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!!

We are in hampshire

Exchange was going to happen today.... except vendors solicitor field.to mention he was out of office today.
Unbelievable.

Hopefully Thursday but by now, after 6 and half long long months I won't believe it till I see it!

Some movement on the boundary issue, best case scenario is we will have the keys by Christmas. So we will potentially have two houses for a hopefully short period!

Hi, posting in here just to vent/get stuff off my chest.

Very anxious/nervy waiting to see if our house purchase is going to fall through.

House was one that kept popping up and I'd disregard as it was a 10 minute longer commute for DP. Our Realtor then had it on his list for us and we saw it quickly (albeit me through videocall) and fell in love. Offer put in below asking and accepted.

Turns out the pre-approval (major US bank) was iffy and details were fudged by a worker who has since left the job without any comms. Expecially when initial forms went to him from our Realtor. Found out randomly by other worker who rang. Sent over everything that was needed and the loan was denied by the underwriters. Apparently pre-approval didn't mean pre-approval.
Now trying lender who works closely with our Realtor and have a torturous wait to see if it can still be achieved or not.

FTBs. So nervous about this...

We saw a house today that we fell in love with. £750k asking price (London commuter belt). We could just about afford that, but I'm really hesitant to overpay in this market.

Would £700k be a really cheeky opening offer? That would be about 6% below. It's been on the market about 2-3mo. A similar house on the same street sold a few months ago for £732k but it's already been extended - this house has planning permission but not extended. They're otherwise similar spec and part of the same original terraces. Doing a very raw "£/sq ft" comparison would indicate £690k or so but I think that's getting a bit too low.

I've only viewed this one and a handful of others last weekend so pretty early days. Obviously I'd expect them to counter...

If the agent said: "you don't need one as you're not having a mortgage, but it would be madness to buy without."

Then I'm not sure that's nonsense.

Although it's not 100% clear exactly what was said.

Whereas the solicitor suggesting waiting until exchange of contracts to organise a survey, that's more like nonsense!

Hi everyone, this is now my third thread, but I have been quiet.

Had a few nightmare weeks. Just feels like one knock after the other, and now I'm just done/close of a breakdown to be honest.

We got our boiler serviced for buyers. It had an 'at risk' fault. Initial panic (but not an immediate danger, so no need to turn boiler off), but gas engineer was lovely and reassuring about it, and said they would come back with a quote to resolve issue. Issue is costing £180 to fix - we agreed to do this, and sent message to our solicitor (to pass on) that we were willing to do so. Not the end of the world (is hopefully getting sorted later this week).

Then 3 weeks ago, we had a meeting at work. Bam - 60 of us (my entire team and two other teams) are being made redundant. Queue mass panic. Even without the house move, without my wages, and living off DH's alone, we're £300 short of our essential bills (with our average weekly shop amount included, but not including petrol etc).
Thankfully, I have now got another job, which I start next week (I have qualifications in a shortage area in the public sector, so I've decided to return to that, which also gives me job security and a small salary increase). Additionally, my redundancy package is pretty decent, but that still needs to cover my normal wages this month. So while 'alls well that ends well', it has been a very, very stressful few weeks.
Then this morning, the EA calls - our buyer wants to do a full level 3 survey. I'm actually surprised by this, as didn't expect a full level 3. We've also had their initial enquiries back this morning - they want an electrical certificate. Our solicitor has reminded us that we are not legally obliged to do this, but it's our choice.

Our electrics work fine. I've said to DH, it's not the cost of the certificate, but rather if it finds a fault - our house was built in the 80s, so not a new build. Yes, the boiler wasn't too expensive to fix, but it still caused a few days of worry. After everything that's happened over the past month, I don't think I can deal with anymore stress to be honest. I'm not in the headspace to be able to deal with it.
We'll probably say no. If they want one, they can get one. I have a feeling they want to negotiate some things - hence asking for this, as well as the level 3. I'm at the stage where ai'm tempted to just say, "Fuck it," and pull out. My redundancy pay needs to cover this month's wages, and part of next month, but other than that we were earmarking the rest for the house move (mainly to help towards removal costs), I'm tempted to just use it to pay off the solicitor instead, as I am fed up with everything at the moment.

I would go for it especially if it has been on for so long.

@OneAmberFinch you expect them to come back with a counter offer, but they might just say no. Could you stretch to paying the asking price? They might say no and ask you to come back with your best and final offer. What would you be prepared to pay?

