The all-new buyers/sellers waiting room (continued x5) thread!

[BirthdayRainbow]

Hi I took the liberty of starting a new thread as I couldn't answer on the last one.

@kirinm I am glad you've decided I pull out. I wanted to suggest it but didn't want to stress you out. I hope the next house you view is the one and it all goes smoothly.

@ingkir I have just read all the search results. My son has helped with a couple of questions, I've left a message for my friend to help with something else and I am waiting for the solicitor to ring me back as they've attached someone else's details to the end of the paperwork 🙄. I'm distinctly unimpressed as of course potentially someone has mine and the whole stream could be wrong. Looking at what the emails say it is likely it is a one off but I needed to tell them. The receptionist was going to put me through to the solicitors secretary until I said why I was ringing. Already over the time of when she said she'd be back.

I still have a few things outstanding but I won't exchange until I have answers so I'll wait it out.

@MotherOfRatios in all honesty doesn't seem like a big job and I wouldn't actually do anything about it at all....but then again I'm not even having a survey because there is always something needing done when you move in! 😅

The surveyor said it needs a whole new window which I wasn't expecting if I'm being honest

You can always find out how much that will cost to replace the window and try and negotiate that off the costs? Have you had the report and does it highlight it as urgent/needs doing now?

He said the report will take 7 to 10 days to come back, the window apparently is causing damp near the wall so he said he would looked to get it fixed soon.

i'm not even sure how I go about replacing a window in a leasehold property

Hi 👋🏻
New to the thread....
Our 2 bed flat in West Sussex, went on the market a week ago. We sold two years ago, at the height of the market, but sadly it all fell through and we reluctantly stayed where we are, to see how mortgages rates and the cost of living crisis would fare.
Finally, we're back. Husband's work has stabilised, and we've both gotten good pay rises during our 'break' from the market.
We have been in our flat ten years, which definitely wasn't the plan. And we're now pretty desperate to get out.
Unfortunately we've had no interest the past week, which has been really gutting. We sold in a day, two years ago!
According to our estate agent, there is less demand for flats as there are less investors purchasing. He essentially has put us in with first time buyers, as apparently the gap between flats and houses is continuing to increase. Brilliant.
It's so frustrating, as there is quite a few houses on the market that we'd be interested in, but can't do anything about!
I'm petrified that we're going to end up stuck here. We have such a lovely life, I'm grateful for my lovely husband and amazing daughter, and it would just be the icing on the cake to finally get our house.

@minitigs hello! really hope you get some viewings in soon, must be so frustrating to feel stuck where you are.

We are fortunate to be in a great house and location, just too far from family. So if it all goes wrong we are buggered for childcare but other than that could stick it out for a while longer.

sadly you're EA isn't wrong if you look at the ONS flats are stagnating

But welcome! Does your flat have a decent lease and ground rent situation?

Thank you for the welcome 🤗
Me too! Sadly we do really need to move asap, we've more than outgrown the flat. Even though it's pretty big, and there's only three of us. My husband has also started working mostly from home, so he's now always in the way! 😩

@MotherOfRatios
Yes, we've unfortunately done the homework and can see it is the case. Which makes me feel even more hopeless 😞
Our flat is ex council, so good size, with very reasonable ground rent and service charges. We renewed the lease two years ago, when we came off the market. It has 173 years now. The estate agent has said that ex-council flats are doing better than those under other management companies.

Ex council if competitively price usually do sell

We’ve got a viewing on Friday. A cash buyer. The agent let slip she’s viewing a 4 bed down the street afterwards, which is £30,000 more than our 3 bed.
Fingers crossed she wants to save money.

Our buyer has now remarketed so hopefully get sold again soon. They still want to go ahead with the survey on our property this week. I don't have a problem with it but not sure if this is normal when they are now not proceedable🤔

We've had two viewings but both have said that they want a kitchen diner.

I find it really annoying when they don’t read the floor plan/write up then give stupid feedback. I had an elderly couple that said the upstairs space wasn’t as big as the downstairs, but they wanted a bungalow anyway.

I think this is why feedback is pointless tbh. You either want the house or you don't, no point giving feedback that people can do nothing with.

Grrs - viewing feedback is generally pointless for the most part. For our feedback we had someone tell us that they weren't too sure about the layout of the downstairs, and someone else tells us that they wanted a bigger driveway. Fair enough as reasons to not choose the house; the house didn't suit their needs and I get that (I also haven't put offers in for every house we viewed), but not much I can do about the layout or driveway, short of knocking through some walls (new owners can do that, if they want, but I don't want to now), or stealing part of my next door neighbours own driveway.

Hoping for some good news today. We put an offer in for a house on Friday, which is an ex-show home, but the Director (of developers company) was on annual leave for a long weekend. We were told they were back today, and so we should have an update today hopefully (we are able to up the offer a little, if needed). We are Under Offer, and to FTBs, and the developers are quite keen to now get rid of this home (means they can draw a complete line under this particular development), so hopefully, our position will go in our favour.

Also spent the weekend filling out loads of solicitor forms for our own sale, so hopefully things will be progressing there too.

Waiting to hear back about the offer we've made. I'm not expecting is to get it (there were other offers and we didn't offer asking) but hoping for a miracle 🤞🏻🤞🏻

Ah good luck!

Heard back from my solicitor today and the seller has only just paid for the management pack which means could easily be 3-4 months of waiting around, her Solicitors seem awful because they should have ordered an LPE1 form almost immediately.

Can someone explain what a management pack is and why it takes so long? I own share of freehold but as a shareholder of the management company. If a pack needs to be prepared, it'll probably be me preparing it but I've never heard of it!

Oh heck I hope I don't need one. There is a management company for the five houses but it seems to be us.

Can anyone talk me through moving day please? Last time I moved I moved 40 minutes. This time I'm moving four plus hours. Do I have to stay in my current home until the money is moved and wait until the new owners arrive or drop off the keys ? Or can I drop off the keys early and set off on the long journey once the removals have picked up the last minute stuff?

Management pack- I ordered mine yesterday (died at the cost but that's another story) it basically details what the management company are responsible for maintaining and that we're up to date with payments etc
It's 4-5working days for mine to come I've been assured by the company!! 3-4 months seems insane

My house I'm selling is freehold but the house I previously sold was leasehold and the management pack had more information to declare even that was around a week

I had to order a Management Pack for my house that I'm selling. It took 2 weeks just to get a response from the Management Company and after I'd made a payment (Over £300!) it then took a further 3 weeks to get the pack sent over. I had to get it as my garage is Leasehold and I pay rent on the Garage but also a service charge for the estate.

That's nothing in comparison to a Deed of Variation that I'm currently trying to get sorted to change wording regarding the Estate Charge on my property. That's cost me just under £1k. That has been dragging on for 2 months now, which ended up in me submitting a complaint to the CEO of the solicitors who yesterday admitted a series of failings on their part!

Hopefully it should be sorted this week, I've signed everything already, so we can then talk dates. I'm sick of the stress!

Hmmm. In that case I don't think ours will take long as we are part of the management company, nobody pays a service charge, repairs are on an ad hoc basis and there's no ground rent. I've already sent company documents and insurance info / share certificates to my solicitor.

In the interest if imperial data 😁 I'll update when my management pack arrives then we can have a benchmark... fingers crossed they are as good as their word!