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.

@pfb12345 Phew! What a relief!

@pfb12345 great news!

We exchanged on our purchase as planned yesterday, at 5pm. The all-day wait was painful, all other exchanges I've experienced were done at lunchtime. I assumed there had been a hiccup.

I feel glad and my doubts are gone thankfully but it's just such a rollercoaster, my nerves are frazzled. I hardly got any sleep.

No further on with my house sale, the viewer from this week has offered on another house after having a second viewing on mine.

Almost 15 viewings, three people have returned 2 or 3 times and no offers, not one. Can't help but take it personally! It's a lovely little house in a great location, great condition. Price?

Sympathies to everyone else feeling the pain, and congratulations @pfb12345 !

Exchanged at ten to 5 yesterday afternoon after assuming another day of unexplained and mysterious torpor was about to conclude! Turns out that the one missing document finally rocked up late on Friday afternoon but my very efficient if somewhat 'old school' solicitor wouldn't give approval until she'd had time to review it properly. I'm now sat on the phone to the bank attempting to get the balance of the funds transferred ready for completion on Friday.

I'm excited but exhausted all at the same time. I spent quite a lot of last night making mental lists of stuff to do/buy and rather wish I'd just got up and transferred all these lists to a real piece of paper given that sleep was clearly not visiting.

Fingers crossed to you all.

@spidershavetoomanyknees Yeah, I sent them an email telling them off now. It has just gotten a bit too much. Hopefully they will redirect their eagerness to those actually holding things up. (love the very metal thunder slug imagery).

@Karmatime That does sound different indeed. Very frustrating!

Congratulations to all who have exchanged!! You give us all hope.

Jealous of those who have exchanged! Congratulations.

Our vendors estate agent has confirmed vendor has sent enquiries back so now I wait with bated breath for my solicitor to get back to work tomorrow and hopefully finish the whole thing off.

Wow, so much progress! Congrats to @pfb12345 @RubyPip and @Vestigia! How much warning did you get? Did you know it would be on the day or was it a surprise "Hi we can exchange now if you can confirm" email? ... in other words, if I've heard nothing in the morning is it sensible of me to keep frantically refreshing my emails in between meetings or would we probably know it's near and I can cool it a little?

Chased our EA today - apparently the enquiries have been responded to but they haven't been confirmed (I guess to check there aren't even more enquiries to go...) but it sounds like we might be somewhere near the home stretch now. In my mind all that needs to happen is someone needs to say "yep, that's everything, here everyone sign these contracts" and then everyone will immediately drop everything to sign the contracts and hot-foot it back to their solicitors, who then will then drop everything to exchange our chain😁Wishful thinking, perhaps...

So happy for the ones who have exchanged/ made progress, I hope things continue to go well for you all.

But I'm sad to feel I will soon be the only one left on this thread as four weeks on and still radio silence from all concerned, I think this is not a case of no news is good news.

@spidershavetoomanyknees Exchange wise we set the date with the vendors 2 weeks ago, as soon as our solicitor's last set of enquiries were answered he then sent us the contact and mortgage thingie to sign, the vendors then also signed that week and last Friday my solicitor suggested I let him know over the weekend that I was 100% happy to exchange.

So effectively we were ready to exchange 2 weeks ago, but the vendors can't complete until later in Feb, and my solicitor advised against any longer than 2 weeks between exchange and completion so that's why we set exchange for yesterday.

Really feeling for everyone still waiting. It was 4 months from offer to exchange for us; it felt as though the enquiries and hiccup were endless but then suddenly you're there. Right at the moment you think 'oh sod this', you're almost there.

Glad to see we have some escapees! Had a 3am panic about everything last night but had a reassuring email from our solicitor this morning so feel that everything is still moving forward.

We are not going to make the latest completion date that everyone in the chain agreed to and we won’t be looking for another one until our our purchase is 100% ready. We were supposed to receive our solicitors report yesterday and it’s not arrived so we haven’t signed any contracts yet. Just waiting for our vendor’s solicitor to send the last two things that have been requested repeatedly over the last few weeks. I feel bad for the chain behind us but not sure what else we can do as the outstanding documents are critical.

Congratulations to the exchangers! I still have little idea of when I might join your happy tribe. I did get some reassurance that all parties in the chain are still keen to proceed but it lies in the hands of my buyer’s buyer’s lender and solicitor to reach an agreement on a ground rent issue. Google tells me this could take a long time…..

