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.

@spidershavetoomanyknees thanks for starting this thread, it's good to be enlightened by hearing the kinds of quibbles that go on and which delay sales.
(love your username)

@pfb12345 I agree that the process in the UK is absurd and it's got so much worse since lockdown and the stamp duty holiday.
Even though the market is supposedly quieter, our solicitor had in her room on Monday, an additional large office desk that was full from one end to the other with piles of conveyancing files that were about half a metre high. I said something about the piles and she rolled her eyes and said she would love to retire.

Today was another silent day until 5pm when we got an email from our estate agent confirming the price (because we agreed to a small reduction on the basis that our buyers had had to extend their rental lease by three months) and stating that all interested parties had been informed so hopefully we could now proceed swiftly to exchange and completion.

This seemed a bit of a vacuous email so I assume it was an attempt to push things along as it feels as though everyone is sitting on their hands and staring out of the window. It's just mad.

I will join you all in the days of silence from all concerned and refreshing emails every 3 mins. I just don't understand why communication has to be this bad when people's homes and money are at stake. Been told about 4 times now that everything is ready but then found out late today that bottom of chain has failed to sign something. All this endless faffing translates into the too of the chain repeatedly losing rentals and the rest of us having to constantly change prospective dates with removals firms. I cant bear it.

Just saying hello. I can’t join the thread despite having an offer accepted back in early October. Seller is now on the fourth house they are allegedly buying 🙄 and I don’t even know how long the chain is any more. They are supposedly committed to moving…

I'm joining too, but really it is probably pointless as mine is on the brink of collapse.
A year of my life wasted on this whole sodding buying and selling shit. And thousands of wasted pounds.
Chain of 3. I'm in the middle. My vendor is buying a house that she was told probate had been granted on. We got all the way to exchange before anyone noticed the fact that not only had probate not been granted, but it hadn't even been applied for. I was told today by my solicitor it still hadn't been applied for and that there was a dispute too.
My vendor has been saying she would break the chain and go and rent or stay with parents since we found out. Then suddenly last Friday she backtracks saying she will only break the chain if they can rent the property and exchange subject to probate. Which could possibly be done. Except the executor is a solicitor who isn't engaging. And the probate hasn't even been applied for. So my solicitor was saying that they won't be able to exchange as there is a dispute and probate not applied for. My vendor who I'm in contact with is saying it might still happen, just waiting for this email, or that email blah blah blah.
Basically I'm being kept dangling.
And I'm furious.
Most of the house is packed up as we should have been moving tomorrow. All this only came to light on 10th Jan. My buyers mortgage extension expires on 23rd Feb (that is all he could get pushed from original which was 6th feb).
So yeah. That is end of road. He is my 4th buyer too. My mortgage offer is for that house only (Nationwide - bastards). Top of my budget in terms of monthly payments. Rates have gone up since. So I can't afford to move if it isn't that house. I'd have to find a house for 30k cheaper to keep my mortgage payment the same, which simply won't happen. I've been looking for a long time so know the market very very well. I'd also have to find a new buyer which seems an impossible task in itself. I'd also have to find another 2k in solicitors fees!!
So now we are stuck here for a few more years in an unsuitable house for my family basically. Until our wages rise some more. And I'm really fucking stressed and angry over it all. My children (one with autism and adhd) need to have separate bedrooms for their wellbeing, and I can't even fucking manage that. I've failed as a parent.

@ThisMustBeMyDream what a dreadful situation. That is just appalling - I don't understand how things like this can just happen with no penalty- how people can just fail to engage on a legal matter. You haven't failed your family - but this mess of a system is failing you.

@ThisMustBeMyDream sickening, all my sympathies for what it's worth. Don't beat yourself up, it's difficult with your kids, I get that. You have been well pi**ed around. Why do people tell such lies.

