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

@LillethCrane yes they should do but there’s no harm in calling them up to inform them to carry out searches, they sometimes need additional payment to cover the search costs. Call the mortgage advisor on Tuesday to chase up formal offer

My solicitor emailed me today. We have documents! My breakdown seems to have promoted a complaint to the seller’s conveyancer.

The address on the draft contract is so wrong it’s almost comical. They’ve obviously rushed it through. I’d be mortified if this was my work going out.

Oh @kirinm that's embarrassing for them!

Well our vendor is still looking. We have the same EA and said today they won't do the memorandum of sale until they find somewhere. He also said that he was confident they would, but to also look at other properties if we want...so not that confident!

That’s awful.

Does anyone have any experience of new build developers mandating a 28 day exchange deadline? We are top of a chain of 5 and just have received our reservation paperwork through with this stipulation, obviously that’s impossible given our chain and the ones below our buyer are only about 4 weeks ahead in the process.

Ive looked online and most things say if we are visibly pushing and we are ready then they aren’t rigid, but, are they? We’ve already been the victim of a chain collapse before and I’m struggling to see how this can work?!

I am just updating to say we did move! We got the keys at 4.45PM la week past friday. It was a strange day. So relaxed me and DH went out for a big breakfast, came back to the house to do some cleaning, we had heard the first 4 transactions had gone through by 11.30-12 so we were on a great position to have our property sold and still time to purchase our new home too. Great! Except the next transaction to sell our property took over 3.5hours! Me and DH went to the local golf club as we were told to vacate our house by our solicitor. So just ordered a drink and turned around to find out buyers also lining up for a drink!! So we sat with them and tried to get updates from our respective solicitors. It was soon close but ridiculous our buyers solicitor took so long for the transfer. I thought there was no hope of us buying. I decided to head to the new home anyway and thankfully our solicitors got our money through at 4.45 and the key had been left with a neighbour! :) absolutely love our house and the boys do too!

Good luck to all of you going through this horrendous process!

This is interesting! We're currently buying a place where the conversion was done pre regs and now not sure what to do with that information. Arguably it's been standing/used for decades. We had a full structural survey done but couldn't access the rafters to assess 🙄

What does he/you expect to be the outcome? Out of interest did you market the loft as a bedroom or just a converted loft?

Hey @notanarchaeologist we marketed as a 3 bed, including the loft room as we were (wrongly) advised by the estate agent to do, according to both solicitors it has to be reported to the lender so they can revalue as a 2 bed. It’s been up for decades and we use it as a bedroom, he had someone come round to confirm it was safe and got a quote for fire doors. The survey which was done did say it didn’t conform and needed fire doors so it’s frustrating it’s come up late in the day!

@unicornpower it may depend on how well the properties are selling on the development. We reserved our new build house mid May last year, with an exchange date of July. Our sale fell through because either the EA hadn’t done due diligence or the buyers had lied about their circumstances, but they couldn’t fund the purchase, so we pulled out.

We informed the developers immediately and they agree to keep the reservation. We sold again at the beginning of August with a different agent and conveyancer and moved in November. There is still one house for sale in our cul de sac. It seems that it’s people wanting the houses, but having trouble selling theirs.

If the houses on the development you want are selling fast, they may not be flexible with the exchange. If they’re struggling, they’ll be more helpful.

Ah no what a headache for you! I can imagine ours would also need fire doors, but it was only advertised as a 'loft room' not a bedroom, so kinda useable space but not sleeping space. Nothing much has come up on the survey other than 'converted before regs, couldn't assess rafters' (summarising). DH and I are torn between 'we feel like we should be doing something' and also 'we have no idea what that something is' 😂

I hope yours all goes through soon! Blooming EA's!

Finally I graduate from this thread. Exchanged last Thursday & completed Friday. It went to the wire & I am never, ever doing it again!!

Graduating from this thread now. I thought I'd be rolling into the next one for sure!

The move went fairly smoothly on Monday. We had the keys for our new build by 2 pm and already had the van filled and on the drive. There was a crazy rushed bit where we decanted most of the furniture into the garage (we're not getting carpets fitted til this week so no point assembling everything), the. tearing the 5 miles back to the old house to get the last bits and have a last clean up. Our buyers arrived at the house to get the keys whilst we were just loading the last bits of garden furniture and potted plants, so really not too bad for timing.

