No progress after accepted offer

[greenteap]

Hello! We had an offer accepted over 6 weeks ago now.. when people said it was a painful process, wow were they right. There has been absolutely NO movement whatsoever. We're FTB, in a rental which expires later this summer. We made all parties aware we were keen to get things moving ASAP. Our solicitor still hasn't received the draft contract pack? After 6 weeks? Is this normal? There's been a loads of miscommunication between the solicitors, with theirs saying ours hadn't confirmed that we had instructed them only a week ago. However our solicitor has given us copies of her correspondence with them which confirms she did a month ago! Argh! And why do solicitors only ever email, and not you know, pick up the phone to give them a call?!

We've been informed our vendors have had an offer accepted on their onward purchase but then why still no contract pack? Should we start viewing other houses? Does this show they actually aren't keen to sell or just bad solicitors?

@greenteap have you paid for your searches yet? We are buying a house and appointed the solicitor and then when the Memorandum of Sale was sent to our Solicitors, we paid for the searches and a week later, the contract pack came through. There is a lot of paperwork to complete in the contract pack so I guess that could be holding things up but I think when we initiated the searches, they realised we were serious and started at their end.
Have you spoken with the estate agent to see what the delay is?

@Frogpig yes, we have paid the initial fee and instructed the solicitor. Our solicitor is literally just waiting on them to send it over so she can start. The EA have been rubbish. I've been calling every week, or atleast twice a week asking for an update and it's always 'oh we can't see an update yet..' I've called them again this morning and apparently they've put it as 'urgent follow up'. It's unusual to not have started 6 weeks on?

are they in an incomplete chain? If so thats why they have not done anything probably. No point spending money if things might not go through..

Have you booked your survey? That and commissioning searches instead cared yo seller you are serious. Your solicitor can do stiff before the searches are back too (check the land registry etc).
The EA doesn't have much to do with it at this stage. It is your solicitor waiting for searches, you waiting for survey report. The sellers solicitor should be handing to your solicitor the sales contract, and relevant paperwork ( building certificates, gas certificates etc). So it seems their solicitor has been a bit slack. Your solicitor needs to chase them, and the EA can also nudge them. I imagine now that thrive had an offer accepted things will happen.

It's so frustrating!! In fairness to them the EA have been helpful now getting updates from the vendors solicitor. We've now been told the contract pack was indeed sent over via email two weeks ago. The email is yet unread by our solicitor.. who is saying she has not received it.. honestly this is a joke. We have not yet started the survey yet as we didn't want to waste the money incase the sellers weren't actually serious about selling. But yes, we are now in a chain waiting to hear about our sellers sellers onward purchase... sighhhhh!

The contract pack will be in the latter stages after survey and searches in my experience . Are you in a chain?
We had an offer accepted Feb last year and moved in sept. I think thats pretty normal in terms of timescale unless you're chain free. Even chain free i think youll have a little longer to wait

Sorry just seen you are in a chain. It sucks!

@GailTheSnail sorry, I was referring to the draft contract pack which the solicitor needed to do title checks and order the searches etc. turns out she miraculously found it in her inbox after much back and forth. Wow, that timescale seems really long! Perhaps we were naive to think we could push things through. Thanks though.

If your Sellers aren’t pressurising you, you need to wait til the chain is complete, don’t get carried away yet.

Ah the old solicitor playing one off against the other. I started insisting on being on cc and our buyer did the same. Said we are paying for the service and we should be copied. Strangely enough no more "we sent it", "I don't have it" after that.

They should be able to start searches without having received the contract pack though. Our searches were ordered as soon as we paid (after 2 days) and the contract pack came through the following week.