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.

We are hoping to complete 18th June. We’ve exchanged… the proposed date is 18th. Praying everything goes to plan. Excited now.

Your date is set as 18 June (barring disaster). That's what exchanging does.

Morning! I've just signed and sent the contracts to the solicitor. She's still waiting for an answer on a couple of queries from the seller but hopefully we can exchange end of next week with a completion date two weeks later. All becoming very real and allowing myself to get slightly excited (but mainly scared as a ftb!).

Ah I see, ok!! Thanks for the clarification!

This is also our proposed moving date but we haven't exchanged yet. Paperwork was getting completed this week so I hope exchange happens early next week as don't want to book removals in yet!

Is it just me or what?
Feeling so nervous about the whole thing when exchange / complete gets closer lol, especially after paying for the deposit.
I am soooooo excited now.

I'm beyond nervous and just numb. I don't believe we'll manage it at all!

Congratulations to everyone who has exchanged/moved since I was last online. The lack of Wi-Fi has been an admin nightmare here, the original line rejected, so it only went live last week and I have been trying to get contents insurance/finalise gas & elec/ chase my solicitor amongst 1000 jobs.

still no mortgage paid to me, I got the letter they needed, but apparently the solicitor says the wording isn’t exactly right, but it has been sent anyway in the hope they release funds.

I’m not sure what to do re my solicitor. They have caused untold stress by missing the mortgage condition until post exchange, I could have lost an awful lot of money, as it is my hands were tied with the purchase as it came to light the Tuesday evening before completion on the Friday. Had I been aware sooner, there were other properties I may have gone for. I think there is an ombudsmen for solicitors I will go to to complain about the service once this all gets sorted. I am so glad I love the house and my girls have settled in instantly to their new schools. I just hope my lender make a decision soon and then I can act accordingly.

Good luck to everyone in this awful process, I will catch up on the thread properly over the coming days, although I have Wi-Fi, it is only in certain parts of the house, SKY will send boosters, but not until it has had 10 days to optimise and bed in, so my mobile has zero signal and the Wi-Fi only works in a few rooms!

@noodles44, the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) won't look at your complaint until you've been through the firm's complaints process first (I think that's common of all ombudsmen). You can also look to instruct a professional negligence solicitor, but if you haven't actually lost money (thank god for your parents) there may be no point.

LeO can award compensation for shit service though.

Thanks for that info @NoWordForFluffy that is really useful to know as wasn't sure what the procedure would be. I may lose some money yet, but I won't know until the lender makes a decision. I am guessing the solicitor has some sort of indemnity insurance for this type of thing too.

There is a chance my mortgage lender will not give me the mortgage now and if this is the case, because I was porting a fixed rate (with another 5 years on it) I may have to pay their exit fee, which is just shy of £5k.

This particular lender also slightly hid the condition, rather than saying "your mortgage offer is agreed when this condition has been met" and highlighting it, they said the offer was agreed subject to conditions, which is the bog standard way all other companies word it when there are no additional conditions apart from standard ones, so I can see how it was missed. Apparently they have changed their procedure now as to how they highlight issues, so I cannot have been the first person this has happened to.

I also lost my buyers soon after the lenders valuation back in Jan, so I think when my solicitor picked up the baton again, it would have looked like all was fine. But, essentially, this is what I paid her for to read and check the small print of the sale/purchase (she has taken her fee on completion already)

Anyway, I am in, the house is lovely, the kids are happy, so it could be a lot worse. I really do dread to think what would have happened if my parents hadn't been in a position to help.

Yes, all firms will have PII insurance (though they're likely to have an excess of £10k-ish potentially), and they should've reported this to them already.

I can imagine your conveyancer has had numerous sleepless nights over this since it came to light. And she must also be thanking her lucky stars about your parents being able to step in.

Is there any more you can do if the letter isn't quite the right wording, or is this the only chance you have for release of funds?

I would think / hope that they would just pay up if the amount is below their excess, rather than make you make a prof neg claim (with all of the solicitor's associated costs on top of your losses).

