The all new buyers/sellers waiting room (continued) thread

[sweetpickle2]

New thread!

Congrats @TomatoSoup69 what a relief (at last!!)

Thanks @ShittyGlitter - yes one of mine keeps saying she is worrying incase she doesn't make friends in the new place. She has had a grotty last year + of school due to some friendship issued and my eldest daughter hasn't settled into senior as well as she had a major op at the end of 2022, so we are all hoping a fresh start is what we need really.

That said, we are in a nice area and will be fine if it doesn't work. I have set a time limit on attempting to move, my eldest picks GCSE options next year, so I want us to have moved before then. If not, I will make something work where we are.

Congrats @SJ456
I am a sucker for a fireplace, hope it is a nice one and exposing it turns out to be a good move (or not too expensive to get rid of if not...)

Well done @TomatoSoup69 x now the exciting bit can begin.

Happy unpacking @SJ456 and good luck with the new baby.

Holding onto hope for you @noodles44 ! I hope it all comes good.

Good luck to everyone who's packing up and their Jurassic Peaches and glass mountain of Gu ramekins.

Joining this thread as we've just had an offer accepted on a house after our last purchase fell through. Turns out the 'seller' had no legal right to sell and was illegally living there. Not something I prepared for in the thousands of scenarios that kept me up at night!

Am hoping this one is a lot smoother and luckily we've been able to just transfer the mortgage application to the new property rather than start again. We lost survey costs, but small fry compared to what we would have lost if we hadn't discovered their deceit. There's some terrible people out there.

We are chain free as keeping our existing place that we'll rent out. I've only ever lived in apartments my whole life so moving to a semi will be a big change! But i'm excited to have a garden. The house was well maintained and good knick but is dated - reckon just ripping out the carpet and fresh paint job would make a huge difference. No extension or loft conversion to it, just a lean to conservatory that was surprisingly comfortable for Feb. So lots of options to do those if we wanted as most neighbours have one or the other. I just didn't want to pay over the nose for someone else's extension when I'm not even sure we need it!

We are awaiting the lender's valuation and I'm hoping they don't down value it. We offered asking as it was fair and already discounted and didn't want to risk getting gazumped - it's a popular area with 3 other offers already. But being chain free gave us the advantage as sellers are chain free and moving abroad soon and want a quick sale.

So once our solicitor receives the memo of sales (agents posted it rather than email which is unusual?), and contract pack, we can start the survey and searches.

Oh my word @houwseevryweekend I have so many questions!! Firstly, why would anyone do that, and secondly HOW are they even able to get to the stage you got to?? Some seriously warped people out there.

Fingers crossed for your new purchase! I'm also going to a house after only living in flats, keep thinking I won't know what to do with myself with all the space 😂

He bought the property with forged papers and there is an ongoing investigation into him- he wasn't supposed to be living the property and certainly not selling it. The banks are legal owners and he was out on bail until his trial! Must have been trying to get the money and run. Lied to the agents and his solicitors - and I guess this due diligence isn't done till closer exchange. We only found out because the police saw the property being advertised on RM and spoke to the agents!! So brazen of him (and stupid). And terrifying this thing can happen.

Hear you about all the space. And also having so many more doors and windows to lock. We would have liked a flat tbh but ones with garden and decent space were wayyyyy more expensive than a house in this area. I think because they are either fancy new builds or period conversions. DP works late shifts sometimes so the thought of me rattling around alone is a little freaky! In my flat, I knew exactly where sounds were coming from - here it could be soooo many different places.

Haha- my partner and i were discussing changing the locks when we move in (do people do this?? I read it somewhere but I don't know if it's OTT) and after we agreed we'd look into it I was suddenly like- but there are three doors! It wll cost a fortune!

Exact same situation as you!

We're so excited to be leaving this crappy area but we love our first house! It's been perfect for what we've needed. We were sad at the thought of leaving.

However today we've arranged broadband for the new house which is pretty much the first thing we've actually paid for and organised and it's made us lose all the sad vibes and are not back to being super excited!!

Praying we exchange before Friday.

Now*

Joining in for the first time, we’ve had our mortgage application approved today. We already have an offer accepted on a house and I think all the searches have been done. We have a couple of questions that the sellers solicitor is taking ages to answer and we want to organise a survey once we know the answers. We’re really keen to complete as soon as possible so I’m hoping the process will be smooth and quick from here on in. Does anyone have any idea on time scales? Will be ringing the solicitor in the morning to get a better idea but researching online shows such variation and I’m getting worried it’s going to be months and months!