We're two years down the road from first going on the market too. We've had two buyers pulling out before exchange for infuriating reasons. We need to downsize, we have a huge, now unmanageable garden, the house needs work and we just don't have the money and we need cars to live here. I want to be within walking distance of town.

Lockdown set off a new practice of auctions, any property worth having became subject to 'best price by.... Estate agents have a lot to answer for. We found ourselves jumping for properties which subsequently turned up seriously bad surveys. The UK housing market is a right mess, it needs sorting. I hope everyone gets some good news and a bit of luck. Cheers folks.

Sending solidarity @Tunnocks2022 for that part of the waiting game. We waited for 6 months for our vendor to find somewhere (offer accepted on one place early on, their vendor then took ages to find somewhere else, so our vendor offered elsewhere that was “chain free”).

Do you love the house too much to threaten to pull out if they don’t get their act together/go into rented?

Welcome all! Happy February!

Thinking of comments from basically everyone about how this could all in theory be faster. It can’t (surely) be workload issues because some solicitors seem to fly ahead, and others are rude and drag their feet etc. I wonder whether there’s some sort of reverse relationship between the complicated-ness of the chain and how long it takes to get responses. Almost as if the thinking is “oh this is an easy chain, I can hold back a bit and put all my attention on this other one” rather than “this is an easy one I can get everything done in a week so it’s off my plate”

I wish you could leave reviews for other people’s solicitors, like a TrustPilot. Can you imagine. “Took three weeks to send a new contract to correct a typo on buyer’s name, then didn’t even fix the typo but made another unrelated unimportant tiny change. Awkward. Rude. Do not use. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200” 😂

How many of us are moving 150-250 miles away?! Seems to be a recurring theme already and we’re only on page two :D If everything was postal I could understand how that could make things take longer, but nowadays… I despair.

Blimey, @ThisMustBeMyDream what a dreadful experience for you. But you're wrong - it's totally not your fault and you haven't failed anyone. You're the one that has been failed. I really hope you get some better news quickly. How stressful.

@spidershavetoomanyknees a Tripadvisor for these services would be amazing! Because of our circumstances we've only had the option of one mortgage provider. The fact it's taken them so many weeks to process our application is just insane. If we'd have had other options, we'd have definitely quit with these people.
Thankfully, the other services have been way more proactive and things have ticked along well.

I did have a sleepless night last night after reading the thread about mortgages prices. We're in a similar position, and with the base rate expected to rise tomorrow, we're feeling twitchy about affordability. So, so frustrating, as it might totally ruin our chances at the last hurdle 😭

@ThisMustBeMyDream Wow! That sounds awful. I can't believe they can just claim to have gotten probate when they haven't even applied for it yet. You have absolutely not failed your family. The only people who have failed are the ones who have lied and betrayed your trust.

Also refreshing my emails constantly. We supposedly have gotten enquiries and searches back and they were meant to be reviewed yesterday. I will call them tomorrow if I don't hear anything today. Really don't like calling because it makes me feel like I'm being annoying but otherwise I just don't ever hear from them.

We finally got our mortgage offer through this morning 🥳
Not sure how long everything else is going to take now, but after almost 3 months, I'm hopeful it will be fairly painless! (Famous last words...)

Amazing news @ShirleyValentin3! Hopefully as it sounds like most of the rest of the paperwork has been done you'll be ready to prepare for Exchange super soon 😍

I know, I can't believe it's actually here. I was so worried about it being rejected because of affordability.

Now I am just worried about the actual affordability and whether we'll be eating beans on toast forever 🤣

Hello all. We are only at the opening act of this shit show but already finding it stressful. We missed out on a few properties as our house was not SSTC and therefore not able to proceed. Fine. So we put our house on the market and accepted an offer from first time buyers (we actually turned down a much higher offer so we could go with the buyers with no chain). Brilliant. Except now there are NO properties coming on the market for us to view, let alone put an offer on, and every few days I get a phone call from our estate agent asking: ‘Have you found anything yet as your buyers are very keen to get going?’ Argh! I’m constantly refreshing Rightmove in the hope that a nice, affordable house will magically appear. How anyone moves house in the UK is a mystery as the whole system is absolutely shite.
@ThisMustBeMyDream 💐 I’m so sorry you’ve had such a stressful time of it.

