The all new buyers/sellers waiting room (x 6!) thread

[Champere]

Welcome across everyone!

We’ve got six nights until we move and the insomnia has set in!

It’s taken us three threads to move and I hope this thread is the one I graduate on….

Best of luck to everyone! May your agents be truthful, your conveyancers responsive, your lenders generous and your chain reasonable!!

Congratulations!

I can't believe there are people on here who are approaching their first anniversary since chain complete. We are now in month 5 since our chain was complete and I'm really losing the will to live. I can't imagine it going on for a year. I think my mental health would be in the toilet.

I go up and down with it. I'm really struggling mentally this week. One of our chain had to change solicitors so we are now back to enquiries and I think due diligence wasn't done first time round so things were missed. It's stressful as it's a related sale rather than our own so little visibility of it. All the emails between solicitors and EAs are written in clipped sentences and just forwarded on, so we are left trying to decipher the meaning of them and whether they are positive or not.

The whole process seems to lack humanity - there's no empathy for the fact people lives are on hold. We've been purportedly close to exchange since December and because we are moving hundreds of miles away, we are left unable to plan anything more than 2 weeks ahead because we don't know what city we will be in. My mum has a significant birthday coming up in 2 weeks and has now postponed the family meal so we don't have to make a 500 mile round trip to attend. I feel really bad that our house move is having a ripple effect. Struggling to focus on anything right now and woke up last night having had a dream that there was rainwater pouring into my house 😓. I'm not even catastrophising in my sleep!

Totally agree with you @Gekko21. Same clipped emails back and forth an total lack of empathy. They literally can't see beyond their nose. If they drop on you an impending exchange date out of the blue, who cares? It's not them who need to arrange the moving.

As expected, my solicitors just dumped on us months of accumulated documents that we are now supposed to read and understand at the speed of light. Still no dates, but wouldn't be surprised if someone said 'tomorrow works fine?' at one point 😆

How long is your chain @Gekko21?

And I hope that everyone who got past their first anniversary since offer accepted definitely exchange this coming month! 🙏

Sending empathies to those struggling! I really do think the housing market needs change, this chain system is beyond silly. I think it's taught me when I come to sell I'd rather sell and then rent.

Anyway, I'm graduating I've completed! 2.5 hour journey to collect the keys!

We are a chain of 4 and are second from top. Everyone else is moving locally - we are the only ones moving across the country. We've been ready to exchange since November. Our vendors were very efficient as were we, so everything asked was turned around within 48 hours. The bottom of the chain not so much and it feels like they now hold a lot of power over the rest of us. From what I can gather, they have none of the dependencies and time pressures the rest of us in the chain have.

Enjoy your weekend of reading documents. It's quite overwhelming when you first get the file, but to be honest I'd already found a lot of the title, search and planning docs myself on Google so there wasn't a lot of new information!

Congratulations @MotherOfRatios on completing. Fish & Chips with Champagne for you tonight!

Congratulations @MotherOfRatios 🎉

Again, it's always down to people not looking far beyond their nose @Gekko21, isn't it? We are bottom of the chain and I live dreading that we are not going as quick as we should and suddenly find out from top of the chain that we are dragging things! While others just don't care that people might not have the same leeway as them.

I'd rather we find out we're the first ones ready than not the opposite! Fingers crossed it will be a light read for us (the TA10 form surely was a fun read this am when I took a peak!)

I reckon if you live dreading that you are not going as quick as you could, chances are you are going as quick as you could. It's the ones who are oblivious who cause problems I suspect.

I love a good TA10 form. We will be taking the extremely dated curtains that we bought in 1985 because they cost us good money 40 years ago😂. And the shades from the wall lamps, even though we inherited them from the people who owned the house before us (which you can see as the prior house listing is still available on the internet). 🙄

It also depends on how far you're moving. Mine is about 2100 without packing. Just load in van, drive, unload the next day.

Meanwhile I'll really consider whether I want to pay £40 for a used toiler roll holder 😆

Arrived at the EA the seller is still packing

To be fair, I'm keeping loads of stuff from my house that I'm sure the buyers will think "why the hell would you take that?" - but I reckon if I've got things like curtains, lampshades and compost bins (!) that I like and will get good use out of in my new home, what's the point of leaving them for people who will probably just take them straight out and skip them?

What's the address? We're all coming round...

The EA has told me to go to the house and collect the keys, should I take the meter readings from when she goes?

Hey all! Can I join please?

