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.

I'm a conveyancer (don't hate me)..

Lots of these issues seem to be down to lack of communication. I wonder how many of you used the solicitors recommended by the agents?

Always use a local firm and go for the best not the cheapest.

My clients know where we are at, they ring or pop in regularly.

Those issues with leaseholds, they will 99% be the management company. 🙄

I'm so sick of it all. Now they want us to get a contractor in to look at the roof. It is an old house but the roof isn't very old and is in good order. We had some work done last year and the one small leak there was fixed. They want us to pay for anything and everything that they think needs to be done.

The surveyor has reported things are are simply not true. I don't think he even went in the attic though he claims he did. There's good reason I don't think he did.

I think this is all leading to them lowering their offer. We are relocating so have little choice.

Please, does anyone any experience of Indemnity insurance policies?

My solicitor is a local firm that my partner had a good experience with in family matters.
My buyer and vendor both have the same solicitors and again - local. I don't think any of us used recommended from EA ones. Tbh my EA didn't recommend anyone as I'd already had mine lined up after a sale (one of 3!) fell through and I switched agents. I'm on my 4th buyer and have lost all patience with this ridiculous process.
My solicitor for the purchase is also very evasive. Never picks the phone up. My solictor (well, paralegal I think) for my sale always picks up and other than her weds she is off she is always contactable and responds/rings back etc. Same bloody firm 🤷‍♀️.
My vendors solicitor is a fucking joke. She clearly works quite part time and no one can deal with anything when she isn't in!!!! They are also the ones who failed to mention the probate issue for 3 sodding months until right before exchange.

Absolutely yes for a poll @thunderouslug! How many weeks of steadily increasing insanity would that solve?

Congratulations@PointersPlease. What a bright and blissful Friday this has turned into for you!

As for me, while standing at a check out waiting to pay for more 'displacement chocolate' yesterday, an email came in from the EA's sales director. My solicitor is ready to exchange (clearly that one document has turned up) and EA is chasing the vendors (or rather the executors of the original vendor) for an exchange. After an hour or so of wild excitement and optimism when I visualised completing by Tuesday and ordering furniture and reconnecting broadband, today dawns and continues to progress accompanied by the usual profound silence on the home front. Fingers are crossed. As they are for you all.

Oh no! Surprise searches are the worst. Are they quick, do you know how long you’ll be pushed back?

@ThisMustBeMyDream your vendor sounds like a piece of work. Makes me glad to not be a conveyancer tbh.

I agree with @Theloftmonster about a lot of these issues being about poor communication… I think sometimes it’s buyers/sellers and sometimes it’s the professionals like EAs and solicitors. Have witnessed both! I think ultimately, no matter the profession, there are speedy efficient people that can make a whole company look good, and there are obstructive belligerent people who can really ruin things

…and sometimes both sides can be the same person, as demonstrated beautifully by our EA "sale progression" person who can go from being fantastically helpful and wonderfully communicative to being actively disruptive and very negative. Keeps us on our toes!

Thankfully our solicitors are amazing and they’re the ones that actually affect the process. They’re local, have used them for years they’re always quick, great updates, the lot. We’re reasonably balanced in our chain – two sets are super speedy and reliable one at each end, and two sets in the middle are absolute jokers. I strongly suspect one of the middle slow solicitors are EA recommended. Don’t know why they’d be recommended when they’re so slow!

Long live the wild excitement and optimism, @Vestigia! I’ve had a some (boring but useful) house-related things in my Etsy basket for a couple of weeks now – cannot wait to exchange, press "buy" and be the proud owner of some new wheelie bin stickers😂It’s the little things…

Our solicitors are not local but not from the estate agent. We used her when we bought the property and she was excellent. Now not so much.

She finally emailed to say she hasn’t sent off the answers to the enquiries as she wants to review the original sale file from the archives and is still waiting for enquiries from our sellers.

She is now on annual leave until Wednesday 😤😤

Everyone else has signed and is ready to exchange.

Hi everyone, please can I join in with my tale of woe.

Found a buyer for our house last august, after several viewings in a limited market we eventually found a perfect house for us. We then had to wait ages for our seller to find a house, after several false starts they finally found one and we now had a complete chain.

We ported our mortgage so paid for a mortgage surveyor, survey and searches, started to pack the house up etc. Then the blow, our buyers had lost their buyer, their house is now back on the market but they are not getting any viewings, so we are in limbo, worried that we may lose the house we want.

Sympathies with everyone else who are having problems with moving!

Well, that is it. Game over for me. Chain collapsed. She won't move.
I am SO fucked off it is unreal. So fucking bastard angry with all of the fuckers.
Guess who will be unpacking a whole house this weekend then?

