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House sale taking too long?

7 replies

Squiz · 20/05/2008 19:01

Our house has been on the market since August, we had an offer at the beginning of January which we had accepted, their buyers did not have a place to sell so we thought things would get moving quickly. Unfortunately these people at the bottom of the chain are in no rush at all to move, they don't want to talk to the estate agents, they did not get a survey on our buyers house until April, they have not asked their solicitor to do any conveyancing yet, but they have been applying for their mortgage and for the last 4 weeks have been waiting for their mortgage offer -as far as we know. Our buyers and us meanwhile are just sitting waiting for them to do something although we both still have our houses on the market. My partner is working 350 miles away so we are desperate to move together - does anybody have any good advice or previous experience in this kind of situation? Have other people's house sales taken this long? Should we just stuff them and put our house up to let so we can go now? Or should I go and whack the guy at the bottom of the chain with a large iron bar? Help!!!

OP posts:
lalalonglegs · 20/05/2008 19:30

Your estate agents should be earning their commission by making sure that this situation doesn't happen. Unfortunately, as things have been allowed to drift, the buyers at the bottom of the chain are in a position of power. In your buyers' position, I would ask the agents to put out discreet feelers to gauge if anyone else would be interested in the property and start showing it. They can't afford to dump these buyers outright because of state of the market but they can see if there is an alternative buyer in the meantime. If these people haven't even instructed a solicitor yet, my guess is that you will need at least another 3 months to complete and they might well be planning to gazunder.

PixelHerder · 20/05/2008 20:47

What a pain . Yes they do sound either a) a bit dozy and not doing stuff in the right order b) not serious or c) dragging things out to see if they can get the price down. Agree the agent needs to seriously pin them down or find another buyer.

The only thing that does sound right is waiting ages for a mortgage offer - our buyers' lender took 5 weeks from offer accepted to valuation, then a further 4 weeks to approve the mortgage. We're still waiting for deposit clearance nearly 2 weeks after the approval so that we can exchange. As far as anyone can be sure about these things, they seem like very serious buyers who already had a mortgage offer in principle in place - so it could possibly be worse for first time buyers in terms of being held up by lenders.

NorthernLurker · 28/05/2008 12:48
  • hope you get to exchange asap!

Squiz - that is totally absurd - ask your agents to talk to your buyers agents and get things moving - they will not want to lose the commission! In the mean time - are you totally ready to go? Done all your paperwork for your solicitor, got removals quotes?

PixelHerder · 28/05/2008 15:36

Hi NL - we exchanged last week - at LAST!! Not moving for around 3 weeks though. How did your move go??

Any news Squiz?

NorthernLurker · 28/05/2008 18:53

That's great news Pixel - well done!

Our move was fine - love,love,love the new house!!!

TheWipemeister · 31/05/2008 18:14

Yay that's lovely news NL

Big to you, and to BringMeSunshine for being generally very fab indeed on the seller's support thread, it was miserable and nail biting but we got there in the end!!

Squiz · 01/06/2008 16:24

Still waiting, we have asked the estate agents to chase things up - on a weekly basis! We get more accurate info from speaking to our buyer direct, we are still waiting for the bottom of the chains' mortgage offer- as he is self-employed he has one more piece of paperwork to submit - I think??!!

We are kind of ready to move- had removal quotes months ago and we have recently decided to move into rented so that makes things slightly easier.

We're just going to have to sit this out.

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