House purchase - should be exchanging on Monday, completing 2 weeks later. I've handed in my notice at work and booked removals etc. £7000 invested so far, so I'm basically not sleeping until we exchange!

House sale - no offers yet.

😬

@ThisMustBeMyDream that is absolutely horrendous I'm so sorry.

You've been failed by the professionals that should know better - what a nightmare for you. You sound incredibly strong for coping with this.

Still not really much further forward today. DH spoke to our Solicitor earlier and she has phoned the vendors solicitor to try and get more info regarding the gas and electric instead of the whole back and forth via email. Apparently she's an absolute bitch, refused to clarify anything further and stuck to the same lines that she's been peddling for weeks. No further info, no indemnity policy, end of. And she tried to make out that the vendors were doing us a favour by breaking the chain so we were wrong to keep insisting for the info. I'm a bit worried my husband is going to ring the vendors solicitor and go off on her which even if she is an absolute bitch and can hold her own, will not end well for her 🙈

I think that if we want to go ahead, we're going to have to just suck it up and hope to god that nothing is majorly wrong with either 😞 bloody kicking myself that we didn't get them properly inspected weeks ago after we had our survey done (they recommend getting them inspected by a professional as they aren't able to comment on the condition of either). Fingers crossed for Friday 🤞

We're in a short chain - our buyer in rented on a monthly lease and chomping at the bit, we've no mortgage, our seller is moving into rented whilst they renovate so only 3 of us. I worked in conveyancing in the 1990's and I have to say not much has changed for the majority of solicitors. Still a stupid amount of paperwork, lots of jargon and no-one talking to each other.... we've had a few queries about our woodburner, but the main issue has been our lease which seems to be the most unusual lease known the mankind! We've had our contract through to sign on our sale, but not the purchase yet. Not sure when we should start packing but I'm hoping we can move in March/April - am I being optimistic!?

That seems to be 99% of problems, is that no one talks to each other. It's an email which is easily ignored and forgotten. Even the solicitors within the company don't talk face to face. We have a different solicitor for sale and purchase but within the same office, yet they only seem to communicate via email. Like wtf, walk over to her right now and speak to her!!

Our buyers solicitor has apparently emailed 3 times to discuss exchange on Friday and had no response from ours 😩😩 ffs.

A contributory problem to communication (or lack of) is the number of case files each solicitor has to have on the go at any one time in order to make any money. It is not unusual for a conveyancing solicitor to have 100-150 separate files running simultaneously.

@RooBear9 - Did you get the gas/electric enquiries sorted?

Nope, solicitor won't engage and in still being unreasonable/obstructive. Sigh.

Email?!? How modern 😂 we got our paperwork in the post- half a rainforest right there

When we were first time buyers about 6 years ago we got everything in the post and it was a massive wad of paper too! But this time around we have an online portal and everything just gets uploaded onto there. We've had to print off contracts/transfer documents ourselves and sign them and return via post though.

It sounds as if the only option is either pay to get them inspected yourself, or accept them as they are and take a chance it's fine.
An indemnity isn't of any benefit to you, and if the vendor's solicitor is still not responding, with completion targeted for next Friday there's little time left.

Yes, unfortunately I think that's our only option given time constraints. As I said above, we're kicking ourselves at not getting them inspected when we had our survey, but they hadn't refused to provide any information at that point, they just hadn't responded to the enquiries full stop.

I didn't even realise how useless indemnity policies are until I looked into it properly last night, why are they still around if they're absolute crap?? They seem to be the answer to everything in conveyancing but don't actually mean anything.