I hope you get it sorted sooner rather than later though. What a mess.

I'm not sure, the letter is from the management company who deal with the leasehold arrangements. They may be happy to re-word it, but they have covered the most pertinent points so I hope it will be enough. Especially given my mortgage is less than 25% LTV and the issue is on the approach to mine and any works costs will be split between all the flats.

Yes, I am pretty sure my solicitor had one of the worst weeks of her professional life in those few days. She emailed me at 11pm and at 5am too in response to me managing to find a structural surveyor who could attend the next day.

Thanks for your advice. X

Right so our chain is now complete and there are 6 in the chain (our EA said our buyer doesn't count as a link as she's in rented?!).

I'm hoping that it can all be tied up in 4 months. 3 months would be great but with such a long chain I think that's unrealistic 🙃

Hi can we join! We had an offer on ours on the 28th may and our onward offer accepted the same day. It's only the two houses in the chain as our sellers are moving abroad and our buyers are FTB. Our mortgage went to the underwriters on Saturday and our buyers had their valuation last Thursday. I am already stressed and can't stand the whole process!!

Hoping to move by the end of August. We've had draft contracts through already so I'm hoping we're speedy..

Happy Monday, everyone!

After a weekend of feeling furious at everyone who has caused all the delays to exchange (and who are now blaming us for the delays when we've been ready for many weeks now), we've agreed to complete on the 17th provided we exchange by the end of the day tomorrow.

I feel like I'm stuck in some hellish version of Groundhog Day, waiting by the phone yet again to hear if we've managed to exchange.

We've booked removers to pack the house, but we're so anxious and feel so helpless, we've been doing a lot of packing ourselves anyway - they should get the rest of the house packed quickly at the rate we're going.

A word of wisdom to anyone reading this thread - do not, under any circumstances, agree to exchange phone numbers or email addresses with your vendor.

I have been inundated by text messages from our vendor since we swapped numbers a few months ago, trying to arrange things outside the chain of solicitors. I've had to block her now, because not only were the number of messages excessive (over 100), her explanation of their situation and their vendor's situation have turned out to be false in a number of ways, and I can't bear it. I am firmly convinced she's the type of person to manufacture drama, and I'm completely uninterested in engaging with it. I wish I'd never given them my number. Gah. It's been an added layer of stress that was completely unnecessary. Lesson learned.

@MovingToPlan hoping this is the home straight for you finally! (Sorry couldn’t resist the gif)

After a flurry of activity last week and me rushing to try and get everything ready for exchange (couriering documents back to my solicitor, speaking to my bank and getting transfers in place etc), my vendors solicitor is still failing to answer really basic enquiries on the fourth chase.

Thanks for the tip @MovingToPlan sound alike that's made a stressful situation even more stressful!

I sent a bit of a chaser email to our EA and subsequently had to give our solicitors a bit of a ticket up the hun but they responded within 10mins and have sent enquiries to our sellers solicitor this morning! Got butterflies as it made it seem so real after a quiet few months of limbo.

They have asked for 3 months bank statement showing our deposit. However it hasn't got the full amount as we are topping it up at the end of the month.

Do you think that's ok? I mean I was under the impression as long as we have it for completion that's ok. Do you think we need to borrow the money now to top it up?

Just send what you have, then another statement at the end of the month when you've topped it up.

@Mover2024 we are also in a chain of 6 and we are second from bottom. We agreed sale and inward purchase the end of Feb but chain didn’t close until end of March/start April 😩so I’m hopping for end of July but everyone else feels very slow with everything so not sure if it’ll happen.
In theory it shouldn’t take longer with so many but it’s because it only takes one or two to be a bit slow and the knock on is huge.
Hetes to a summer move and news shortly!

Thank you

Out of curiosity, do you get a copy of the enquiries the solicitors raise?

We got blind copied in to the email to the solicitor.

Love the gif, I may have to rewatch the movie once we're in and can laugh about it all. One day. 😆

Chased our solicitor this morning with regards to exchange and they have confirmed all is in place and should be happening this afternoon ☺️