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!

I'd like to join please. Sold our house, moved into Air BnB for what I thought would be a couple of weeks until searches and enquiries were done and now......delays.

Seller said they would move out but that has all changed. Now I'm in a chain (me, my sellers, their seller), waiting for the seller at the top to be ready.

I'm spending a fortune on temporary accommodation and can do nothing to hurry things along. I'm beyond frustrated.

@Simplelifecoming oh how frustrating and I’m sure expensive for you.
Our purchase is only us and sellers (who are divorcing) they take forever to answer anything and my solicitor has sent the contract paperwork back three times as the sellers info hasn’t been filled out correctly, currently it’s only signed by one party.
They obviously have no interest in the house anymore and have not been able to provide much paperwork, we have to accept indemnity on historical building work ( but it has all been checked by our surveyor) and are dragging their heels about gas/electrical certs, I want these to know if we need to do any immediate work as survey says about £10K needs sending in other areas, damp windows needing replacement, rotten deck and they are also taking everything from the kitchen ( cooker extractor fan, fridge, dishwasher ).
We don’t have any kitchen stuff as we left everything in our last house, the few possessions we have are in storage.
I’d quite like to ask for a discount but I’m a bit worried to try in this current market and due to the divorce they want every penny. We can’t afford to loose this sale as we are not in the UK so finding another house would be really tricky.

Someone please kill me
Trying to move for 11.5 months and sale fallen through for the 4th time. House prices are crazy, anything that does some on is going for crazy money

@lifelongfrugaleer that is absolutely awful how come the sale keeps falling through?

@lifelongfrugaleer I am so sorry to hear this, how shit for you

@StrongArm it sounds like you're sorted with you sale. I hope this last stage is quick and painless. We're going to run a scaled down version of the B and B.

So we had a conversation with our solicitor this afternoon - everything's fine, everything's going ahead for mid September. Happy days I felt the best about the whole thing that I have felt throughout this whole process. Cue an email from the B and B seller saying they'd heard our buyer has pulled out and they've got no choice but to start letting rooms out again!!!! Flipping heck. DH phoned her straight away to put their minds at rest. Another miscommunication between solicitors it seems and we're now left feeling unsettled.

I hate this process, it's consuming and exhausting. Can you imagine in your own work life miscommunicating things? Unless you're going through it you forget how bad it is.

Hello to all the new people. Hold on tight!!!

It’s a long and stressful saga which I won’t bore you with.
Waiting to hear back on 2 offers - 1 I know they will refuse as too low and they feel grabby.
2nd 40 people at an online viewing.
Other offers refused as too low as houses going over asking

Oh god it sounds like it’s still crazy out there trying to buy a house, I keep saying to DH let’s just get this done and not ask for a discount but he’s feeling a bit miffed as the last two times we sold our buyers dropped their offer near to exchange, we have never done anything like that, he says we are too nice so loose out, but I think in the current market if you piss your sellers off they just re-list, do you think I’m right and it’s not worth trying for a £5/£10k reduction (815k agreed price) ?
I just want it all done and dusted as soon as possible, don’t want to risk problems for a small reduction.

So now on top of my buyer trying to negotiate the price down, the vendors of the house I'm supposed to be buying have now lost their own onward purchase and the chain is back in the wind. And I am... not sad. The last week or so of questioning whether it was actually going to happen have knocked me from a place of thinking 'yes, there are some cons to this house, but it also ticks a lot of boxes' into 'I really don't think I want to live there' and not buying it would be something of a relief. So although I've not formally pulled out yet, I'm going to take a look at some properties in the area I'm currently in and see if I can swing anything there.

My slight difficulty here is that the purchase price for my flat was agreed the best part is six months ago, and obviously prices have gone up a lot in the meantime - I was already trying to swing something tricky, financially speaking, but it'll be worse now, and if my buyer really is adamant about wanting me to knock the price down further then the whole idea may well fall apart anyway. But hey ho, we'll see!

Honestly Persipan unless it really is something structured I would tell your buyers to jog on. Or if you have a sticky property maybe I would consider it

I think this is driving me mad. We have had a structural engineer out to the property we're buying. Looks like there are issues and our lender will have to be notified of them so mortgage offer may be pulled. Nothing else out there for us to buy. I feel in complete limbo just waiting for reports and then decisions being made by others. Nothing I can do and I'm feeling so lacking in motivation to do anything at all.

@lifelongfrugaleer It's just a ragbag of odds and ends - many of which I personally think were perfectly apparent upon viewing to a person with functioning vision. The stuff I knew about I specifically pointed out to the agents when they were valuing it, and the rest isn't stuff that's especially surprising for a property of this age and type. (Some damp readings around the chimneys, that sort of thing.)

The full list of stuff is fairly long, but none of it's structural or especially alarming - it's all stuff I live with quite happily. My initial response was a hard no; I'll wait to see what they come back with now they've had bullets round to quote. I could live without having to put it back in the market - I initially did it while I was on maternity leave, and getting it looking respectable is harder (read: almost impossible) now I'm not!

lifelongfrugaleer

I have accepted a second offer on my property and we are all systems go! This FTB had already spoken with a broker and has a solicitor in place so I'm hopeful this one will go through.

Morning all!

There seems to be a lot of us feeling the stress this morning.

@Wrongsideofhistorymyarse That sounds positive!!

I'm waiting for DH to call our estate agent again - they're supposed to be chasing our buyer. They talked to him yesterday morning and he was, apparently, still keen... but they didn't realize that he hasn't paid the solicitor until after that, and they haven't managed to contact him since.