Well, I finally got the call, our sellers have lost the house they wanted so are pulling out of our sale too. We are left with our buyers who can't sell their house so we are buggered.

Oh no, god I'm gutted for you, it's beyond disappointing - I know there's nothing we can say that will help but offering cake and wine here 🥮 🍷:(

@frustratednomad really feel for you. How long have your buyers been back on the market? Is it worth going back on the market yourselves and starting again if you can face it?

@RubyPip thanks for the info. We're coming up to the anniversary of when we had our offer accepted! I think the only reason we haven't really considered jacking it all in is that we broke the chain when selling so we've been in rented for ages now. Trying to keep positive..!

@RubyPip Thank you, I'll pass on the cake but gladly take the wine, in fact I have!

@spidershavetoomanyknees they have only been back on the market for four weeks but it's a difficult house to sell, we are back on the market now, I'm not looking forward to showing people around again but needs must but I'm going to give it a couple of months and see what happens. The problem is not too many houses around that fit our criteria so we were lucky to find one and I don't hold out much hope of finding another.

@frustratednomad Oh no, what a nightmare. I hope you can find something you like just as much. Difficult when you have specific criteria though.

It seems like we are crawling to exchange. Maybe end of this week. Maybe next week. Oddly enough, I'm getting cold feet. It's not my first house purchase but the first proper family home we're buying. And suddenly I'm questioning all the compromises we made just so we could get a house in our favourite village. We made the opposite choice with our current house, perfect house in a shite location and really regretted it. Difficult to sell too. Just have to keep reminding myself that until our budget magically matches our dreams it's one or the other. Anyone else getting jitters?

Thank you everyone. And congratulations @RubyPip and @Vestigia

Sounds like so many of you are close!

We knew in advance of exchange as well @spidershavetoomanyknees but only by about a week.

@spidershavetoomanyknees

You've hit one year?! Wow I'm not sure i'd have the patience for that.

Our signed contract is in with our solicitor and we are waiting. The other side may want some clarifications on responses to the enquiries or they may be ready to go, we don't know.

The turnaround time is kind of hilarious. Their solicitor takes 2 to 3 weeks to communicate and ours takes 1 business day. I can only assume their solicitor does a round robbin of their files in that period and then checks for updates for each file. In a world where every solicitor takes roughly a week to respond, their lag time would be less apparent.

@frustratednomad fingers crossed everything gets going soon.

@thunderouslug joining you in the jitters club. Ours is a bit of a mid-term project. It's perfectly livable but very dated and needs a new kitchen. Old style bathrooms, ancient carpets, artex. Y'know. Nothing major and we love a bit of DIY, but it's daunting when our previous place was newly done and only really needed a lick of paint here and there. I understand the budget comments. Plenty of gorgeous places out there well above our budget!

@Sousuke nearly! Getting cabin fever in the rental 😂we decided to move summer of 2021 and we were on the market that autumn. Seems like a whole other life sometimes.

2-3 weeks to respond? Your sellers must be using the same solicitors that our vendors' vendors are using!

Sorry it’s all going wrong for you @frustratednomad. We’ve finally got our solicitors report and the contracts to sign. There’s a lot going on so I’ll leave DH to go through it all in detail tomorrow while I go into the office and have a normalish day. We still need to get confirmation that a charge will be removed on completion and some other deed before we can exchange so we are still inching forward.

Our Vendors solicitor responds very quickly but unfortunately he doesn’t actually provide the full information that is needed. This is week three of asking for confirmation that the charge will be removed and can the deed be supplied with the right names on it this time.

How much warning did you get? Did you know it would be on the day or was it a surprise "Hi we can exchange now if you can confirm" email?

Having had a couple of weeks of 'nearly there' sort of messages there was an exciting morning when I was asked to transfer the 10% deposit ready for exchange. This was just a harbinger of further silence though. Although there was a flurry of anticipation on Thursday afternoon which amounted to nothing at all on Friday. By 4.30 yesterday I'd stopped expecting anything to happen. Ever. At 4.45 we'd exchanged and set a completion date of Friday. So definitely keep hopes up right through the day!

Thanks @Vestigia! Our solicitors have had the 10% deposit since December (when we were last "nearly there", before we had a surprise addition to the chain at the top!) and we've signed the contracts etc already... so I think we'll get less of a warning than usual that the game is on. I will keep hopeful!