8 weeks in, and things are still not moving

[SuperlativeOxymoron]

So this is more of a rant rather than what do I do situation.

8 weeks ago, DH and I accepted an offer on out house, and had our offer accepted on our next house. Short chain, we're the only link.
Our buyer is struggling to get a mortgage sorted, he's had 4 mortgage valuations now, 2nd and 3rd significantly down valued our house on resell and rental values, 4th done this week, not had an update regarding that.
Our vendor has a land registry application pending regarding the boundary lines and deeds, which they refused to do anything with until a sale had been agreed.

No legal work has started, but I've already paid for searches and for the management pack (I live on an unadopted estate) for my buyers solicitor. When this all started, we were looking at completion being end Aug-mid Sept, now it could be end October.

In this time my fixed term has ended so my mortgage repayments have SHOT up, and are higher than what we are looking at for the new property.

I'm worried my sale is going to fall through and we're going to lose the house we're buying and it's starting to stress me out.

My solicitor and broker are amazing! I couldn't praise them enough, I'm just stressed and want things to start moving.

Urgh!!!!!!

well the market is changing. the fact that your property was valued 3 times below your agreed sale price reflects this

I think if your buyers mortgage company are valuing your house at so much lower than they’ve agreed, and that’s happened more than once then you might need to accept a lower offer.

If they can’t get a mortgage for what they’ve offered I’m surprised they haven’t offered a lower price already, can you afford to accept less?

We can't afford to accept less, well we can, but it increases our repayments as we're relying on the equity for our deposit and our savings for fees.

The thing that confuses me on the mortgage downvalue is that we accepted £10k less than the estates and our independent valuation as we needed a quick sale, as when we looked at the house we're buying, the estate agent told us the vendor wanted a quick sale, but they didn't tell us about the land registry issue.

The land registry query doesn’t sound like an issue as such, more that they don’t want to spend time & money on it before the mortgage is agreed- sounds pretty sensible to me.

Marking my place
I won't go into detail OP but I'm losing the plot with the legal stuff that gets exhumed by lawyers.
If my current sale doesn't go through I'm staying put!

If the 4th valuation is also low I think you will have to renegotiate on price. You could have the exact same issue with other buyers if you relisted. Maybe you could meet in the middle with the buyers if they could find a bit of extra cash and you reduce the price a bit so they can go with whichever lender valued your house the highest.

Thanks everyone, it's all stress I don't want, my lender did a desktop val on the house I'm buying whereas my buyers lenders have been doing physical vans, makes me wonder if its worth having a surveyor attend in person to see what they say.

Funnily enough, both my house and the house I'm buying have come down in value according to zoopla, and the purchase prices are between the minimum and middle expected price, I know that's not gospel, but the estimates seem to be fairly accurate in all other instances?

I've spoken to the EA this morning and it turns put the buyer is trying to get an extra £10k on the mortgage, so it may not be downvalue on the house, but refusal to lend him the extra? Is that a thing?

They may be trying to borrow an extra 10k because it had been downvalued by 10k.

When I say extra 10k I mean we sold the house for £195k and the surveyor had it as so at £205k. So would that still stand on trying to borrow the extra £10k because it's been down valued by £10k?

I don’t think you can get a mortgage for more than the agreed price, if you agreed 195k their mortgage can’t be for more than that.

I thought the surveyor down valued it? If you’ve sold for 195k and the surveyor says it’s only worth 185k they’ll only get a mortgage for what the survey says, if they want to pay the extra 10k they’d need to find it themselves - in their position I’d be renegotiating on price, and any other buyer you get is likely to get the same valuation so you may well have to accept or not be able to sell.

So yes, the house had sold for £195k, I thought you could only borrow to the value too, and this is what's confused me now.

The surveyor I saw (all others have been done while dh and I were at work, and EA provided keys, but I was on AL last week and this so was home and able to let them in) checked a few things about yhe house including the sale value with me, and said £205k, I said no £195k.
But as PP suggested they maybe trying to borrow the extra £10k there, so I was asking if that was a thing.

I don't actually know what the value of the downvalue is, only that the surveyor had an extra £10k added to the price on their records for the value.

I'm going to speak to EA today to find out if that valuation has come back and if the buyer is anyway forward.

As my purchase can't progress until land registry have done the deeds and boundaries aspect, I'm not going to suggest a price negotiation on any part of the chain, the buyer can ask, absolutely and I will enter negotiations then, but I am unwilling to be the one to suggest that, why would I as the seller say "here have it for a bit less" with no comments from my buyer?

It’s unusual for a valuation to come in at more than the agreed price but I’ve heard it can happen. I would ask your EA about it

Ahh sorry, the valuation hasn't come back higher (it hasn't come back yet) I'm probably not being clear.

