House buying enquiries

[Lemonyfire]

Hello
Bit of a long one bear with me.
House went up for sale in April 2024, accepted an offer and had an offer accepted on a property in April 2024 ( 3 below, 2 above in chain). In August 2 at bottom of chain dropped out a few days before exchange, then in September our buyer couldn't get a new buyer so dropped out.

Our sellers waited for us to resell which we did in October. First time buyer, buying a house from the person buying our house.

Things have moved fairly quickly ( we are impatient as it's been a long time for us while understanding it isn't for them!).

We've got to the stage of talking dates again, only to find out that someone got their wires hideously crossed and there are A LOT of enquiries outstanding at the bottom.

Fast forward lots of frantic calls and the solicitor for the buyer has confirmed they've received the responses and they are reviewing them.
Realistically how long are we looking at for these to be reviewed ( bearing in mind these are the enquiries to our buyer).
Google says between 1-4 weeks, no one can give me any answer. Ours, our sellers and our buyers contracts are all in, it's just the bottom of the chain that's waiting for enquiries.

Most of our stuff has been packed since August, we've started hopefully packing again.

I realise in the grand scheme of things it's not the end of the world if it takes another month. But the chain fell through on the day we found out our daughter had died in the second trimester, I'm coming up to her due date, which coincides with the date I had a miscarriage in Jan last year, and our dog just died, so we are well and truly ready for a fresh start in the new house.

We have a lot to pack! And we don't want to be in a situation where we don't have much time between exchange and completion ( we can't be picky with dates as want to get a move on).
The reason we packed in August was due to simultaneous exchange and completion.

Well ideally our solicitor would be best to answer, but it's two solicitors below him in the chain that the enquiries are with , and until today he had no idea there was anything outstanding in the chain so doesn't fill me with much hope!
This is our 4th house buy/ sell so I should know, but it's been 10 years and our other transactions were so easy

This is a 'how long is a piece of string' question. It's well known that buyers and sellers need to prompt conveyancing solicitors to help their case be prioritised. Next step is for you to keep in regular contact with your solicitor asking them to ask the question down the chain of solicitors of the buyer's solicitor.

It entirely depends on the solicitor reviewing them. It could take a few days, it could take a few weeks. They could then need to raise further enquiries if they aren’t satisfied. It is very frustrating, but it’s just a waiting game now.

@yeastextract sorry I wasn't clear!
4th time of moving, last time was 10 years ago!

Thanks all, I didn't know if there was a general time frame once they've all been sent over, I shall try and be patient!

Fear of it falling through again has caused the anxiety- it's very hard when it's out of my control, although if you'd all given me an answer that may not have helped me anyway so I think I just needed to vent more than anything!

Unfortunately it is hard to provide estiamtes but I understand the fraustration of the waiting game.

I'm also in the process of buying and just today asked solicitors of potential timeframe while I know it's almost impossible.

So I tweaked the question slightliy and asked what tasks are outstanding, and in my case - my solicitor is just waiting for her enquiries to be answered by the vendor's solicitors - which has been ongoing since early Dec with the last set of queries sent last week. She said she will chase up again.

My solicitor advised that if I have a date in mind, she can let the otherside know and sometimes they are more inclined to then come back with more insight e.g. likely/ unlikely to meet the date due to xxx... So I gave her the end of March deadline to put forward (ahead of the stamp duty rate changes). So maybe try and give them a date and see if they come back with some more insightful answers?

@MelodyJ that's a good idea. Bizarrely in December our solicitor asked us for dates for completion, very much implying we were close, then the next email was actually no there's loads outstanding at bottom of chain! But this was about 5 weeks ago.
Even with the newest update I think we will broach dates and see what the answers are!

If there is a leasehold property at the bottom it can take longer as there are usually enquiries to be referred to Managing Agents. Probably better to wait until all enquiries are answered before discussing completion dates, although no harm saying you want 2 weeks between exchange and completion. Good luck 🤞

@pilates the property below us is freehold but shared leasehold in a block so that is exactly what's been the hold up, very slow, although we were only told about this last week, everyone said before how quickly and straightforward it would be!