ThisMustBeMyDream so sorry for you, it's a nightmare. I don't know why people can do this, if only there was something to stop this happening.

I've only got half my house packed but it means we can't have visitors for meals or overnight, and I'm dreading if this happens to us and we have to unpack again.

I'm so gutted for you.

I advise a big drink, and a lot of your favourite foods. I'm so sorry.

Oh jeez @ThisMustBeMyDream what a way to end the week. Any chance she's being dramatic and actually she'll see sense of the weekend?

Hi @frustratednomad I'm hopeful for you that as we get closer to spring your buyers find new buyers. We had a similar situation this sort of time last year and it was excruciating so I fully sympathise. Is everything in the rest of the above chain ready and waiting, or is there other stuff ongoing?

spidershavetoomanyknees yes, we are all just waiting, the person at the end of the chain is going into a new build so I guess that as soon as that house is ready they will want to go right away.

I think our buyers house is over priced that's why they aren't getting any viewings, along with the COL and mortgage rates rising, all we can do is wait and hope.

@ThisMustBeMyDream Im so sorry about this. How completely appalling

@ThisMustBeMyDream oh no, that's awful! Does that mean you need to start from scratch or could you rescue some of the chain?

I just heard from a colleague that the sale of his flat has fallen through yet again. This is the fourth time in the last 3 years. First buyer pulled out because of covid uncertainty, second buyer lost her job just before exchange, third buyer didn't realise he was buying a listed building until three months in (how??? I saw the listing and it said listed on there), and now this one pulled out once again just before exchange because of the economic situation. This whole system is insane.

Much sympathies to everyone in this stressful position and particularly to @ThisMustBeMyDream

Someone further down our chain needed to exchange today or Monday at the latest so that they could move in before they have an operation. Well it didn’t happen today thanks to our vendor and his solicitor who send back a quick dashed off answer rather than actually providing the information needed.

We are buying off the most unreasonable person I’ve ever come across and have nearly walked away (we’d have moved out rather than collapse the chain behind us). The title is being split as he is retaining some land so he took that as an opportunity to try to put a whole batch of brand new restrictive covenants on us. It took pressure from our and his estate agent to make him backdown particularly as there was no mention of this happening until completion dates were being discussed.

We need to get all the documents from our solicitor and sign the contract so unless they arrive Monday morning I can’t see how we can exchange. I’ve spent the week with laryngitis which I’m sure was to do with stress. I don’t feel we can look forward to moving as it’s all too up in the air.

What would you like to know about indemnity policies?

Another rant from me. So after going on holiday to the Maldives instead of signing documents so we could move to exchange, our buyers come back, screw £5000 reduction out of us because we caused a delay and they had to extend their rental agreement.
We chose a house that we're not totally happy with because it was no onward chain and everyone involved in our three chain sale/purchase has been running around, pulling out all the stops to meet the buyer's supposed deadline of end February.
Now it seems that the reduction is going to cause a delay because it has to be a new contract according to the solicitors and buyer's mortgage company and they will, after all, have to fix themselves a new mortgage.
What I'm really enraged about is that they have insisted through their solicitor that they aren't prepared to exchange anyway before they have 'had another look at our property'. We are livid. The EA is trying to smooth it all over but we feel like pulling out of the whole thing. Anyone think that wouldn't be unreasonable at this point? We really are wobbling about the house we found to buy.

@notsosoftanymore What worries you about the house you are buying?

@PointersPlease thanks for asking. It's being sold by the family after the 90 year old man died. It's semi detached which makes us nervous about noise (we have the same problem here!), it needs a lot of work - new kitchen and bathroom, rewiring, new carpets and curtains, the garden needs work, there's a lot of ugly concrete, it's a 1960s estate house and you can see another house out of every window which just isn't us. I worry our cat will get run over on the fairly busy local roads. We only jumped at this house because it seemed an easy purchase and we were being driven by these buyers. Reading what I've written it's mad.
We have just agreed that we both woke up saying let's drop the whole thing.

@notsosoftanymore Well that sounds to me like enough wobble not to proceed! Im a fan of asking in situations like this whether your gut feeling on making a decision is of relief - or more worry. Does this decision make you feel relieved?

We used solicitors recommended by our EA - they were great! Not very expensive as well (compare to the local ones). It is a very well known "chain" of solicitors started with T :))) Our neighbours also used them with no problems at all

@PointersPlease thanks for that. It's relief plus guilt about the nice people in the house we offered on and knowing that the EA is going to give us a hard time and my DH will go all flakey and the EA will think it's me (he's been rude to me, hate the man!). There is also slightly longer time concern about the huge, steep garden here and managing the damn thing, lovely though it is but hey, we can practice wilding! There are a few other things but then there always are, that's life. Houses, never just about the house.......