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

[MovingToPlan]

The previous thread is almost full! We've had lots of completions, exchanges, offers accepted, maddening conveyancing teams, strange requests, and worries to last a lifetime. Welcome welcome.

Catch up here: The all new buyers/sellers waiting room (continued) thread

My update is that everything seems to be lining up and we're looking at exchange next week. 🤞 Hoping to complete a few weeks after that.

Good luck to you, whatever stage you're at in the process.

They need you to sign it ready.

On day of exchange they will call you to confirm you still want to go ahead and then call you when you have. The

@MovingToPlan that’s sounds infuriating - have a 🍷 from me.

My vendors, who are reputedly desperate to move, solicitor still hasn’t come back with the answers to final enquiries. It’s really stupid stuff that they should have had the info on from the get go. I’m half tempted to call the EA tomorrow and get them to push from their side too.

Another collapsed sale. How can we get so close to the end and the buyer pull out? We have the house back on the market and praying for another buyer, soon. It baffles me that this is the process for buying and selling. There needs to be another way. I would love to know what the impact on people's mental health is when selling and buying. We are in another country and the buying and selling process is so much more streamlined. I wish we never bought in the first place, absolutely not worth all of this.

@Gloriasub when you decide on an exchange date, your solicitor will ring you up on that day and ask you formally whether you are still happy to exchange. You obviously then agree.

The solicitors then do it all my telephone to each other.

You will then get a second phone call to confirm that you've exchanged and that is when it is now all legal and binding.

Completion will then happen on a date decided by you all.

Again the solicitor will ring you and say completion has happened and they have contacted estate agents to release keys.

About a week before exchange I was sent a Draft Completion statement- which is basically a bill detailing the EA fees, solicitors fees etc, I had to confirm that via email. I knew it was all getting close when that happened.

@fromtheshires the job they want doing is flagged as a safety issue: repointing some bricks in the roof space in loft (the flue). If the sale collapsed, we’d have to do it anyway. We also need to fix a step on the decking but I don’t think that’s a deal breaker. I think we will just do the work to keep them sweet. We agreed the sale on Feb and as we are both bottom of chain, I’m conscious they’ve waited ages.
My vendor however doesn’t seem as thoughtful or motivated to move quickly and hasn’t responded to queries from weeks ago! Honestly…. I answer all my emails within 24 hours (single mom who works full time): he is a young man with a girlfriend and no kids 🤦🏼‍♀️

Wouldn't hurt to ask the EA to contact them to try to push things along. EAs are normally pretty helpful in this sort of situation because unlike the solicitor, they don't get paid unless the deal reaches completion (in most cases).

Sorry to hear this. Is there a reason for it falling through?

I think from looking at this thread it has a massive impact on mental health. Its said to be one of the most stressful things ever

I haven't posted for a bit as our purchase is on the brink of collapsing too, as our vendor doesn't have some paperwork from the build which means our mortgage offer has been withdrawn. I haven't slept in days! They're trying to sort it out and we're trying to find any lenders who don't need it but really struggling. Our conveyancer and broker just told us to find another house. There's nothing on the market we like in our price range. I'm hoping we manage to come up with a solution or it will be a very disappointed chain!

Does anyone know the chances of a chain breaking down between exchange and completion? My brain has decided that it’s a good thing to worry about in the middle of the night.🙄

Very, very unlikely.

Because if someone pulls out after exchange, they have to pay hefty financial penalties

Our searches came back yesterday and are being reviewed so things ticking over.

I got myself in to such a flap though that I couldn't sleep yesterday. Was going through all the money side and checking we have enough savings, which we don't right now but will have and everything kept snow balling.
I'm so tired and worked up I feel sick today. This is the first time I've felt stressed with the move.

I also feel like it's only me who does the worrying and not my BF. Maybe it's because I'm the one who's always dealing with it and will be the one in a mad panic once we complete to get a school place for my son who will be starting reception in sept.

It does seem to only be the women dealing with it all in my experience. Everyone who viewed my house - it was the female who's name I was given, so they clearly booked it. All the information from our buyer and vendor has been through the female partner. I am doing everything for our sale (but it's my house so that's fair) but I am also the one doing all the chasing and contacting for our purchase. My partner will look stuff up but he wont email or phone anyone, and no one seems to expect him to! I have got him trawling every mortgage lender in the UK at the moment trying to find one that will accept our criteria and he's putting all that in a spreadsheet. He's good at spreadsheets but has no project management or communication skills it seems! And he definitely doesn't seem as stressed as me, he starts snoring as soon as his head hits the pillow. Lucky him!

Sorry to hear this 😞 happened to me twice, so stressful! It will get there in the end though, and despite it being ridiculously stressful, I’ve mostly forgotten about it now it’s done!

I agree - tends to be the woman mainly dealing with it hence the woman who feels more of the stress.

Not always of course but as a general pattern, yes.

We’re buying and I’m feeling feeling on edge about asking for anything (2nd viewing, a specific survey). Nervous they’ll be difficult or pull out even though they struggled to find a buyer. It’s so hard when you find a house you love! Hoping it’ll be speedy by my experience of selling was sooooo slow despite no complications.

