I think our chain has pretty much collapsed 😔 My solicitor and my buyer's solicitor have been doing the same thing as described upthread: batting enquiries back and forth , never answering all questions at once, letting weeks drag on as they repeat enquiries, or questions, or play dumb, or refuse to do things because "it's not conveyancing protocol" so the other one should do it, so it just doesn't get done.
It's 3 weeks since top of our chain (2 above me) said they were relisting. Yesterday morning the EA managing the top half called to say if we didn't exchange by Friday and complete by 31st March, they'd pull out. I've issued a similar ultimatum to my buyers to try and get their solicitor to speed up and stop bouncing back the same old stuff. Things seemed to be moving at last.
Found out yesterday afternoon, having reassured the EA that we were making progress, that our buyers mortgage was refused on the grounds that a bit of road you cross to access my house is unadopted, and they won't accept stat dec / indemnity. I KNOW this road isn't a problem — multiple houses here have sold without issue, including the downstairs maisonette in October. We've been crossing it unobstructed for 30 years. Everyone is shocked the lender has said no, and no one knows what to do next. EA for bottom half is the only one with any good ideas, and he reckons if you go back to the broker and say 'find me someone who'll accept stat dec and indemnity', it could be sorted within a fortnight. But he also thinks the buyer's solicitor might be saying 'what happens when you try and sell in a few years?'
I have been trying all day to make my solicitor return the call of the buyer's solicitor to find a solution. If they can tell me what they are doing, I can call the top half EA and try to get him to convince top of the chain to give us a couple more weeks, not accept a new offer, and not have the 4 weeks they requested between exchanging and completing. My solicitor has not returned the call, as far as I know — so we have lost ANOTHER day where things are unresolved.
I'm just so angry — if the seller at the top of the chain was posting on here I know you'd all be telling them to pull out and take a new offer. As others have experienced, I'm not sleeping properly and I'm crying in between work calls. None of this needed to happen, it was completely avoidable if the people we paid and trusted to represent our best interests just did their jobs and communicated.
The last-minute miracle saves I've been reading about today are giving me hope that maybe we can still pull this off, but I know how unlikely it is. I wish there weren't so many of us in the same boat.