EA has asked buyer/mortgage broker for an update today as it's been a week since the surveyor came. What I'm trying to say is:

Accepted offer - £195k
Value provided to surveyor - £205k
Difference- £10k
Previous surveyors (2 and 3) downvalued. We're unaware of the difference between accepted offer and valuation yet. I keep forgetting to ask when I speak to EA.

I’m confused then, who’s surveyor has said 205k if the valuation hasn’t come back yet? Who’s that valuation from?

Sorry.

So we've agreed a sale price of 195k.

The 4th surveyor last week, did the survey then asked me a few standard questions about the house, which also included the sale price, either our buyer or his broker/lender when requesting the survey had told her the price agreed was 205k as this is what was in her notes.

I'm now concerned he's telling his lender that the agreed price is this additional 10k and this is what is causing the problems.

Weird!! Yeah I’d be straight on to your EA and solicitor, give them this info and say you need some answers asap.

Did your buyer have an agreement on principle for a mortgage?

The EA really should’ve flagged this if they hadn’t, unless they’ve got something their offer is utterly meaningless.

Luckily my EA are pretty good and are on top of things, chasing for updates etc and my solicitor is equally brilliant.

They're chasing it up today, so hopefully will have an update for me by cop or tomorrow.

He did, he's an investor so I said I wanted him to have the mortgage in principle before we would accept his offer, that then organised the first survey and my solicitor was sent the mortgage agreement... and then survey 2 and 3 came along. So I called the EA and they told me the surveys had "significantly" downvalued the house but he was keen to proceed hence survey 4 and that's where I discovered the value difference.

My solicitor and broker have both assured me at this point I don't need to worry as my purchase is being held up by land registry, so we can't move forward on that anyway.

I really don't want to buy and sell a house at the same time EVER again now! I thought it was pretty straight forward getting your paperwork and info organised and sent to the EA, solicitor and broker and they did the rest. Seriously that's what my purchase was like 10 years ago, so this has really thrown me a loop.

I’m totally confused now why you have had 4 surveyors and why the price is 195k or 205k please don’t try to explain it again I’m officially over trying to make sense of your situation

To be honest @Twiglets1 I'm finding that I'm clearly not very good at explaining that my buyer has had 4 surveyors attend to do mortgage valuations on my house and the 4th had a sale figure that was different to the agreed sale price.

I'm not going to try and explain the situation again because I've tried and I've even broken it down in different ways, so clearly I'm just not good at putting my thoughts in writing.

I really only posted to vent and see if anyone was in a similar situation. I wasn't looking for help or advice.

Thanks everyone for comments etc all same.

I’ve just never heard of a buyer getting 4 valuations that’s ridiculous and ridiculously expensive, especially on a property only worth 195k or 205k. And on top of that for the 4th valuer to somehow have the wrong sales figure? It will be some kind of miracle if you get to completion with all this confusion going on but I hope you do.

It’s all very frustrating. My neighbours have been trying to move for over 5 months. It was all going well and they were supposed to move early June. It’s a long chain of 5 properties and it’s the first time buyers who are having the problems, mainly mortgage offers not being enough due to undervaluing. They’ve now got new buyers, but again new reports need to be done. Fortunately all others in the chain are still wanting everything to go ahead, but I know my neighbours are fed up and considering pulling out.

Your buyer is trying to get your house valued at the asking price rather than the agreed sale price. I can't see that flying with any mortgage company. Even if he gets a valuation of £10k more than the sale price it's all going to fall apart because his solicitor will confirm the sale is for £10k less. Unless there are different rules for BTL type mortgages?

That said, even in a short chain you can expect things to take around 12 weeks.

TBH, whilst this survey/mortgage issue is the most pressing right now it’s the LR/boundary query that would make me most nervous. If the vendor can’t define the boundary they can’t define what they are selling. If that’s the case it seems madness that they wouldn’t have sorted that before marketing the property. LR are not known for being quick. Having said that, if it’s a long time (like 25-30 years) since the house last sold its possible you’re talking about digitising the title which might only exist as a paper copy, this would be called something like ‘first electronic registration’ and we had to do it for our house but we paid the fee (£500?) and did it after completion.

You are explaining it perfectly well.😊 Sounds like there is something weird going on with your buyer.
Either they are struggling to get a mortgage at all or they are overstating the price paid to try to borrow extra to have some spare cash or do some work on the house, but they won't be able to do this.

Having so many valuations makes no sense at all. Can you look for another buyer?

www.theguardian.com/money/2017/apr/06/take-out-bigger-mortgage-cover-cost-renovation-homebuying

I agree with WeAreTheHeroes, your buyer is trying to pull as fast one. I bet the house has been valued at or near the agreed sale price of 195k. I would give him a week to get a mortgage agreed and if he doesn’t I’d put it back on the market.