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.

For us it's all about location and bettering ourselves with what we have now. We're quite lucky in that we like our current house, it's been done up nice and we have a relatively private garden. So we had to find a house in a good location and with a relatively private garden. Inside the new house isn't up to our current standard but as it's going to be our forever home we can do this in time. I would have preferred to move into a house that didn't need much work but we couldn't find one in a better location.

But it's all up to each individual and your preferences.

Has anyone found any good removal checklists/things to do?

Are property surveys not standard then?

I double checked with our solicitor if we needed to do one and they said "you can choose to do another one if you want."

All we've had is the mortgage valuation survey.

The solicitors do drainage and land registry environmental searches.

I just assumed we needed to do an actual property survey... help! I'm confused.

@trampoline123 you don’t legally need to do one if your mortgage company has gone a valuation and is happy. However, most people get one fine (there are three levels to choose from) for peace of mind. I found out the roof on my purchase might need replacing so now I will put aside £ from sale to do that job.

Thank you!! It's all a bit overwhelming just now so thanks for explaining.

Mortgage valuation survey is very basic, often online. It’s just making sure the bank thinks it will get its money back if needed.

you can have a level 2 or 3 survey (the latter being much more in depth) - this is recommended.

then there are specific surveys, like damp surveys, drain surveys (camera down the drains, mapping, identifying issues) which you can instruct yourself.

you can go whole hog and get every possible survey or you balance the risk and decide what seems most sensible

Just tell them that the survey isn't to knock down on price and you wont try and haggle after a second viewing. That will make them feel better.

When i had my survey, i called the EA and told them id had it back and was happy with it to make our seller feel better about things

Good idea! I was so nervous when surveys were done in my prev sale.
It’s hard as what if something major and completely unexpected comes out of it - but I guess then you deal with it when it happens and reassess

If its major then thats understandable as long as they know you aren't going to try and
Chip them down because theres a bit of wonky guttering or other easy fixes

Would like to join thread too as I’ve just been reading through everyone else’s frustrating stories :(

We’re divorcing and split up before Christmas. STBexH is buying a vacant property which is all good to go and I’m moving into a rented house with DC.

Our house went on the market 1st Feb, sold mid-March to a cash buyer who’s selling to a FTB in rented , so you would have hoped that by week 12 where we are now we could be talking about an exchange date. How very wrong I was!

Our buyer seems to be the most laid back buyer ever. She’s aware of our divorce situation (and we’re still living in the same house ☹️) but is in no hurry to sort out paperwork needed for the land registry. Our EA sales progressor is great and doing all she can to expedite things, but at the end of the day the buyer seems to be in the driving seat. I’m desperate to move and am currently off work with an injury so the thought of doing any packing yet is off my radar.

How do people who are impatient - like me - cope?!

I feel for everyone going through this and it does seem to be more bearable knowing that I’m not the only one 😆

Welcome to the club @Househunter16 !

Sadly there is fuck all you can do but grab on and endure the white knuckle ride. Im a planner and organiser and have deadlines for everything and the whole process drives me crazy.

Update for me today;
Our progression EA must hate me as we've had our new buyers for just two weeks today and I sent an email asking for an update. I did it in a jokey way about living in boxes .

Luckily in them 2 weeks the buyer has been quite proactive and their mortgage offer was confirmed on Tuesday as well as searches being ordered. They have also had the survey so it's now just the conveyancing bullshit to wait for.

I have to wonder why when its the same conveyancing firm and same conveyancer as our last buyers they cant just take the searches out of that file as they are only 2 months old but it is what it is i guess 🙄

How late in the day can you exchange? I’m guessing will be doing it tomorrow now…

How long have people waited for a complete chain? We have accepted an offer but the end of a chain is looking for a bungalow which are in short supply.

I got the call just before 5pm. Fingers crossed for you...

Right. I've wrested control of the situation and am now refusing to exchange until they change the completion date to the following week. We'll see what happens tomorrow, because today the builders magically found the paperwork required before exchange, but then the solicitors left for the day at 3pm. As you do.

Placing bets on everyone being suddenly desperate to exchange at 9am tomorrow morning.

Well I spoke too soon just as I'd arranged removals and cattery and annual leave my buyers threw a hissy fit saying I'd told them verbally a date I definitely cannot do and if we can't all do that date then the next date they could do would be early July. Ok fine. But then my vendors threw a hissy fit at that and I was left trying to orchestrate everyone with the estate agents doing naff all apart from saying how frustrating it is.
I stopped doing my own actual job for an hour to try to get sense out of the upstream and downstream chain and removals and cattery but then gave up in frustration asking someone to just give me a nod when a date was agreed as I was flexible apart from the one day I cannot do. Ffs.

👏👏👏

It's amazing what ultimatums do to focus the mind. Fingers crossed for tomorrow (for the god knows how many times ive said this to you)

we've got a new broker and a new mortgage application in. our previous rate was a really good 4.1%. expecting something quite hideous this time due to the vendors complicated paperwork issues. really hoping it still starts with a 4...

Evening all. So we accepted an offer last few days of April, and then the buyer still didn't have a mortgage but nonetheless a memorandum of sale was issued on 7th May, survey done. All plodding along with legal issues and then today completely out of the blue just before 5pm, solicitor emails us to say the buyer wants to complete by the end of the month. 3 weeks today.

He never said he had a timescale in mind, we've had no comms from him whatsoever, just his solicitor in touch with ours. If he honestly needed us to leave by end of June, why didn't he simply say so?

My fear has always been that this buyer (seems to be a builder) has more than one property on the go and he will only complete on one; maybe whichever can move quickest. But that's just a hunch I've had based on no comms and he only did one viewing. Apparently he's FTB.

Is the sudden haste something to worry about? In any case, we can't move out in 3 weeks so that's that. Just want to garner some reactions and hope to speak to solicitor tomorrow.

Might not be an issue? We've only done one viewing and asked no questions just whatever is going back and forth with the conveyancers. also didn't bother with a survey. until our conveyancer rooted out some bad paperwork issues, we were getting ready to request a date. if i see a house i like, i decide to buy it, and that's it. i don't really have any questions!

Has anyone had any experience with restrictive covenants? We have one on the property we want to buy stating that no extension or building works can take place without the permission of a man who wrote the covenant in 1929 (unless he was 1 when he wrote it I’m guessing he’s not around anymore!)

@sugarbyebye I was just worried because if he had always really wanted to move in by end of June, why not say so before now? He could have told us that last week, or the week before, or when we accepted the offer etc. Why the sudden 3 week deadline?

@Toothspots we've got something like that and the solicitors have asked us what to do?! I mean like WTAF surely they come across this all the time and the people involved are long dead, so surely they should know what to do in that case!

Maybe he's just a bit dense and didn't realise it would be an issue for anyone, and thinks three weeks notice is fine? Is it a single guy?

when I bought before, our conveyancer was approaching retirement and knew everything. This time around, ours is young, and it seems we have to work everything out for ourselves. I was really expecting the former again, so this has surprised me.