Reality check needed ?

[hotandpermi]

Hi all

As you might gather from my username - I'm in the beginning of the big M so totally understand I maybe being unreasonable. Offer accepted on my house yay.

Made an offer in or around 1st October for out hopefully to be "house" which was accepted on the spot double yay. Both my onward purchase and my house marked as sold, swapped solicitors and I was told my vendor is very motivated to sell.

The problem is - i have checked with my solicitor and EA from vendor - and it seems that as of today - the house we are buying their solicitors have done nothing (other than memorandum of sale), mine have been chasing them daily and radio silence . For my property I have done fixtures and fittings document for the sale of my house, got Mortage approved and they seem to be on go slow. I spoke to my solicitor and they have advised they cant any surveys until they hear from our onward purchase, even the sellers EA sounded concerned about radio silence.

I haven't heard if the couple have found an onwards purchase and as of last week were "looking" but now it seems to have gone - dead silent.

Am I going completely mad to think that this is unreasonable. I don't mind waiting but I'm also getting the deep vibe of "not very motivated" due to lack of communication.

I'm quite happy to be told I'm being unreasonable and actually would find it rather comforting. We wouldn't have offered on this house if we were going to be dragged around for months in limbo with no communication while someone makes up their mind and the EA was quite certain they were a motivated seller. Unless obviously their solicitor is shit but EA says they are usually pretty good.

Advice welcome. One very hot and grumpy women.

I understand completely
1st Oct that's quite a while for nothing to have been done

It's natural to be anxious when going through a house move, and I think you should be quite clear you expect to see progress by end of this week or you will start looking again!

Yes I think the thing is I don't want to be that person and I know I'm not the most rational right now but my god why would it take this long ?

Is it an indicator that seller it's going to be tricky ?

Potentially,

I'm also going through the buy sell process but I am have only just now entered week 2, and where my buyers are very motivated and I am too I am not getting the same impression from my seller. Which is unusual as in their circumstances (empty house) you would think the money would be welcomed and they would be trying to push it along. As I say only week 2 but the house is still live on rightmove, which I understand is probably an EA problem but that seems strange to me as my own house was shifted to sold immediately and the EA my end made big fanfare on social media about it being sold...

Just be that person, ask for updates every few days, has buyer found anywhere, what's next etc!

We accepted an offer on our house about a week after you - it took me a week to get a few quotes from solicitors and pick one, so the memo of sale was early last week. The solicitor sent us the fixtures and fittings/ ID check etc middle of last week but I have only just sat down to go through them and realised them have sent pdfs we can’t edit and our printer is bust. So now they’ll need to send them in the post and the post only gets delivered once or twice a week. We have had a horrible week at work and a daughter with a stomach bug. We’re motivated sellers and no onward chain here but I guess what I’m saying is that it could be perfectly innocent!

Go knock on the door.

"Hi, I'm your Buyer. My solicitor is having problems getting a response or reply to messages from your solicitor, I just wanted to check that things are proceeding and ask if you could light a rocket under your solicitor's arse."

(you might use slightly different phrasing)

Do not do this! You will look crackers!

You probably just need to be a bit more patient.

It's a house - the quotes are to recognise it's not actually our house yet and to differentiate since we have looked at all different types of properties .

If you have nothing to offer to the conversation other than to complain about wording of a post. Do kindly swivel - I do not have the patience.

I'm happy for people to say I'm being unreasonable, or say hey be more patient or whatever, but I have little tolerance for the MN trend of people picking apart a posters wording and offering nothing else. It's boring

I get that, to be honest I wouldn't mind if that was the case just would want to be looped in tbh.

I fear it's not actually the seller being rubbish but the solicitors they are using.

Ps I hope your little one gets better and your move goes smoothly 🤞🏻

We accepted an offer and in truth it has taken me a couple of weeks to get all the documents together. I'm extremely busy with work and a child and it was time consuming. I also couldn't sign the forms electronically so had to wait to go to work to print them off.

I expect our buyer thinks we are time wasting but we really aren't doing it intentionally.

The benefit is that by finding pretty much every document, I've saved any delays that might have arisen if I'd just sent the forms back with everything to follow.

I think the consensus is that I need to have a bit more patience. Which tbh I'm grateful for because as I said in my original post - I know I'm not being the most reasonable (across all fronts) so I'm grateful to this thread to give me a reality check.

I think this moving house process is getting to me and I haven't even really started yet.

How long does it usually take ? It seems to be the elephant I. The room every time I ask the EA or solicitors.

There isn’t really a ‘usual’ , it depends on both the seller and their solicitors etc….but I would be a bit 🙁 in your case.

Have you met the vendors? Once the offer is made and accepted, it would be fairly standard to meet them ( and see whether they are going to be hard work). I’ve bought and sold a quite a lot of houses in three countries, and the only time I haven’t met the other party was during lockdown.

