroom they would have, the garden and if they could run around and make noise.

@Seaswallow when we got an offer on our house in January it was conditional on a few items but two of the highlights were

• remove the cat flap and replace door panel
• tile front of bath (white painted panel) with tiles to match rest of bathroom

We told them to stick their conditions and either offer as is or sod off. They did offer on the end but we were wary of them. 3 months later after them giving loads of hassle to our EA to force us to break chain to get it our sale completed ASAP we told them to eff off and withdrew our sale to them. Ended up with a sensible buyer the following day and for 5k more to boot

@Seaswallow I must admit, I cannot believe the CF of your buyers!

I am starting to feel like I'm in the middle of 2 sets of lunatics. Our buyers are raising the strangest queries I have ever known - I was waiting for loads of queries about the cracks in our walls and the fact that the floor isn't even and I just got 5 queries, each with an increasing level of hysteria, about a passage that runs behind the terraces (that we have a ROW over/don't own) and why it's untidy and who is responsible for tidying it! I feel like saying if that's all you're worried about, then whoopy do but spent about 10 mins trying to compose a reply without sounding like WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WORRYING ABOUT THAT FOR!

then the sellers of house we are buying, who don't give a flying fuck (they inherited the house), and did nothing they were meant to do and are using an online firm of conveyancers who seem to give even less fucks than they do and every single email we send them with a query comes back with a 'our clients cannot answer that, when are we exchanging' (literally every single one) - have just refused to give an indemnity or a statutory declaration for the bottom of the garden where they only have possessory title not absolute. Our solicitor has just written a 'are you mad' type email to their 'we are not prepared to give anything on this' (given we asked them to get the title upgraded the minute we discovered it was possessory and they had time to do so but just didn't bother). I know all they want is the money but surely at some point they need to engage just a teeeensy bit to get the sodding thing sold! argh!

@Cruddles- we are on the edge of telling our buyers where to go, but are hoping they will calm down as would be a shame for everyone's hopes to fall through. The agent is going to try and explain to them what is normal (would love to be a fly on the wall). A stranger on our doorstep a few weeks ago turned out to be our buyer's buyer given our address by our buyers 'to check the chain' - Even the estate agent was shocked at that one...

@StrongArm Bad luck on the lunatic front- we've not had one before. The most annoying was the buyer of our previous house who tried to change our utility providers as soon as the offer was accepted (which we blocked) then kept trying until our solicitor wrote to hers and told her to stop or we would pull out. In contrast, most of our buyers/ sellers over the years have been lovely- perhaps its just 2021 madness!

[quote Seaswallow]@Cruddles- we are on the edge of telling our buyers where to go, but are hoping they will calm down as would be a shame for everyone's hopes to fall through. The agent is going to try and explain to them what is normal (would love to be a fly on the wall). A stranger on our doorstep a few weeks ago turned out to be our buyer's buyer given our address by our buyers 'to check the chain' - Even the estate agent was shocked at that one...

@StrongArm Bad luck on the lunatic front- we've not had one before. The most annoying was the buyer of our previous house who tried to change our utility providers as soon as the offer was accepted (which we blocked) then kept trying until our solicitor wrote to hers and told her to stop or we would pull out. In contrast, most of our buyers/ sellers over the years have been lovely- perhaps its just 2021 madness![/quote]
What the ever loving F? Why on earth would anyone want to start paying utilities early?

I don't think she planned to pay them early. She just went online with our meter details and address (from the property form you complete for the buyers when you sell your house) and tried to change the supplier- we then got a 'sorry you are leaving and here's the charge for leaving early' letter from our supplier!

Caught up with my estate agent today, all being well we should be ready to start chatting exchange dates next week!!

Currently 36 weeks pregnant, not sure if I should push to try and get out before the baby gets here or plot something a bit further ahead?

Just need to keep telling myself that neither babies nor houses come with fixed timelines...but I can see this getting a wee bit stressful!

