The all new buyers/sellers waiting room (8) lies lies and the stamp duty deadline

[hotandpermi]

Continuing on the convo- title based on the theme of the last thread

@NeverGoingToMove i haven’t as the developer we are buying through doesn’t offer it but I absolutely would have gone for it if they did- do they offer full market value?

@unicornpower they only do it on the houses they want to shift. This one was a done deal but it fell through after the kitchen and floors went in, feels a bit karmic.

They'll get three local agents in to value it, take an average and the offer is 105% of that.

Can I join please. We are in London, and getting ready to sell.
Our local estate agent has been and has given us valuation which I think is little more than I was expecting. He justified it by saying that our kitchen is lovely and has all NERF appliances including bake off oven 😀. We have photos booked for early next week but private viewing will start next week!!!! I wasn’t aware of anything like that before but now getting the house ready. Any advice on photos for online viewing would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

I’ve not posted for a few weeks but I’m getting very stressed - we’ve been on the market 3 weeks and still not sold. We’ve found the one we want but they won’t come off the market until we have a buyer. Had anyone done an open day to get viewings? We are in England where it’s not usually done but I’m getting desperate! Potential new house is perfect for what we need and there’s nothing else on the market like it.

My DS went to a couple of open days but they were initially marketed properties I think the agent sort of set the day up (Saturday about 10 days after going live) so as to maximise the use of time to cover lots of initial interest.

I went to one with my son that had 15m visits and was running behind. It was a dreadful place but still the queue of people gave a feeling it was something you might want to buy (that feeling like when you are on an ebay auction!). The agent took his details and asked for feedback before we left. This one sold about 2 weeks later so I don't know if it was due to that day.

Do you have people looking at the moment? I'm guessing you'll need to drop to generate sufficient interest for an open day?

What is your agent saying about your current interest, your price and the local market?

@NeverGoingToMove it seems a no brainer then tbh! I would absolutely do that as you’ve had a complete nightmare!

@Lemurabbit i wouldn’t worry, 3 weeks isn’t that long, have you had many viewings? I was panicking last week around the 2.5 week mark as we had had like 8 viewings and no offers, number 9 offered! Open houses can work, they worked for my friend and she had about 20 viewings and 4 offers from them. Plus with kids (if you have them) it’s so much easier to just pack up for the day!

3 weeks is not long though. Haven't you had any viewings yet? Enquiries?

We've only had 3 viewings. One loved it but then started saying they need to declutter their own house before it will sell (talking about multiple skips, piles of stuff, I can't imagine they are selling soon), one seemed to really like it but never even gave feedback and another couple the man really loved it and the woman clearly didn't like it but didn't say why - she scowled the whole way around.

We initially had three agents value it and we put it up for sale below the valuation of all of them, because we put it up for close to the minimum we need to buy the new one and wanted a quick sale. There is another one on the next road very similar for 125k more but it's been on the market 9 months so overpriced. Another one on the same road just came on the market and sold within a month for 125k more but the single storey extension is bigger although one bedroom less. Ours is fully renovated, no work at all to do, everything less than 2 years old or newer including electrics, plumbing etc and with a good sized extension and newly renovated garden (late last summer).

I called the agents and asked what we can do. I spoke to someone who's not dealt with our house before and he said usually its the price and we could consider dropping, but then he searched for our house on the system and said absolutely don't drop the price. He assured me we will sell at this price but I am so stressed about missing out on the potential new house. We have a severely disabled family member and the new house is already adapted with a room on the ground floor which is very hard to find, it's the only one within my 40 mile search radius suitable, and it also meets the other very niche criteria we have.

3 weeks is not long enough to think you need to reduce the price @Lemurabbit when you priced it competitively to begin with and are getting viewings and a fairly good response.

I would try to hold your nerve for at least a couple more weeks and see what happens. The house you want to buy sounds niche (though perfect for you) so that is unlikely to sell very quickly.

Can anyone please help me?

I move house on Thursday. I'm packing more each day but know there will be last minute stuff.

I am worrying about the removal men and not having everything as they need it to be.

I also don't know who is coming as they have now said it might not be who I've had all the conversations and meetings with so I'm worried they won't be up to speed. It's not as usual move with a lot of things staying here.

I also now don't feel comfortable leaving them here alone so will have to walk my dog very early or not at all.

They won't have committed to memory what's staying, so you'll have to make sure to stick an A4 (I'd suggest) sign on each item which isn't going, and at least group all of your boxes in one place for them.

I'd also be getting up early to walk the dog, especially before a long journey, to wear them out.

All the boxes except six are in the garage so that's easy. The six are marked separate as they have to give them to me on day one. The people coming haven't been here before so are going on who I thought was moving me tells them. I expect I'll wake up at stupid o'clock but it will confuse my dog if I try and walk her before breakfast! Might be better to have a very early breakfast as it is a five hour drive. I will have to stop for her though, she has lunch and will need a wee. As will I.

6 weeks into the process with no progress. Still desperately hoping something else comes on the market.

Back on the market. Our lovely buyer pulled out just before the Easter weekend, our fantastic EA has already booked in 5 viewings so far already this week.

