Buyers/Sellers Exchange waiting room

[spidershavetoomanyknees]

Currently waiting for exchange, stuck in a never-ending loop of "there's been a couple more enquiries higher up the chain" and "we're nearly there now". Wondering if there's anyone else who would like to join me here in the waiting room of doom to vent into the void.

Next train for Exchange (line terminates at Completion) is currently delayed and they'd like to apologise for the delay.

So we still haven’t exchanged and still waiting for someone’s mortgage issue to be resolved. On to a third day of waiting.

@TeaChocKitKat completion by Easter when you're waiting on searches now? Possible, yes. Likely, no. Especially as you haven't booked a survey yet. Is there any chain above?

@Inapicklee sorry to hear about your soil issues. Autocorrect really wants me to say "soul issues" but I'm assuming that's doing okay , if a little stressed 😂 I hope the tests come back good enough for grazing!

@thunderouslug any luck getting through to your solicitors?

We've had radio silence for a couple of days now but I'm hoping that means lots is going on in the background. I'll be on the chasing queue tomorrow if we don't hear anything by lunchtime though!

@spidershavetoomanyknees soul issues is definitely right at the minute 😂😂 they ended up taking the samples today so we should know early next week hopefilly!

to top it off, in all the chaos my partner has happily set off on a 5 hour drive to visit family in Cornwall without me signing one of the contracts. She’s taken the paperwork to get a witness signature for hers and was going to post it direct tomorrow. Now she’ll have to post it back to me instead 😅

I hope you get some movement ASAP. I was completely at the end of my tether this morning. Had a big Valentine’s Day row with partner last night and ended up losing my temper with my dad over something super minor 🫣🫣 So I’ve been grovelling all afternoon.

We've had the lenders survey for the mortgage but it was very basic- I'm just debating if I should stump up for a more detailed one for my own use.
The searches were requested 2 weeks ago apparently.
It's chain free on both sides so it SHOULD be easy!!

@spidershavetoomanyknees A miracle! Just before 5pm we got an email with 10+ attachments, including contract. I don't want to jinx it but maybe we will actually exchange next week? I really need a win. Got a huge workload at the moment and had some really devastating personal news earlier today, which is taking up a lot of my brain bandwidth. I am juggling so many plates at the moment and just need one of them to go away, otherwise I might drop them all.

@Inapicklee our contamination was similar. There was an old landfill site behind the house (that was built on in the 90s!). The results came back fine. Some elevated metals, all within normal range, just at the higher end.

@Inapicklee wow! Why did they take it all the way to Cornwall?! We just had the neighbours be our witnesses. Fingers crossed your soul analysis comes back okay... 😂

@TeaChocKitKat then it seems plausible! Personally I don't think I'd bother with your own survey - not on a house of that age

@thunderouslug great! Have you started to talk dates yet? That's often a good sign that everyone has their contracts as is preparing for exchange

Sorry to those still in this situation - our pre-exchange "quick look round" has gone down like I anticipated... list of other shit

@spidershavetoomanyknees hahaha I probably didn’t explain that well! She’s gone to visit family and our neighbours weren’t in 😂😂 not all the way to Cornwall just for a signature!

Found out yesterday that our buyer still hasn't had his mortgage offer. Our solicitors had no clue about this, and our estate agents have apparently been constantly chasing them up. I had a huge wobble as our buyer is self-employed and was panicking that they were going to refuse him or there be an issue, but the agents have tried to reassure me that the bank in question are often very slow... We had been told by our solicitors at the start of the week that we could now start talking about moving dates and our buyer keen to move in as he's in rented. Feel a bit worried!

Waiting for our solicitor to call so we can exchange. Just wondering how late in the day it can get and it still actually happens.

Oh no @CoffeeWithCheese what was raised? My buyers are doing one at the weekend, the agent assured me it was just precautionary advice from their solicitor to make sure nothing has changed since the survey. She said it was to cover things like leaks, fire damage or any structural changes rather than an opportunity to further negotiate on price.

Almost exchanged had the call with our solicitor and found out we were expected to accept a significantly reduced deposit when we had asked for the full 10%. No mention of this beforehand we agreed grudgingly to this on the phone but our vendor hadn’t given authority to his solicitor to exchange with a reduced deposit and they couldn’t get hold of him to check he was ok with it. I’m just worn down by the whole thing.

Just to reassure a few people, the new owners asked to come round to my mother's house (which needed a lot of work) just before completion to measure up. That's exactly what they did and there was no delay/haggling.

@spidershavetoomanyknees Yeah, we all agreed on the completion date weeks ago (it's next Friday!). Our sellers are super pushy and sort of just decided on that date for everyone, although we hadn't even had searches back at that point and bottom of the chain was still waiting for some important leasehold documents. Now that it looks unlikely that we'll make next Friday, they are getting quite unpleasant because they feel like it had been a certain and agreed date for weeks.

Yep that's what the estate agent expected - but it was a full hour of looking in every fucking cupboard again and going through the whole lot of stuff again... estate agent is now really rather pissed off with them!

I’ve decided to let the agent do the visit. To be fair my buyers seem lovely and have been pretty easy going with everything to date.

@CoffeeWithCheese that sounds awful. Your gut feeling was right about this one, but I echo others’ comments that a look around isn’t always this.

Last year our buyers came around to measure for furniture before we sold last year, and they definitely weren’t thinking of pulling out. They nearly cried when they had to leave again! However, back in the 80s our buyers came round to “measure for furniture” and they did do measuring… but then pulled out that afternoon! Estate agent was very apologetic and clearly irritated with them then. So there are always stories for both types.

Maybe it’s more about gut feeling on the buyers themselves than a general rule on what most people are like - @Karmatime I hope yours goes well and your gut is right!

Sympathies and solidarity with everyone on new delays this week. We’re stuck in an enquiries loop at the moment. Hoping as ever that today’s the day I’ll get an email with “surprise! How do you feel about exchanging today?” Starting to lose hope the closer we rattle on towards Friday lunchtime.

Here we go - true colours shown - "the property market is more attractive now"...

Finally exchanged this morning. I don’t think anyone wanted it to go on another day so things got moving straight away and we were done by 10am. We’re completing next Friday so plenty to do this weekend. Our vendors agent called and said what lovely buyers we were and to expect a gift from them when we move in. Hopefully I can stop waking up at 3am now.

@thunderouslug we had an imaginary completion date set by our buyers and they kicked off when it became obvious we wouldn’t make it. Our agent is fed up with them as they have been very difficult. They were very nice up until that point. We’re making ourselves feel better by imagining that we’d leave hidden kippers round the house.