Our solicitor intends to take the file home for the weekend, but I'm not at all confident that they're moving very quickly, and the rest of the chain suddenly seems very impatient to get it done this month.

We do too - I'm 20 weeks pregnant and would very much not like the stress! - but the lack of communication between anyone at all is driving me insane.

Hello there!

Our house has just gone on the market and the first day of viewings saw 24 people through the door. We had a couple of early offers but nothing amazing. We've got a 2nd viewing tomorrow along with 12 others looking around.

We had agreed a private sale with someone I know but her buyer pulled out on the day of exchange. Absolute fuckers.

Anyway, I've been keeping an eye on things and not been that impressed by anything coming on for sale. Until yesterday. Perfect house for us, ticks all the boxes. BUT ITS GOING TO BLOODY AUCTION!!! 😩😩😩😩

Any advice on how we get it before the auction?

Yet more issues here... Got the pack from the seller.

She's advised that they're not selling it with vacant possession, that neighbours are responsible for all boundaries, even though it's an end terrace that backs on to a back street, so if the house doesn't at least own the side and back boundary then who the fucking hell does, and that it's not connected to mains draining which it absolutely must be because there is not a septic tank.

That was an interesting email to my solicitor whom I'm sure has already picked up on it all but Christ on a bike.

I am losing the will here. Our cash buyer who was 'all ready to go' has now revealed that the money he had transferred from the US (which was going through anti money laundering checks) is actually a larger sum than he previously told the EA. It's actually 600k not 180k he's had transferred so of course the bank is investigating this! He now can't get at this money and is trying to raise a 5% deposit instead! The people we are buying from have had enough & if we don't exchange next week they are going to relist & we will lose our dream house. I'm so angry & upset, this is such a shit process!

Eurgh @labourlost, I’m sorry.

Our buyer has been a pain too. Apparently he’s done nothing for four weeks, but has today requested a valuation on a different house he owns next week so he can remortgage it to get a buy to let mortgage for here.

Once he’s got that, he’ll instruct and pay his solicitor; who has all our paperwork…

But the rest of the chain want an end of August completion date, they’ve been waiting a while for the chain to complete, and everyone said they were keen to move fast.

Our solicitor was waiting on searches from the precious buyer and then was going to take our file home to review the purchase pack this weekend… hopefully that’s happened. Our survey should be back not Wednesday at the latest.

Gah.

Our EA has gone quiet after saying he would “ get back to me by end of day” on Tuesday. He is chasing up enquiries from our solicitor about purchase which still haven’t been answered, yet apparently we are holding up the chain. Argh!! Another week where we haven’t moved forward at all!

Here we go again. Fourth times a charm. Offer accepted on a house today

@labourlost can I ask how long it’s been taking for this money from USA?
We’ve got to transfer about £150,000 from Canada to UK, I didn’t realise there would be any delay as it’s going from our Canadian bank account into our British bank account, maybe we should move it now?
We are hoping to exchange by end of August.

@Itscoldouthere It's taken over 2 weeks at least. We were initially told it would be a matter of days but he has lied about the amount being transferred. I would perhaps check with your bank as they may need to undertake some anti money laundering checks. My advice would be to move it sooner rather thank leave till the end of August. I hope yours goes through ok .

Hi Everyone. So glad to find this thread as feel like we are going mad. Sold our house…cash buyer in a short chain. They also have a cash buyer. We haven’t been able to find anything suitable; put two offers in one was 40k above asking and one 56k above asking but didn’t get either We are prepared to move into rented but don’t want to sign a rental contract til exchange and then have a longer period before completion to find a rental. Is this the right thing to do? I’m worried if the house falls through we will be liable for a years rent? Our buyer is getting pissed off with us but equally I feel we are being accommodating agreeing to a rental but even rentals are few and far between. It’s the first time I’ve sold a house so not sure if we should just stump up for a rental now and take the risk?

@labourlost thank you that’s good to know, I think we will speak to both banks and get it sent next week, our mortgage has taken quite some time as it’s an Expat one, so I don’t want anything else to possibly hold things up (although my sellers solicitors seem to send reply’s via donkey express so so far we haven’t held anything up).

@wanderlove I think it’s a difficult thing as you could get stuck in a rental, it depends how hot/active the market is where you are looking and have you got a good price for your house?
In the time you have been looking has much come on? Or is it just that people keep biding more?
Obviously if you have nothing to sell you become a great buyer, but if you are very stretched financially in your area it can be tricky.
I sold a year ago and can’t believe how different the market is, I’ve ended up with a compromise house, but it really was the best I could find.
I’m obviously chain free and my sellers are divorcing so no onward purchases but it’s still taking time, I think it’s going to be late August/mid September before we complete and we had our offer accepted mid May, so 3/4 months, if you’ve yet to find anything you are going to be looking at a 6 month rental anyway, can you see if you can get a rental that allows a months notice after 6 months, maybe offer to pay 6 months upfront as you will have the money if you’re sold already.

A flurry of activity means that we might be exchanging Monday and completing Friday

I’m so hacked off with the vendors estate agent who have been dragging and dragging and now things are URGENT! Without explanation! We’ve found out now it’s because the vendors and their onward are going on holiday on the 16th (not together). If they’d said this before we could have moved things on earlier.

Why are estate agents such arses - I know they’re not acting for us but if they were a bit more open it would be very very helpful!