House sale: Conflict of interest?

[Pegs11]

Hi, we’ve been selling our property through Connells. It’s been an absolute farce from the start. There has been no sales progression, there have been untold delays, it’s taken nearly six months and we don’t even have a chain at either end.

We are now close to exchange but there is a holdup: the buyer has requested a homebuyer survey. VERY late in the day. The buyer’s solicitor is dragging their heels over last-minute enquiries.

And here’s the thing: the buyers are using Talbots as their solicitor - on the advice of Connells. And Talbots are part of the Connells group! It has only just occurred to me that surely this can’t be right? Connells are supposed to be working for us!

Furthermore, it’s a Connells group company who will be carrying out the homebuyer survey on behalf of the buyer! Risking our entire sale by doing so, and putting us in a very stressful position at the eleventh hour.

Surely this a conflict of interest?! Is this even legal?!

Connells are shit. Our seller used them and their solicitors. They lied to us constantly (and not small ones). I had to turn them down 7 times! When they tried to force us to use their mortgage broker so our offer would look better 🙄. A chain free purchase took 5 months and 29 days because their solicitor wouldn't even answer a yes or no question.

Update: survey completed and the buyer received the report yesterday. I have no idea what’s in it. Apparently the buyer is consulting their solicitor about it today to take advice. I am freaking out a bit. I’ll update this later!

Consulting their solicitor about a survey??? Why? As there’s no contract yet, this seems odd.

@TizerorFizz I guess they need advice from the conveyancing solicitor as to whether any of the things raised in the survey are a real concern, or just advisory things that they might be willing to overlook. Either way, I need them to hurry up. I’m calling the estate agent at least twice a day now for updates.

The estate agent says the buyer is just very green and doesn’t understand the process so they are being really super vigilant and nitpicky. But estate agents lie. I just wish they’d done all this much earlier and not just as we are about to exchange, because I worry they’ve chosen to do this now so they can try and knock down the price at the last minute when they know we are desperate to exchange.

Not sure a conveyancer will give them info about a building survey.

Hmm. Well our estate agent said the buyers were reading over the survey, then they plan to send it on to their conveyancer. Perhaps something got lost in translation.

It's not the role or remit of the conveyancer to advise on the survey at all, as they are not qualified to do so.
I'd be surprised if they did.

The survey often has a section on things to ask the solicitor, these are things such as rights of way, boundaries, building regulations etc. Mostly it's stuff that's already been reported on anyway and just an arse covering exercise.

Also if the solicitor is arranging insurance they may need information from the survey such as 'historic movement', construction etc.

Buyers are getting cold feet the market is cooling.

I don’t know what’s going on really. One minute I’m told one thing, the next I’m told something different. I spoke to Connells again yesterday pm and they assured me the buyer is still really keen and eager to exchange, and that while they do still need to confirm they are happy with the survey, really the holdup is more to do with their solicitor. I found out yesterday from our own solicitor that there is still important paperwork that’s missing on the buyer’s side and this means they won’t be ready to exchange “for some while”, although they were unable to give me any idea of how long. I have been considering giving them an ultimatum/deadline and if they fail to meet it, to bail out and remarket the house. But it probably wouldn’t make sense to do that before the new year now, as the market tends to slow down towards Christmas, so I guess I’m best off just waiting it out for a few more weeks … and keep taking the anxiety medication! It all really sucks ☹️

Yeah I'd take that view.

@Pegs11

It's really stressful. I had this at the bottom of the chain last time I sold where the buyers were dilly dallying over this and that, and they pulled out the week we were supposed to exchange after 6 months!! It's such a broken system.

I don't think an ultimatum is going to make any difference unless you'd be ok with putting the house back on the market.

It’s all very scary. Especially given the dip in house prices that’s happening now.

If we did remarket, what might go in our favour is that we’d be able to sell the house with no chain and vacant possession, as we have family we can stay with. So hopefully that might pique an investor’s interest - especially as rents are at an-all time high - and often they pay cash and can get it done faster. Plus our house is in a very convenient location. When we sold in the summer we had 20 viewings in the first ten days of marketing, and six or seven offers. I know it won’t be that good next time but even if it’s half as good, that should be OK.

@Pegs11
Yes it's not easy doing this in any market but this one takes the biscuit!
Are you downsizing, going sideways, or upsizing, sorry if you've told us already!

@HotChoxs we had planned to upsize, but shortly after accepting the offer on our house, my husband and I separated. I’m staying with family, he’s still in the house but it’s all packed up and ready to go and he’s fed up with being there surrounded by boxes and memories.

He is buying a place separately (the vendor is ready to exchange) but he can’t move forward until we’ve sold ours. His vendor is putting pressure on him, so he’s not having a fun time, caught between a rock and a hard place.

As for me, I haven’t found a place to buy yet but to be honest I’d rather wait and get my share of the equity from this house sale before I make an offer on a place. Trying to sell and buy at the same time is even more stressful, and I’m already just about at my limit!

Basically I just want rid of this cursed house so I can move on, and I don’t want to lose any more money (we already had to accept a £30k lower offer from our buyer as the house got downvalued by their mortgage company).

@Pegs11

The good thing is it's obviously a house you can sell easily and will hold up a lot better than many other houses if you had so many offers on it.

I think best to remember that everything is going down and not just your house, so if you're going to buy again things will have fallen too.

If you can move in with someone and be chain free when you buy you'll be at a good advantage. Try not to stress too much, easier said than done!

My buyer and I used the same firm of solicitors and had to sign something to say we agreed to it. My solicitor was poor and must have forgotten this detail as I asked him what the holdup was on something and he responded 'I haven't had contact about this from the buyer's solicitor'. I told him to go across the hall and ask 🙄.

@HotChoxs I am going to try to get into a more relaxed state of mind. I want all this to just be over, but I know I need to accept there is only so much that is within my control. I’m struggling a bit with feeling angry too, that I have been misled and badly advised and not kept up-to-date by Connells. With hindsight I would have done things very differently and certainly would not have used Connells 😅

Ha, If I had a pound for every time I or an associate of mine has picked a bad estate agent or conveyancer and lived to regret it I'd probably be able to buy another house!!

@Pegs11

Also you're bound to feel angry. It's perfectly normal!!

OP, you said earlier that your solicitor was drawing up indemnities. Hopefully this was overstated and what your solicitor was actually doing was arranging standard indemnity insurance that you would pay (a small amount) for?

@dieselKiller there are two indemnities, one for building regs and one for restrictive covenant. Both in respect of the conservatory. It’s costing us about £300 total for those.

Was just speaking to my big brother, he reckons the reason for all the delays is because our buyer is doing the new ‘help to buy scheme’ and there are lots of hoops to jump through with that, and it’s probably the reason they’ve needed to get this survey done. He reckons we shouldn’t worry too much about the survey, but thinks it could take a few more weeks for all the paperwork to be in place. I wish we had known our buyer was doing help to buy, Connells didn’t tell us until about a month ago. We probably would have gone with a different offer had we known.