Survey delayed

[WhenTheyComeForYou]

Sense check please as I feel like I’m losing my mind on this.

Our buyer has been in the chain since early November and we’re all now close to exchange. I won’t go into the details but it’s been a looooong moving journey for us with our previous buyer pulling out at the last moment.

Anyway, now, 3 months in they want a survey. The problem is, they want to break the chain and wait until they’ve exchanged and completed on their property until they get a survey on ours. Apparently they don’t want to spend £600 if their property sale falls through.

This will undoubtedly hold our sale up by a few weeks minimum which feels a lot given we’ve been in the house sale process for almost a year now. We’ll have to wait for their exchange, then the surveyor visit, then the report and then potentially any issues the buyer raises (we’re confident there aren’t issues though).

Does anyone else think - if you want a survey, get it asap?! Our estate agent is siding with them that it makes sense to wait. I feel like it’s taking the piss. We’ve already forked out £££ for our purchase as does anyone buying a property, there’s always risk. They’re restricting their own risk by delaying us which feels unfair.

Would you accept this and just wait, or continue to push that it’s done asap to prevent delay.

There’s a chance, if they hurried up and got the survey, we could tie in the chain as we’re only 3 properties in the chain (us in the middle of it).

Wtf that's insane!

I thought it was a given that you pay for the survey but there's always a risk that sales fall through....do they have somewhere to live after they complete on theirs and before they buy yours?

They can cover costs on House Buyers Insurance. Or could have done, it's probably too late in the process now.
It's obvious that they are not desperate to move into your house. Start marketing again and see what other potential buyers are out there.
And have a word with your EA!

Personally, I think there's a lot of piss-taking with surveys these days. I'm sure it used to be more usual for them to be done in tandem with searches and enquiries and it was seen as a sign of commitment from a buyer. Now, people seem to wait until after all the searches and enquiries have been done and then it delays the chain even longer. I'd be wary of this as surveys can beget more surveys and a lot of time gets lost.

You can wait 3 weeks from booking for the survey to be carried out, followed by a further week for the report to be written up. So you've already sunk another month there. Then if the buyer wants an electrical test and a gas test and God knows what else, you can added on another 2-3 weeks. I'd say that they need to start the process now and that your EA works for you and should be pressing the buyer to keep moving things forward.

@Worsthousebeststreet its good to see you feel the same as me.

Yes they plan to move in with parents then move into ours once we’ve completed. They’re a youngish couple, no kids. I’m not sure why they’re so intent on breaking the chain, it’s all very smoke and daggers, we get drip fed information that changes on a regular basis.

I feel stuck though as we love the house we’re buying and so don’t feel like we can back out or play too much hardball. So I’m not sure there’s anything I can really do?

@senua unfortunately we’re not in the position to lose this buyer if we can avoid it. We desperately want to move into the house we’re buying and apparently are close to exchange - it’s just this survey delay that’s adding stress.

@Gekko21 thanks Gekko. Do you have any ideas on what you’d do in the same situation? We don’t want to lose our buyers at this stage, so we’re not really sure what we can actually do.

Our estate agents are crap. They’ve mishandled a lot so far, hence it taking nearly a year to get to this stage over 2 chains.

I want to tell our buyers that they have until Friday to schedule the survey, but if they say no, then what?!

Tricky situation as there's no use issuing an ultimatum if you aren't prepared to see it through. Is your vendor aware of the situation as I expect they would be very unhappy about it also and might start putting pressure on you? I would be reticent about agreeing to it without the full consent of the chain as you don't want to end up the recipient of heat that is out of your control. In that regard, I think you need to ensure your EA is talking to all the other EAs in the chain. It took ages to get the EAs in our chain talking to each other and not just going through us, but we finally made it happen - I started copying both EAs into everything and eventually they got the message that they need to communicate with each other to get things moving. All vendors in the chain are paying their EAs to get this over the line so hold their feet to the fire. But I probably wouldn't issue ultimatums to the buyer at this point. You could go back to the EA and ask them to confirm in writing that all parties in the chain are happy with this arrangement.

I think absolutely push - push doesn't have to mean actually issuing an ultimatum. It does sound very odd though - why would they be so worried that their sale might fall through?

Personally I'd be saying to my estate agent that they must have a reason why they think their sale will fall through and therefore it would be prudent to remarket the property immediately. If you are expected to shoulder an undefined risk, you totally are allowed to manage it in the best way for your needs. It wouldn't mean dropping out of the sale but it would move you forwards with a back-up option.

@Gekko21 thanks that’s really helpful, I’m going to ask for the writing from our sellers. Unfortunately they’re with the same EA but this should at least make everyone aware what’s going on and hopefully put pressure on our buyers.

Really appreciate your input.