Andthenanothercuoftea definitely push for a pre due date completion date. I had to move a couple of weeks after each of my first four DC (army postings) and it caused enormous stress. You'll be wanting to nest anyway, so makes sense to do it in the new house.

@goodbyestranger that's what I thought. Will speak to solicitor etc tomorrow and say that's what I'd like to do. Obviously no guarantees, but a date in black and white might focus people's minds.

Also was glad for this update as the neighbours in our new property are very loud (some shouting, but I think they just have loud voices generally!) and they've also just started a BBQ at 9.15pm and and due to the way our houses are arranged it's pretty much under our bedroom window so we've had to shut it, just as outside was cooling down.

Counting down the days til we can move...even though we don't know when that will be yet!!

I'd like to hope that decent people would try to be as accommodating as possible for someone with a due date fast approaching. Top tip is to start packing immediately, in an uber organised way (Amazon sells great boxes at a very reasonable price), so that either you're ready to move before, or, if that proves not possible, you're at least all sorted for as painless a move as possible after the birth. I wouldn't worry about unpacking if you do move before the birth, just camp for a while, and work the packing accordingly. Main thing is you and baby - sorting the house can come later (this is definitely wisdom in hindsight!). All the best.

@Andthenanothercupoftea I feel for you. Never mind the stress of packing and will we-won’t moving dates, how are you coping at this stage in your pregnancy with the insane heat?

These tales of CFery are something else! Makes my realise how lucky we are with our buyers, who have patiently sat tight since Feb with barely a peep!

yes poor you in the heat @Andthenanothercupoftea. I gave birth in August 21 years ago (!) when it was very very hot but it was lovely having a baby in the summer and only worrying about vests and nappies! I went on to have a baby in November which was quite grim in comparison! Good luck with it all and fingers crossed the baby holds on for its new home!

I am a bit annoyed with dp and he totally lost his shit with the EA last night. i think we have figured out what the problem was. We put in our searches immediately for the house we are buying but it looks like him (our buyer) and his solicitors did not even look at putting the searches in for our place till after the 30 June stamp duty deadline had passed. I think his solicitors just prioritised getting everyone else over the line and he strikes me as the sort of man who wouldn't even think to ask coupled with a shit EA who probably wasn't pushing.

we are buying and selling in the same borough of London so we know how long the searches took - we got ours back weeks ago, I really have a sneaking suspicion he hasn't got his back because they were asking about planning permissions they have 'looked up online'.

if that's the case, it explains why he only wants to exchange mid/late August because they are simply not ready

the EA of the place we are buying is starting to get seriously annoyed because we have all said end July since the whole chain began. Our EA and our buyer are now denying any knowledge that this was ever the case.

I said to dp all I really want is someone to tell me what is the buyer's realistic date of exchange but he got so annoyed with the EA arse covering yesterday that he gave them 10 barrels and now we are none the wiser so I'm going to try and call our solicitor today to see if she can have a solicitor to solicitor conversation to find out what on earth is going on!

if we lose the onward purchase, there are no other houses of the size we want in our price range in the entire borough so we would have to pull the sale too. It's all completely nightmarish and I don't even want to think about it!

The cheek of some people!!!

Sky have dispatched our new broadband hub, to the new house 🤦🏽‍♀️ No one will be there. I don’t know if there is a ‘safe place’ to leave it, I doubt it. And I don’t have any ID to collect it from the post office AS I DON’T LIVE THERE YET 🙄

You only need a bank card to collect post, @Newhousehope. Bit stupid of Sky, mind you. 🙄

@NoWordForFluffy

You only need a bank card to collect post, *@Newhousehope*. Bit stupid of Sky, mind you. 🙄

Ooh. Then might try that, thanks! Agreed - was stupid of sky.

All the broadband hubs I've had recently fit through the letterbox. As long as you don't have a teeny letterbox, you may find that it's waiting in the house.

It said it needs to be signed for 🤷🏽‍♀️ But no ones signing for things these days are they!?!
I’ve re-arranged to collect it now. Knowing my luck the vendors would still be there, and take it with them as revenge for delaying things past June 🙈