By all means put in the offer, but have a think about what you might do if the sellers don't respond the way you expect.

We've only offered on two places but neither made a counteroffer!

@kirinm do you mean they just said no with no further response?

I think £710-720k would be a pretty fair price for this house based on the similar house and my general feel of the area from Rightmove sold prices. I could pay £750k in the sense of I have a DIP and could afford that but I don't want to overpay just for the sake of avoiding awkwardness. We've only just started looking - saw 4 houses on Saturday and then this one today. So I'm okay to wait if we miss out.

@OneAmberFinch people will say houses are worth what someone is willing to pay so what another house is sold for isn't the whole story. I was offered 50k below my asking price initially so people do do it. Don't over stretch yourself though.

I said if would be madness to buy a house without a survey.

The solicitor wasn't suggesting I wait until after exchange to do the survey. I have to wait until draft contract is received.

@EagerHouseMover we got some work checked then needed more work done but it got us the electricity safety certificate. We also had the boiler serviced as part of our contract. It was about £250 all in so on a house over 1/2 million it was a no brainer. Think about what the costs will be if you pull out in terms of what you've paid out and what you'd have to pay out on a new house.

We have been waiting and waiting for exchange and completion date and now it has come though suggested next week. No removals company has any space for us, and still not confirmed 100% date! This system is bonkers!

@OneAmberFinch Estate agents don't seem to have caught up with how much extensions cost these days so there often isn't much difference in how much they value extended and non-extended houses.

My main advice if you're offering low is to get a DIP for £700k, maybe £710k. Any estate agent that sees you've got a DIP for £750k will be telling the seller to push you for a higher offer. When I was offering I got multiple DIPs and submitted the one closest to my offer.

Yeah. I, like you, assumed we might see some negotiation!

@EagerHouseMover Sounds to me like you've got very naive FTBs there. A level 3 on an 80s house is unusual and certainly not what RICs recommend. With an electrical check as well (unless you have some weirdly dilapidated house) it smacks of nervous people who have no idea what they are doing. My worry would be that that means they are the kind of people who are going to react in a panic to everything that comes with a property not being a newbuild with guarantees and modern perfection. And a level 3 survey is going to always have lots in that will scare them - even when it's just stuff like "I didn't lift the patio slabs, so I can't guarantee there aren't any bodies under there".

There's no harm in letting them do the survey - they're the ones wasting the money, not you, but it's possibly worth talking to the Estate Agent in advance and being clear that you won't accept negotiation either at all - or maybe specifying that red/urgent items only, saying the buyers would have to provide full survey details for anything they try to negotiate, and being ready to say "hell, no" when they get ridiculous.

I'm wondering whether it's time to go back to our EA. Our buyer still hasn't commented on whether she's going to accept our building control cert or if she's sticking with her surveyors report,

It's important to know as our fixed rate mortgage ends on 31/12 and if she's not going through with it, I want time to get a better rates

Frankly seeing the state of the rental market combined with having nowhere to buy, I'd rather stick to our £600pm mortgage than live in a rental at £2800 per month for an unknown amount of time whilst paying £100s in storage costs too,

I think I'll give her until Friday. That means she's had a week - in addition to the 2 months prior to raising this.

Found you all!
Our sale seems to be moving, just hope we aren’t holding anything up as top of the chain. Sorting out our mortgage has taken longer than I anticipated, but hopefully we’ll get our offer next week & can book a survey asap. We’re going with first direct. If anyone else has a mortgage with them, how long did it take?

Things seem to be progressing with our sale and purchase - all mortgages in place, surveys done, searches complete... However my vendors solicitor still hasn't sent through the contract pack so no enquiries have been raised that side (my buyers enquiries are complete). There is also a land registry issue to sort out. Hoping to exchange before Christmas and move mid-Jan

This would really annoy me. Why is your solicitor being so slow?

@kirinm it's my vendors solicitors being slow.... Although we're using the same solicitors, it hasn't sped things up, they're just incredibly busy at the moment apparently. Our vendors have also now moved abroad which could be holding things up too I guess

I guess there's a bit of a rush before Christmas.

Another one still here!

After 2 months of delay mostly caused by trivial things at bottom of the chain, it looks like we should be exchanging on Monday. Completion is very near to Christmas but hey ho.

Bottom of the chain are doing a final viewing on Saturday but hopefully that will be alright (after 5 months you would hope they know what they are buying!!).

Good luck to everyone waiting / moving.