Buying our first home - enquiry about the process

[heatherkay333]

Hello,

In mid April this year, we put an offer to purchase our first flat in SE London and it was accepted. Great news!, however, the process seems to be taking ages and we don’t know who to ask about it. Our solicitor hasn’t received all of the necessary paperwork and I think has had to chase their solicitor for more information - I know there was an issue with the title but the agent told us that was resolved. We are concerned if too much time goes by and then it falls through - we want to be able to use our current mortgage offer if possible which expires end of September. Is there anyone we can ask? It seems we are constantly chasing our solicitor and the seller agent for information. It feels like there is something we don’t know about but no one is telling us. Or are there certain questions we should be asking? Thank you for your help - we are so new at this so we don’t know what to expect.

Are you getting a survey? If so have you organised it? You can ask you solicitor have the searches been requested and are they back? You can ask your solicitor when they will be ready to report to you on title? This might give you a clearer timeline. Are your vendors also buying somewhere? If so you can enquire where they are up to in the process

Average time for everything to get sorted is around 3 months, but can be extended further if it's a longer chain.

Your solicitor is really the main contact, being as you're the one paying them to complete the process. Normally they would have some kind of checklist of every thing that has to be done, showing what's been done, and what's left to be done. Can you ask them for something like this?

It sounds like a normal purchase- slow & frustrating.
As PP said, have you organised the survey yet? Your lender will organise one for valuation purposes but people often get a structural survey too ( not always).

Thank you! We do have a solicitor - she is very to the point via email so we just cannot tell if this is taking too long or not (compared to normal cases). We are chain free and the sellers are chain free - so it seems their paperwork wasn’t sorted or up to date. We plan to do a survey once we get through this first step of the solicitor receiving all of the information. Have you ever used a buying agent before? Could this be worth it if this purchase falls through?

So you put in an offer 2 months ago and haven't yet sorted your survey? Unless there is some reason not to one normally instruct a surveyor within a week or so of an offer being accepted. What is the 'information' that your solicitor is waiting for? Title enquiries should be well under way and searches returned by this point.

Why would you need a buying agent?

There is a lot more work involved in buying a leasehold property, including obtaining a management pack from the Managing Agents/Freeholder.

Thank you so much for your reply. So that is the problem - our solicitor doesn’t have the title or any of the information they normally receive straight away and she is chasing. She said she has made 20 enquiries to the other solicitor and no response as of yet. Hence, we have held off on booking a survey in case a red flag shows up early so we avoid paying close that money. We thought about a booking agent to have someone on our side :)

Yes, we are waiting on the management pack as well. And the searches.

In which case you need the agent to put a rocket up the sellers solicitor! 2 months with no title is absurd

Searches should be back if your solicitor was prompt in requesting them. How much are you paying for your conveyancing?

What is a booking agent?

I bought last year, also in SE London, both no chain. Something is moving absurdly slow for you so you need to start pushing.

Have you spoken to the estate agent? Although they work for the buyer rather than you, they generally don't get paid until the sale goes through so they will want to help you move things along.

:) Yeah, we think something must be off - they said they did need to update it but then said it was resolved. Just wish we knew more about it.

when we were buying, our vendors were desperate to make things move quickly and basically kept giving us deadlines… eg if you don’t book survey by x date, we will be going back to another buyer… etc
It made things very stressful but it did get things moving! I think you can do the same, e.g if you don’t send us this info by x date, we shall start looking at other properties etc. it is a buyers now, and they would struggle to find another buyer so hassle them!

Such a good point - thank you so much for this!