Pressure from EA in the chain making everyone nervous

[bottomofthechain]

Name change so I don’t out myself to anyone who may be potentially linked to this, and sorry it’s a novel but I don’t want to dripfeed.

TLDR; we’re getting a lot of pressure from further up the chain to speed things up with the purchase of our (hopeful) new home, they are making us out to be the ones holding things up but I think they are being unreasonable and everything feels like it’s moving along as it should.

We are in the middle of the process of buying a new house. This house is in a chain of 3 other properties, which means including the sellers of the house we are buying and ourselves, there are 5 parties involved. We would complete this chain, with the caveat that we are at the tail end of selling our own property. We don’t need everything to align in terms of exchange/completion because we have somewhere to go once our sale completes, and can wait for however long it takes to coordinate our onward purchase in the chain. We do however need the proceeds of our sale to put into the deposit for our purchase.

Our sale I would say is 90% of the way there, just one little thing left to resolve. This is all in hand, but we can’t guarantee a timeframe because we need to get the lead time from a third party, and we’ve not heard back on that yet. Once we know a timeframe, we can agree an exchange/completion date with our buyer. I am optimistically hoping that everything to do with the sale will be done and dusted before the end of March, but it is also entirely possible that this could be wrapped up by the first week of March.

Meanwhile, for our purchase, we instructed our solicitors and started the buying process (i.e. homebuyer’s survey, mortgage application, specialist surveys like drainage, electrics, etc) in mid-December. We also had to renegotiate our offer just before Christmas due to lenders valuing the property to be a good chunk less than our original offer. The final price was agreed just before everyone broke up for Christmas break. Our solicitor received the draft contract in the second week of January and went back to the sellers’ solicitors with queries based on the contract and searches last week. In my opinion this is all ticking along at the expected pace.

However we have been hassled by the estate agent (let’s call him Greg) at the very top of the chain for weeks, who is also pestering the estate agent (let’s call her Betty) dealing with the sale of the property we’ve offered on, who in turn is passing on to us these questions and emphasising the pressure she is receiving from further up the chain. I don’t blame Betty whatsoever as this must be frustrating for her too, but I feel like Greg is being completely out of line? He has sent us physical letters to our home pressuring us to contact him directly about “major issues about the chain” (which, by the way, he meant us and the sale of our property). He has also been bombarding our solicitor with emails and phone calls trying to get “updates” even though things are progressing as planned. Our solicitor has told Greg to back off and all is going at the normal speed. The clients he acts for are the people who have offered on the chain-free property at the top of the chain. They have only just put in their offer about a week ago. Surely then they still need to go through the whole searches, mortgage, surveys, draft contracts, queries process themselves now? In talking to Betty, she agrees that they would be starting from scratch and would be much further behind where we are at the bottom, so she is unsure why they are pressing us and making everyone else nervous.

I understand that the fact our sale hasn’t completed yet will be something of concern, but we are nowhere near discussing exchange/completion dates for the onward chain, so what’s the rush and why is everyone in the chain feeling anxious about us taking our time? I was expecting to be in the new home around summer 2024, considering our first offer was accepted in December and this is a pretty long chain. Everyone further up the chain getting antsy is making me feel nervous because the property we’ve offered on is our dream home, and we’d be really, really gutted if the sellers panicked and decided to pull out and remarket if they think that will move things along quicker. All the blame at the moment seems to be pointed at our sale which IMO is not really relevant at this point. There still feels like lots more needs to happen in the chain itself before we will all be ready to exchange, but now I feel like I’ve been too nonchalant about the whole thing and it might well fall apart around us. Am I being unrealistic?

Honestly in my experience these things don't move along unless everyone is like Greg.

I think OP is referring to the draft contracts being sent by the seller's solicitor to OP's solicitor for approval and enquiries. That does happen months before exchange because it is the start of the process. Whereas sending the contract to you for signature takes place when most of the process is complete and is not a "draft" contract, it is the final contract.

OP, the timings on your purchase do seem perfectly normal to me. If your solicitor only received the draft contracts during the second week of January, there is some way to go on your purchase. The second week of January is effectively when your purchase transaction began, as far as the legal work is concerned. What has delayed it was the Christmas break of 2 weeks, the negotiations over the price and that other client completions would have taken priority in December.

Far from saying Greg is an experienced Estate Agent, I would say he is being vastly over optimistic and has no idea about the legal process. You have said that he is representing the people at the top of the chain and they only had their offer accepted last week???!!! He's having a laugh if he thinks you're the one holding it up. Yes, of course, the top of the chain need to get their mortgage offer, searches, surveys etc and are therefore behind you in progress so far.