Really not trying to let this whole mess of a purchase wind us up. The estate agents continually lie to us, we’ve got absolutely no idea what’s going on with probate and nothing has happened with the sale. We have agreed (between ourselves) to hang on for now and just see how things pan out but if anything comes on the market we will pounce on it. We made our offer about 7 weeks ago and they accepted it about a week later. It’s just nuts that nothing has happened in that time.

We will absolutely have to find another rental now. I think my anger is primarily with the estate agents for endlessly lying.

I've found that everyone, except my solicitor, has lied to me in my attempt to buy a new home. I'm six months or two months behind, house one and house two. However, tomorrow I'm moving. Eek.

We sent all our paperwork special delivery yesterday for our solicitor to NOW tell us our signatures need to match our ID, this may seem obvious but that’s not our signatures anymore and NO ONR TOLD US! My head is done in!

Our buyer was signing his paperwork today but has now dropped off the planet and isn’t giving me any updates.

I will never move again if we manage this!

Everyone else in our chain of 4 is ready to sign contracts apart from us - our solicitor is very on the ball but said she still has 8 queries that are not yet answered to her satisfaction. It seems our vendors solicitor is the one being slow to reply, even though the vendor themselves is in a hurry to move…. How often would you say is reasonably to ask our solicitor for updates? And do I let the vendor know (I’m guessing via the estate agent) that it is her solicitor holding things up?

Just bear in mind that it may be your solicitor being a pain and asking ridiculous questions or re asking questions that have already been answered in the minds of the vendor or their solicitor.

You are only hearing one side of it so if you do reach out to your vendor I would ask very diplomatically what are the queries their solicitor is unsatisfied with. 8 queries seems a lot at this stage.

Hi everyone I’ve been following along but not had much to comment myself for a while. I finally have a date for completion - 7th may 🎉 really can’t wait & also in slight disbelief it’s finally nearly here, I really thought it would never happen 🫣 lots of hardwork to do when I get the keys - it’s a bit of a fixer upper, but so glad to be on the home straight.

Hi all ,
Currently we're awaiting our buyers Sols to raise enquiries.

Ours are raised awaiting a response. They are literally things we can answer ourselves from just looking at the garden etc!
Contracts signed by us and our Vendor in preparation.

Our buyers are FTB and young we spoke to them and asked where they was with it and he said oh our solicitor said he would be in touch in about a month 🤣😖. My partner was like tou need to call them atleast twice a week and everyday nearer exchange/ completion . He was so shocked he had to chase when paying them ! .

We have said we want to be done mid may! I work in a school so the may week off would be good !

Hope everyone moves along .

We started the process with sols on 03/04/25 , I have been relentless in chasing for updates and all paperwork done straight away on my part.
House on market on Friday sold the next day on Saturday! Empty your house as much as you can so it looks spacious, make it smell nice but not over powering , even if you have to put all clutter in your car etc x

We have our memo of sale yippeee! We reserved our house at the weekend which was so exciting but now the wait starts. Our buyer seems quite on it though so hopefully her survey is arranged asap. We are in a chain of 5 though which isn’t filling me with confidence, I hate chains! But we have to try and stay positive!

Hi all. FTB and first time commenter here. I’m currently in the process of buying a leasehold flat, there’s no chain but my offer was accepted in October so it’s all taking quite a long time.

The seller’s solicitors and the management company have been taking ages to get back to any queries or do their parts in the process - my solicitor is pretty on the ball thankfully. She sent a load of queries off following receipt of the management pack/searches, some of which the seller's solicitors have answered, some of which they haven’t and she and the estate agents have had to chase up multiple times, to date with no success.

One of these queries was in relation to something in the management pack saying that internal and external work is due to the building in the next 2 years. The flats were only developed in the past 8 years I think so relatively new. My solicitor has asked if they can give a ballpark figure as to how much this work is likely to cost each flat owner in the block (there’s 11 flats in total I believe).

The longer time goes on, though, with no response to this the more nervous I get. The service charges for the flat are already high (£1800 per year, not including buildings insurance which is an additional £500 or so) and if these works aren’t covered by the service charges, then I’m scared I’m walking into being hit with high costs straight after the biggest purchase of my life. If they can’t give me an estimate of how much the work’s likely to cost, I’m starting to think perhaps I should walk away? What do you think?

I would be annoyed at things moving so slowly @Tafelberg - October was ages ago so you should have completed by now not still have outstanding queries.

I would be telling the EA you are fed up and thinking of walking if you don’t get answers soon to your questions. It seems surprising if there are expensive works in the pipeline for a building only 8 years old. But it’s suspicious they aren’t giving you an estimate of costs so you definitely need answers from the management company before you decide whether to proceed or walk away.

Thanks @Twiglets1 I just checked and it was actually November I had the offer accepted but still, a long time. And I agree, suspicious to me too. I was wondering if the management company would be obliged to divulge cost estimations, if they have them? I suppose they have no reason to hide them as it doesn’t affect them if I don’t go through with the purchase. I’m just starting to mistrust everyone in this process now. I was initially told the service charges were £1350 per year so am already looking at paying more than I wanted to.