Buyers / sellers exchange waiting room continued...

[NoWordForFluffy]

New thread for those of us still waiting the dreadful wait. 😩

Can I join for a bit? I am helping my daughter buy a house as she has a few learning difficulties. I am doing all the solicitor stuff for her. We/She bought a house at modern auction which is supposed to be quick but their solicitors are so slow! It is driving my solicitor mad. At least she keeps chasing stuff which means I don't have to! We had to pay £6000 fees to the auction company and have to complete within 56 days of our solicitor receiving the draft contract or we loose our £6000! Which in our case is Xmas day 😳It's taken the sellers solicitor two weeks to answer the initial enquiries which they apparently did yesterday. It also took them nearly 5 weeks to get the draft contracts out so it's not going to be any quicker by the time we have finished. No idea what happens to our £6000 if we don't complete by Xmas day and it's the sellers solicitors fault. Especially as they are using the auction houses in house solicitor.

Debs handhold from me, that's such a tough situation

I'd have liked to give someone PofA when I had my breakdown - the current situation would be a lot different if I'd not been ill. Alas, my sister doesn't do well with admin and would refuse to do it anyway.

It's interesting to hear from people in the know about laziness. My dad's estate took so long it was insane. It did seem like they just diarised looking at the file once a month or even once every two months.

Whoop whoop! We have a correct plan. I've agreed it with the HA contact so he'll now send it to their sols who'll send it to ours. Then we can exchange!

Wooooo @NoWordForFluffy thrilled for you!! Really hope you're near the end.

A bit of a block this morning due to our broker dropping the ball a bit, and pushing our mortgage valuation back another week- annoying as we had hoped it would be done last week.

Also need to address some of the items on our level 3 survey- a few 3's which need looking at. It's an old house though so I was sort of expecting that.

Our buyers are having their level 2 survey done on Monday- that's currently the biggest unknown, as I'm selling a flat and so much of the building is out of my control. But will see!

That's so frustrating, @sweetpickle23.

I've just spotted that our mortgage company has dropped our rate by a further 0.2%, so I've asked our broker to swap down to that before we exchange next week. From initial offer to exchange, we will have reduced our payment by £34 a month, which isn't too bad! The delay has been good for something!

Ah, that would make sense then @flipent – I might ask that question should it come down to it and say we'll cover the cost.

Still no news today. Still waiting. Another week has come to a close. If you're in the same boat as us, I feel your pain. And every week, we get closer to Christmas. Trying to stay positive. Trying to stay sane. We've got so much going on at the moment; we really are in the thick of it.

Crossing everything for you @NoWordForFluffy

there's a thread going atm which is another great explanation of why I don't want to be a landlord though obvs we can't talk about it here.

Are you going to continue with the sale then, @EmmaEmerald? Is that the curtains / carpet / doors(!) thread?!

Still waiting for an update from my solicitor re. enquiries.

Emailed and phoned - no response.

Really getting annoying :(

@NoWordForFluffy yes, I will try to continue the sale.

that thread is demonstrative of many reasons I don't want to be a landlord.

We're waiting for everyone to confirm we're ready to talk dates. How hard is it to say yes or no? So close to getting a date it's frustrating. I did manage to finish sorting the loft today so that's one thing off the list!

@Debsthegardener your flat sounds very draining. My house has been a drag for me also so I have sympathies!

Interesting what everyone says about solicitors. I was prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt, however it seems as though the solicitors go through their normal searchers/contracts. But anything in the slightest bit tricky or they don’t understand, they don’t get on top of it.

My buyer, is apparently finally OK with the lack of warranty over a repair that I’m not sure ever needed one in the first place. Their solicitor told them they had to have it.

Now the buyers solicitors are asking again, for the third time, for planning permission for roof retiling - I’ve looked this up a few times and I cannot see any legislation requiring planning permission for this! And building regs for a couple of other things that do not need building regs.

I’ve asked my solicitor if they can do something about this. Surely this is some kind of access to the facts and legislation around building regs and planning permission! I’m not sure I want to just take out indemnity insurance because solicitors or advisors are not fact checking. Anyone else had problems with this kind of thing?

@NoWordForFluffy that sounds so positive! It feels like things are finally really moving along now for you, a lot down to your persistence.

Sympathies to everyone waiting either at this horrible enquiry stage or for final dates.

@Crazymadchickenlady the in house solicitor for the auction - that sounds bonkers everyone who buys from there must have the same frustrating experience.

Silly question alert

If a level 3 survey suggests following up with further investigation eg on the roof- who arranges that? I have reached out to a couple of roof companies today who have said they don't do that and would only come and quote for work once we owned the place. How will we ever know how much a quote will be if they all do that!

Still super keen on the property and don't think the issues are a show stopper, but if its going to cost a lot of money to rectify we may want to speak to the vendor about the price.

Eugh another week with no news. Our buyer promised an update "midweek" ... we are way past midweek at 4:30 on a Friday 😭

The strain of waiting is just awful everything's ready we're just waiting to lower chain to all get ready

@HopefulSeller, I don't know how you're still sane! They're like a dog with a bloody bone and need telling that they're stupid by your solicitor!

And I can rest a bit easier this weekend, knowing we have an agreed plan. I reckon we'll probably be ready to exchange by mid-week next week. 🤞🤞

Great news @NoWordForFluffy ! I'm glad it is moving forward for you, although slowly.
So if the mortgage rate drops down, you can just ask to be switched to it? I thought I was stuck with the rate on the offer? Will it slow things down or will I have to go through the whole application again?

We've dropped our rate twice. Our broker just switches via the online system, then the next working day we get the new offer (last time, anyway, knowing our luck it will be slower this time!). It's not wise to do it close to completion, but it should be quick to do.

We started at 5.79% and we're at 5.29% now, which isn't bad for 90 LTV, I don't think (with no fee).

It's not a new application (or isn't for us with Leeds BS).

Thanks fluffy, I'll speak to our broker!

@Floopani we switched rates yesterday. Solicitor received new offer today and resent our mortgage offer document and all done! I was worried it would hold things up. I guess you just have to be confident that nothing in your spending or credit rating has changed in case they do more checks?

Ours doesn't do checks, from what our broker said.

Those of us hoping to move before Christmas, what are your planned completion dates?

We want to complete on 13 Dec and move on 15 Dec. We're hoping with a gang of us involved in unpacking, we can do the bulk of it the first weekend.

I really can’t rem her what’s “normal” @NoWordForFluffy - what is a usual gap between exchange and completion? I can never remember how this all works!

@NoWordForFluffy I would similarly be proposing completion on fri 15th Dec, 8th would be amazing but likely too soon. Much later than that seems a little too close to Xmas. I would probably accept up to the 20th though…
We would ideally want to complete on a Thursday / Friday as my DH only has 1 day AL left for the year 🙈

I think usual / nice is a week. I'd never exchange / complete on the same day in a chain; my nerves wouldn't allow it!

We will probably have 2.5 weeks in between if we can exchange next Friday.

We're having a long overlap between houses as we rent right now. Which is nice for us, as we don't have to kill ourselves moving everything at once!