If you can meet for a ‘second viewing’ and they seem reasonable, you could drop a few hints about the time scale.

Why not?

I know MNetters will, in general, do absolutely anything to avoid interacting directly with the Seller/Buyer and will put every trivial enquiry through the EA or Solicitor, but why? I have always had a direct communication with the person I was selling to or buying from.

@hotandpermi yes to be honest I have no idea if the buyers solicitors have been in touch with mine and what mine have said if so! They certainly haven’t asked me for anything but that might just be solicitor rubishness.

We have already bought the onward house and it was a private sale so we were in direct contact with the vendors all the way through and it was quite funny to see how the interactions with the solicitors went. The solicitors weren’t terrible but there were several times when info had been passed on and they just didn’t realise or other times when we’d agreed something with the vendor that the solicitors seemed intent on complicating. We got there in the end anyway 😂

Turning up on their doorstep will make you look like a loon, that’s why.

Agree with others here - yes, it's stressful having had nothing so far and totally get why you are worrying, but also it's very easy to understand why you wouldn't have done.

It's only 20 days since your offer was accepted - 14 working days. In that time people need to have found solicitors, instructed them, potentially transferring some money over to solicitor as a down payment, Solicitor needs to gather documents and send them out (could be by snail mail), seller needs to sit down and wade through tedious forms, find paperwork, try and remember stuff, google how to reply to the japanese knotweed question, possibly have to contact various organisations to get things signed off... return paperwork to solicitor - likely involving mailing all kinds of certificates and guarantees. When all the forms and accompanying paperwork arrive at solicitor, someone there has to go through it all and process it...

If the vendors also have yet to find somewhere to buy, they might be out viewing properties, visiting estate agents and/or developments, offering/negotiating etc.

Best advice is to try and relax.

You could phone them if you have the number.
But see comment about MNetters avoiding actually talking to the other party, presumably to avoid a personal connection that might create trust in a transaction that's designed to create mistrust.

Yup, just about sums it up!! (Now what did I do with that certificate we got five years ago when the chimney was re-lined????)

House buying is the worst process in the world, and requires a lot of paperwork that many people may not have to hand, or answer questions they don't fully understand, or they don't have a printer, or can't get to the post office until the weekend and forgot it closes at 11am, or any number of deeply inconvenient tiny steps that add up to weeks of waiting around.

We moved in June this year, and were being pushed and pushed to hurry ourselves along by our vendors, who then went radio silent for several weeks around the time they were wanting us to exchange. Apparently they didn't realise they needed to withdraw funds for their own deposit in advance of exchange, which took a few days to process. Or whatever the excuse was.

It drove us absolutely barmy, to the point we were nearly ready to pull out of the entire sodding purchase. Thankfully they somehow managed to get themselves sorted after we threatened to collapse the exchange and we got the house (which we love!).

Am I ever moving again? Like hell I am. I'll be removed feet first, thank you very much.

@MovingToPlan how long did that process take if you don't mind sharing ?

I feel next time we move it will be in my coffin tbh.

I mean the thing we are chasing isn't fixtures and fittings paper work. It's the first bit of paper work that's signed so say we are off. I believe fixtures and fittings comes shortly after.

I spoke to their EA and she said she would chase as they are worried. The solicitors has been instructed already is apparently getting them to jump at first hurdle. I just want to know are we going or not.

All of this I wouldn't mind but the radio silence and the lack of response is frustrating.

I wouldn't go sending letters through their letter box just I think if the seller wanted to contact they would have been there at second viewing. So I will leave it at that.

My buyers are coming for a measure up the property I'm selling soon and I have said would they like me there to answer any questions . That said outside of "the change" I'm quite a friendly person but I recognise that my sellers may not like that and I have to respect it.

Why did I think moving was a good idea 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

Until the chain is complete there is unlikely to be much action - many solicitors won't don anything until the chain is complete

@hotandpermi they were pushing to exchange mid-May back in March/April time, and then we didn't end up exchanging until 10 June or so. I've blocked it out of my memory because the mad rush to finish packing and get all the loose ends tied up before moving a week later was absolutely awful. We had been ready to exchange for many weeks by then, and it stopped us from being able to apply for schools in our new area. It was so stressful. Didn't believe we were moving until I had the keys in hand.

I might be inclined to get their estate agent to say to them that you are starting to be a little concerned about how long things are taking and are wondering if you might need to think about viewing other properties just in case. Depends if you feel you can trust their estate agent to phrase it in the right way.

Please don't go to their house. It happened to me and it was horrible. I wasn't dragging my heels - I was actually cracking the whip to keep things moving - but they were first time buyers who didn't understand how long it takes for all the legal aspects to be dealt with. My estate agent had to set them straight.