The new house is great, a few snags which can be expected with a new build but nothing that's too concerning.

Overall, the process of buying a new build whilst selling our old build went really smoothly. I'd planned for all the situations where we would have to move into rented or suffer serious delays, but we only slipped 1 month in total, and we knew a march completion was not realistic. That means another couple of grand in stamp duty, but 🤷

Good luck to everyone still in the waiting room, Im sure the stress will be worth it.

Pic of Keith and Simon enjoying their new view, for completeness! As an aside, these are paper blinds I bought from Dunelm for £4 each as I have a few weeks for my blinds to be made. I would recommend to anyone needing a temporary window solution!

Started 03/04/25

Have just signed the final paperwork ready to exchange .
My advice. Call your solicitor every other day and ask for an exact list of what's outstanding where you are currently. They soon start to contact you first with the updates. Also get the EA to chase the buyers sols daily too! .
I have called every afternoon the last 2 weeks and now I have an email at 8am with what's happening so that I dont call them .

Make it so your easier to talk to than ignore was the advice I was given without being a pain in the arse ! X

Good luck all x

Fingers crossed!

When you say 'started 03/04/25' do you mean that's when your house was listed for sale? Or when it sold and the sales part started?

Just want to say thanks for posting this. Off the back of it I contacted our EA and solicitor and made a couple of surprising and unwelcome discoveries which is likely to push the timeline back by another 6 weeks! But better to know than be surprised in a month when we're no closer to exchange.

Well, our buyer pulled out today. Instead of a survey she decided to bring a builder she knew round and he’s made some wildly wrong statements about our house like, the basement is damp (no it isn’t), the roof is falling apart (he didn’t bring ladders and didn’t go in the loft) and the roof isn’t falling apart. Anyway he told her it would take 25k to fix and she’s asked for a further 7k off(!) we’ve told her absolutely not and she’s taking the complete piss. We don’t know this guys credentials and I doubt very much he’s a qualified builder based off some of the questions he raised.

We’ve now lost our new build. It’s a complete joke this process (we are almost a year in now) I’m contemplating having a break and trying again once my children are at school and just enjoy life with them for a while and not be filled with house anxiety!

@unicornpower oh no I really feel for you. It’s so hard for this situation to not take over your life but you’ve done your best. Maybe your right take some time out, enjoy the summer with the kids with no house worries and try again when you’re ready again.

@unicornpower so sorry, it’s so shit that this can happen. We had something similar and lost a buyer earlier in the year after he came round with a mate ‘in the trade’ who highlighted things which were obvious at the time he made his offer, so frustrating!

@unicornpower that's absolutely shit, so sorry to hear it. This whole process wrecks you mentally, a break is a good idea. I think we'll consider the same if this last attempt to move falls through.

@unicornpowerso sorry. This process is absolutely awful and the disruption and uncertainty and stress is unbelievable. Enjoy the summer and hopefully when you can face doing it again, it’ll be a smoother process. If we hadn’t already moved into rented I’d be very much leaning towards ending this sorry nightmare too

Nothing happening here at all. Searches still won’t be back for another two weeks. They were ordered in March…. It’s been 8 weeks now. Ughhhhhhhhhhh. We want to know what’s happening with the rest of the chain but when we have asked our solicitor the response was a bit like “how should I know ask ure agent” not so bluntly but that was the jist. Phoned the agent and they didn’t even know there was a chain. There is. How do we find out where everyone is at ? We just wanted an indication of time line etc.

Valuation and survey has been booked in by my second buyer next week! Fingers crossed round 2 goes all goes well.
The surveyor from my first buyer was an absolute t**t, did a 15 minute survey (I know this for a fact as I was in - level 2 surveys are suppose to take at least 2 hours) and completely scared my buyer they ran a mile!

Urgh waiting over 2 weeks for our level 3 survey report now…so frustrating. Just want to see the bloody thing.

our buyers have their survey booked in for next week. im so nervous. i don't know what level survey it is?

my buyers have already pulled out of one house because of the survey so im extra nervous