Just wondering on people's thoughts on buying a house you really like but don't "love". Would you? It does tick all the boxes - close to station and shops, extra bedroom so kids don't have to share, in catchment for the very popular school we want. But the road is busier than I'd like and the (very nice and pretty big) garden is north facing which means the kitchen is much darker than my current one. But everything in that area on a quieter road is about 20% over our budget - think £100k. We COULD stretch further but it would affect us a lot day to day - we'd have to cancel gym memberships, cut out holidays for a couple of years etc, and we'd be very stressed about any rate rises. We've looked at quite a lot on Rightmove and in person and it does seem WAY better than anything else in the price range within our area. The school is what's putting the prices up round there. I'm sort of thinking along the lines that if we bought it and weren't happy we could sell in a couple of years once my kids are settled in secondary. I know we'd lose out by paying stamp duty and fees and everything twice but it would be less than the cost of a year's worth of private school fees.

We're both women in our couple, but I'm doing more of the legwork on the whole, simply because I'm a bit obsessive (dog with a bone more like) and can't get things out of my head until I do them.

I've sent emails to our EA and conveyancers to say we are no longer happy with the completion date of 17 June, if we aren't going to exchange this week we can't commit to a completion date the first day the vendors at the top of the chain are back from holiday (why would anyone book a holiday around the time they are asking for exchange/completion? I can't think of anything less relaxing!).

I'm going to dig my heels in about this one, because this messing about has caused us so much stress. And it's not even just one person, we've had delays and nonsense from everyone in the chain at this point!

If we wait until July to complete, we'll actually be slightly better off financially, but at least end of June completion means I'll have another payday under my belt before moving. Either way will be fine in the end. I just need to feel like I have control over the situation in some way.

I’ve done this before, bought a house I didn’t love but I did like. It ticked all the boxes but lacked the character of the properties I love. However, it was the best we could afford at the time & was realistically priced for what it offered.

We stayed there lots of years though and it sold easily because it ticked lots of boxes for other people too, including an outstanding primary & secondary school in catchment.

I say go for it as long as it isn’t too noisy from the road - that would be a deal breaker for me personally.

Don’t blame you at all for saying you want to change the completion date to one that suits you better.

Not exchanging when you were supposed to will have implications for the chain & you don’t have to always be the one being flexible about everything!

@MovingToPlan definitely dig your heels in at this point. Perhaps a deadline with the threat to pull out May push them along. Sound alike you've had a really stressful time.

@Itsrainingten personally the rd would be a no from me and is on my list of non-negotiable's. We live a few roads back from a busy rd and it's noisy in the summer and I'm forever dusting.

I guess if you can live with it for the sake of the plus points though, I'd go for it.

@Itsrainingten , there's a lot to be said for not overstretching your finances in terms of quality of life. How does the rest of the family feel about giving up holidays etc for 2 years to live on a quieter road? If you know you will probably move in a few years' time anyway, I'd say go for it.

On the kitchen, mine is north-facing but very light as the windows are large. The lack of direct sunlight is actually an advantage in terms of it not getting too hot (as my last south / east facing kitchen did).

Apparently we might exchange contracts today.

We are in a delightfully small chain. Just two houses with three parties as buyers/sellers. Despite this it was been a stressful journey which started in November when our house was first on the market.

We are all in agreement that a late June date would work.

Removals and annual leave from work booked and house looks like a chaotic warehouse with boxes and piles of things everywhere.

It was at precisely this same stage the last time I moved house that the chain behind me collapsed I was awaiting the call from the agent to say 'You've exchanged' and instead I received the call that buyers had pulled out and we needed to get ready to start viewings again. It then took another three weeks to get a new buyer but in the meantime lost the house we had been buying. Two months later we still hadn't found a new suitable house and the original houses sellers came back to us to ask if we would still be interested as their new buyer had an issue with their mortgage offer!

It's horribly stressful and uncertain.
What a crazy system. The conveyancers benefit when things fall apart as they then get the joy of redoing the same work for a new purchase/sale.

Think it depends on what your non negotiables are? Eg. My partners non negotiable is a south facing garden and definitely not north. we do love the house we’re buying even though it’s not perfect, but we get a sense about it being right?

Thanks everyone. Our non negotiables are catchment and 4th bedroom plus nice garden.
It has all those. We'd rather the garden was west facing if we had the choice. Sounds a bit nuts but we have south facing at the moment and everything is always so HOT but I like to sit out on a summer evening. I probably would have said not north facing but for the garden I actually think it's fine. It's big so there will always be sun, just maybe not right outside the back door and the patio is quite long before you get to the lawn so even that has sun (it was sunny on our 2nd viewing so we checked) but like I said the kitchen doesn't really get much. It has big windows though and the seller has blinds on one and curtains on the dining room side that were sort of together at the top and looped at the sides (if that makes sense?) so part of the window was covered, so I think it might be brighter than it looked.
I dunno about the road though. It's not a main road or anything and it wasn't noisy on either visit but it is used as a sort of cut through. The high street is curved and this road joins one part to the other. It has no business or industrial property on it but I imagine anyone who wanted to avoid high street traffic would probably drive down it. Also we have a cat so I'd be a bit worried about cars with him. Like I said though the garden is big so I'm not sure he'd have much reason to venture out the front really.
I dunno. I think it's good and I think we'd be happy but then I remember how much I LOVED the one we're living in (which doesn't work for us anymore) and I don't think I'm as excited about this other one as I was.
It's tricky because we moved from a teeny tiny dark flat to our current house so I guess I'd have always been excited really. And we didn't have schools to consider then either