@Gekko21 I could have written your post except we aren't moving as far. In a chain of 4 going on since August last year, no one will even discuss dates yet as it may lead to disappointment! Our mortgage offer expires this month as well. Our vendor initially chose a crap conveyancer so after 3 months wasted of them doing nothing she chose a local one and had to start the process all over again.

My buyers are ready to exchange and asked to complete on 14th Feb but the rest of the chain not ready. The EA working for my seller is simply saying she won't discuss dates until all solicitors are ready to exchange but it would help to know roughly how long is left so we can plan moving. Our mortgage expiring is worrying me, It's just so frustrating. The lady we're buying from is a hoarder and I expect she won't have even started packing her house yet. It really is a mess!

I'm scared our buyer will pull out if it goes on too long. They aren't selling their house but buying ours as a second home and our house was hard to sell so I just want it all to happen now and be moved!!

@JoyfulSpring, does the vendor know about your mortgage offer expiring? Maybe she needs to start putting pressure on her solicitor to get it done before it does?

I'm (kind of) back in the game, as my parents are moving into a retirement flat, but I'll be dealing with the conveyancers for them. We're using the ones I used when we bought in '23, as they were great.

We'll sell theirs once they've moved, as mum can't cope with getting into a chain.

Our buyer wants £25k off the price as a result of the survey.

Some of the things raised are just not...things. We have planning permission for a loft extension done in the 1970s. We have planning permission for a lift.

There might have been movement in the loft, no idea as don't live there.
There might be asbestos in an old garage built in the 1960s or in the house, but if it's there, it's hidden.

I have to speak to my brother when he's up (lives the other side of the world). But the buyer is keen to exchange before the stamp duty changes.

Why do they always send these emails to us on Friday nights!

It's probably deliberate timing to cause maximum stress!

I'm really flip flopping about whether we should try and buy this house. The way prices are going I know it would be worth more very quickly but bloody hell it is so much money for a house with a recent subsidence claim!!

I'm coming on to moan. Our vendor said she was moving in with family but now ideally wants to tie in a property (if they can complete before our deadline we gave when we offered as a condition of the sale) .

I can only imagine our buyers are absolutely frustrated (as are we too tbh)

Our chain broke when tour buyers lost on of their buyers so we waited for them and they found a replacement super quickly to be fair so I'm hoping they hold on in there.

Sadly our vendor bloody has got the most useless solicitors and nothing got progressed due to them generally being useless and she went off sick for two weeks.

Ready to jump off bridge but if our vendor keeps prattling around then we will do an air b and b. My worry is the chain below is getting annoyed and or has a deadline due to mortgage but because of the size of tree chain the message isn't getting through...

Coming to moan
so I didn't get the keys until 4:30 and then when I got into the property, but the seller was shouting at me it turns out that the estate agents have been blaming me to her and her to me and the Solicitors were recommended by the estate agents which makes sense why they were crap. When I arrive, she's panicking about the boiler and I said to her what is wrong with the boiler and she said oh it's broken. Apparently it broke yesterday and she was trying to say it just needed a reset but I was busy dealing with other stuff in the property so my dad rang the boiler man and the boiler man said it's been broken since last week.

The house is also filthy and it feels like she has deliberately wrecked some of the stuff because the kitchen was all brand-new when I went to view it and everything is peeling

That’s awful @MotherOfRatios

To top it off when the removal guy is dismantled my bed last time they've broke it my day literally couldn't get any worse

@NoWordForFluffy the estate agent dealing with her sale is the only person I can get updates from or pass information to for the vendor and she is extremely difficult. I don't believe she is passing on my messages about asking for dates or that my mortgage is expiring. She has said she's not prepared to start discussing dates until all solicitors have said they're all ready for exchange as in her experience this leads to disappointment so I worry my vendor is in the dark. I don't have contact with my vendor directly and even my solicitor has expressed to the EA that she's concerned as she's not heard from vendors solicitor in response to remaining enquiries and therefore concerned there may be an issue they aren't sharing.
Would it be totally inappropriate for me to put a polite note through her door effectively bypassing the EA that I have no faith in? Has anyone else contacted their vendor directly?

We have gone through the survey and identified some sections that seem either to have come from another property or are generic ‘possibilities’.

Flood risk is ‘low’, according to gov.uk flood risk postcode summary. They have put an incorrect date in for some building work—24 years off.

we haven’t given a counteroffer but pointed out these discrepancies. Will see what he comes back with.