I'm sorry to disagree with so many posters here, but this is nowhere near ready to exchange and it is pointless trying to push something along when the work is still at the early stages. In fact, I would be minded to inform Greg that he is not to call/email anymore. Please, please remember that EAs are not really party to the legal work. That isn't their job, so they often don't know how long things take or exactly what needs to be done, so their input can be interfering rather than helpful.

I do hope you have advised your solicitor that your sale and purchase can be independent of each other, so that they are not trying to tie the sale in to your purchase, though obviously you need the sale to complete first so you have the funds available for the purchase.

I'm retired now but am an ex-conveyancer.

I suspect a lot of people on this thread haven't sold recently. We moved late last year, ans it took 5 months.from chain completion (total 3 properties in 3 different arras).

Estate agents, solicitors and removal.people all said that things are taking 5-6 months to complete right now.

Thank you Frecklespy and Flubadubba, your perspectives help me feel less like I've been really silly about my expectations. I will of course continue to keep on top of our solicitor for updates but good to know that we're not wildly off track.

And yes, our solicitor knows the two transactions don't need to be linked! We will be focusing on getting the sale over the line as we're so close.

The top of the chain might be like us we took indemnity insurance for most things so our searches came back in around 48 hours. We didn't bother with surveys as buying a project (also wouldn't for a new build) issues can be resolved once we are in. From surveys in the past all I get is a list of jobs that my builder can generate in a half hour long walk around and email within 2-3hours.

It took me 4 months to get the person out of our current home and I was ready to walk away at that point.

We bought a rental at auction recently was competed in 2 weeks

It's all very well saying people saying they would call the solicitor/estate agents every day to try and get things to progress, but some of us have busy lives and jobs and can't realistically do that. For example, if you can't take phone calls at work, like many of us, it isn't as simple as sorting things quickly, and things can take a while. I think that's very normal and putting loads of pressure on the situation doesn't help things.

My seller's estate agent also tried to put pressure on me to accept something I wasn't happy with because they wanted the sale to go through more quickly. Most likely, Greg is annoying everyone, especially the buyers of the property he is selling, as they probably know it could take ages to get things sorted.

OP, in the current market, if you pull out, it's not going to make things go any faster- particularly as another buyer may come with their own chain! I would tell your solicitor that all the contact from Greg is making things very stressful for you, and ask him to back off. However, I would also ask your solicitor to ensure things are going as quickly as possible.

If you can, maybe speak to your sellers and assure them that things are moving as quickly as possible on your end?

We found out today that the sellers Greg acts for, the ones buying the very top of the chain, had originally offered on that house, pulled out to offer on a new build who didn't want to wait for a chain for very long. When the new build property developer went for another offer, Greg's clients went back to the previous house they offered on (and is now the top of our chain... again?). So looks like we've been caught up in all this.

Greg also appears to be making things up to everyone further down the chain about deadlines and ultimatums, he has told us and our solicitor that the EA at the top of the chain (let's call him Steve) has told his clients that us at the bottom need to exchange in 10 days or they will pull out from the sale. Betty has been in touch with Steve and he said that wasn't true at all and his clients weren't remotely worried about the bottom of the chain, just worried about their buyers pulling something fast again.

Good news is that we spoke to our sellers today and everyone is much more confident about the speed of progress now. It was indeed Greg who spooked them by claiming there were "major issues" at our end holding everything up, but not explaining to them what those issues were. They decided to get in contact with us of their own accord to get the real story. Good timing as our next step was to ask Betty to let us get in touch anyway so we could reassure them directly.

Hopefully this purchase is a forever home and we won't have to deal with this much stress over a chain again...

This is exactly why estate agents need to stop trying to micro manage transactions. It is the solicitors job to deal with the transfer of property from one party to another and it is only them that really know what's going on. Anything coming out of an EAs mouth needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt.

A lot of posters here don't seem to have read this bit of the OP's post "The clients he acts for are the people who have offered on the chain-free property at the top of the chain. They have only just put in their offer about a week ago. Surely then they still need to go through the whole searches, mortgage, surveys, draft contracts, queries process themselves now? In talking to Betty, she agrees that they would be starting from scratch and would be much further behind where we are at the bottom, so she is unsure why they are pressing us and making everyone else nervous."

I'm bringing this back as I didn't want to start a new post, but what does it means if the top of the chain is waiting for an equity release mortgage and what kind of timescale we'd be looking at for that?