My solicitor told me it averages out 8-12 weeks.

Welcome @fingerscrossedplease!

It depends on a number of factors- how many are in the chain, if there are any complicated properties in there (eg leasehold, probate), or just plain old how good your solicitors are. I was told between 12-16 weeks (chain of 3 properties including one leasehold), we're going to be bang on for that by the time we complete.

Waiting for exchange, fingers-crossed.

Hopefully the seller can get the lease extension done smoothly

Joining in here too. Waiting to exchange but the vendors let me come round and measure up this evening which was lovely of them. I'm downsizing and my furniture is going to be massive in my new smaller home.
We're hoping to exchange and complete before Easter. Maybe just three weeks away. Movers coming round to quote tomorrow.

I have had an offer, well 2, they upped their opening offer. The agent is checking they qualify financially before I accept, it is the people who were super keen immediately and have come under offer now and offered.

I'm not going to say anything to my seller until it is confirmed tomorrow as don't want to get their hopes up for them to maybe be dashed. I'm sure they won't be, but no point tempting fate.

Eek! Hopefully that is me/us back on track....

Heyy mind if I ask when your offer got accepted?
Just wondering your timeframe for this whole transaction:)

Sitting patiently in my camp. Accepted an offer on 14th Feb and had an offer accepted two days later on our onward purchase.

Our survey has been done and we are awaiting the report which should be through Monday.

I have the mortgage appointment tomorrow but no issues as its only a small mortgage and not even 2x salary (thank the lord we are lucky!)

I forgot how stressful it is waiting on everyone as we are on top of all admin and our solicitors are impressed as we gave them everything they think they will need (elec reports and safety certs / boiler service receipts / FENSA certs etc) when we took our signed forms back.

Hopefully our buyer is just as on the ball and we will have the keys by the end of May assuming the house we are buying isn't falling down. The survey will be terrible I'm sure as we purchased a 3 year old house last time and they made it out I was buying a shed .

Im trying not to be too enthusiastic but i have mood boards for every house made up and 'spending' all my money on renovating the house already.

We still have an enquiry outstanding on our sale that my solicitor is looking into and still waiting for something from the management company on our purchase. I think once these are resolved we'll be able to discuss dates for exchange but my god this stage is so slow! Absolutely painful.

Omg @noodles44 this is very exciting! Very good news indeed!!

@Gloriasub we had our offer accepted 16th December. Pretty small chain of FTB, our buyer and we are buying a rental that's currently empty so we're the end of the chain. We wrote off the 2 weeks over Christmas so are now 8 weeks into the process and are still in the enquiries stage. I'm really hoping to exchange in the next 2 weeks with completion before Easter which felt very doable a few weeks ago but the enquiries stage is taking far longer than I anticipated.

What happened if your buyer renegotiate the agreed price?? What would you think and will you pull out because of this or would consider adjusting the price before exchange?

@Gloriasub I'm not expecting that to happen, it's a new build estate and the house is still under NHBC warranty, the final enquiry is regarding the developer so I'm not expecting anything untoward at this stage. I've not thought about what we'd do if it did tbh.

@gloriasub offers were accepted around 20th Jan

Oh, similar to my timeframe as well, but EA said they are hoping it's all done by May.
Such a long wait :/ although I have time to wait, still wanna get it secured

Hi all!

So we're 7 weeks in from accepting an offer on our place and having an offer accepted, and after a very slow start (buyer doing nothing for the first 6 weeks), they had a Level 2 survey done on Monday. It was quite good actually as I was home when they came round, and I was chatting to the surveyor quite a bit and on his way out he said, "it's a good house, you've got nothing to worry about". Very reassuring!

Really hoping we can exchange in the next few weeks; we're waiting on the buyer to get their survey report back, complete their searches that went in last week, and handle any enquiries on both sides. All three solicitors seem to be a bit on the slow side too and require regular nudging. So who knows!

Feeling nervous as house prices have definitely gone up in our area since we had ours accepted...and the house we're buying is vacant. An identical house (with older bathrooms and kitchen) came up last week for £25k more than we offered, and it sold instantly. Eeeek. Just have to hope they don't check Rightmove as obsessively as me 😆