Avice needed buyers dragging sale out

[Dontyoupullmyplayhousedown]

Morning

I did post this before but somehow it didn't appear. If it does I apologise its being repeated.

As the title says our buyers, The Church of England are dragging this sale out. They had their offer accepted in November. We had a successful offer accepted in Scotland.

Both our English Solicitor and the buyers were made aware we needed to sign contracts here before missives were completed in Scotland. No problem there is a tentative moving date for after Easter set.

The C of E have had the transfer and contracts for 6 weeks now, their solicitor said they were being checked and would be signed and sent very soon, they weren't. Our solicitor seems to wait for us or our Scottish solicitors to contact him before he chases anything.
They also drip feed questions, so after the initial ones, now it's every 10 days on a Friday at 4.30pm l!!

Contracts are ready to be signed north of the border and our solicitor amd theirs are very aware of this.

All this is making us and the people we are buying off very nervous.
Is there anything we can say that might hurry this along?
We don't want to lose the sale, obviously, but this foot dragging is making a stressful situation much worse.
TIA

If your solicitor seems to wait to be chase before he does anything, I'd start by phoning daily to ask for progress reports. Secondly, use your estate agent. They only get commission if you complete so get them worried this sale is going to fall through and they will start phoning everyone to try and get it moving.

Thank you for replying! We shall start with the Estate Agent and see what she can do to help, never thought of asking.them.

Oh, definitely ask the estate agent. Think about how much you are paying them - make them earn it! :-)

In what context is the CofE purchasing? Having previously bought from the CofE, I’d advise doing a bit of your own legwork and identifying somebody relatively senior in the team who is making the purchase and making direct contact. Are they using their in-house legal team for conveyancing, or an independent firm of solicitors? Ultimately what you’re up against is a very bureaucratic organisation where each individual request made by your solicitor may have to be siphoned through several individuals until it reaches the person who has an answer, all whilst working around their broader workloads, working patterns, annual leave etc. It’s not given the same urgency as somebody buying or selling their own home would give it.

@ComtesseDeSpair
Thanks for replying.
As far as we know ots being.bought.by the local diocese. We know the nsmme of their surveyor as he did the viewing. They are purchasing our property as a cash buyer, it's to be the new Vicarage.
They are using a solicitors in Newcastle for their conveyancing, they are rather slow as well!!
The advice you've given is great, I will see if I can find a list of the finance trustees (they are purchasing it) and send a few emails to them to see what is happening. I'll also contact the surveyor and see what he says.

Thanks again for your help, it's nice to hear from someone who has dealt with them .

We offered on a property being sold by the C of E. It was quite a slow bureaucratic process. There were a lot of things that needs to be in place, all the trustees had to turn up to the meeting, that sort of thing. Throwing in that honestly, there is no real motivation for them, they aren't buying a family home that they love, so it's a very detached sort of process, and no one was doing anything outside of regular business hours. This meant even just making offers and getting responses back took a few weeks. So I empathise. We didn't end up moving forward with the purchase, but not because of the church specifically.