Please can you explain to me like I'm 5 because I did some googling and to be honest I'm still not that clear because they obviously are not doing it to release some equity while staying in their home, this home is being sold to the next people down the chain.

By way of a short update, our sale completed in March and can no longer be targeted as a reason things have stagnated (even though it wasn't in the first place). From speaking to Betty, it sounds like everybody in the chain is at the stage of signing and returning contracts to their solicitors in preparation to exchange, with the exception of those at the top of the chain who are Greg's clients. What we've been told by Betty, who had been struggling to get any answers from Greg for weeks until she finally heard back this morning, is that the top of the chain need to do an equity release mortgage but their solicitor has only said that "this will take some time" without giving any indication of how long.

Firstly, always ask Greg to put everything in writing, email is fine, you will find he is less likely to then be economical with the truth especially to solicitors.

Basically, as those taking an equity release have given away equity of their home to an external company (those providing the equity release), they need permission to exit that agreement and therefore sell the property. An example, a property is worth 500,000 and the vendors own it outright. In order to release equity but remain living in the property, they asked an equity release company to release 250,0000. They will not be paying back that amount to the company until normally the owners pass away. However it is possible to sell the property (as per your example) but in order to be released from that agreement the company must agree to the sale. So when the property is sold, 250,000 plus interest is given to the equity release company and the remainder goes to the vendor.

It is very similar (ish) to a mortgaged property, how long it takes to gain that permission I sadly think you are in the how long is a piece of string situation however I would ensure your solicitor and EA chase the relative parties to expedite the permission.

Thanks so much for that explanation, I was confusing myself when trying to read up on it! Frustrating that this means timescale is a complete unknown then.

The good(?) news is that Greg has written everything he's claimed/accused/relayed via email, leaving a lovely paper trail everywhere.

@bottomofthechain Someone may be along to explain the equity situation clearer than I have and hopefully will let you know how long permission is taken to be given. Hopefully though solicitors will have come across this before so will be au fait in what has to be done.

Pleased there is a paper trail!

@bottomofthechain to reassure you, you were not going crackers. We have had a Greg too, let’s call ours “Beatrice”. Beatrice is the agent for the people we are buying off. We are in a chain of 5 too our buyer > Us > our vendors (the one who Beatrice is working for) > their vendors > their vendors. Beatrice has made an absolute nuisance of herself, chasing us to do stuff (even called me yesterday to see if I had read the report on file our solicitor had sent in 23 Dec - which I had and replied back to but not the point!!), calling our solicitor and then relaying to us what our solicitor is doing/will be doing which she’s got wrong so many times and Stating all these “agreements” which have been made which are just a pack of rubbish and no solicitor is aware. The best was telling us our vendors will break the chain when the legal paperwork said otherwise, happy days Beatrice put that in an email! We’ve had to be very firm with Beatrice as has our solicitor, who has branded Beatrice a “pain”. Conversely, our agent has been super chill and left us alone saying at this point he won’t interfere as it’s up the solicitors in the chain but if we need him we know where he is - couldn’t have asked for better tbh!

We offered on our purchase in July and had to renegotiate in August as the vendors came back and wanted more money. It’s now January and we still have not exchanged. Our vendors have messed around with breaking the chain and not breaking the chain, delaying paper work, refusing access to do a viewing so we could refresh our minds on the house and check out what they had and hadn’t included on fixtures and fittings (for context I asked for a viewing in December as the last time I saw it was July and offered multiple times and days we could do), saying they want to move at pace in the summer and then refusing to complete at any time before Christmas, which we could have done easily if they hadn’t purposely dragged their heels as they have (we had an email from Beatrice telling us to ask our solicitor not to push theirs as they didn’t want to move before Christmas - said email was sent at the end of October…..). They have done everything in their power to slow this down and then Beatrice has been creating confusion and pestering us to no end. I came close to telling my husband I wanted to pull out as it was getting so angsty.

So from what you have said you were not slowing things down, conveyancing takes time and then the Greg’s and Beatrice’s of the world slow it down further while people have to unpick and decipher what they are saying!

@Purplecarrots123 I'm so sorry you're going through a similar situation now with an unhinged estate agent. It's so frustrating when they complicate and confuse matters up and down the chain. In the end our vendors' vendor decided to break the chain because she didn't want to lose her sale... And that probably meant less hassle from Greg as he could just focus upwards then (he was the agent for the house she was buying)!

I hope your chain comes through soon and you can finally relax. Is there any possibility someone in the chain would be willing to break it?