The all new buyers/sellers waiting room (9) the one where we start to wonder if we'll move by Christmas..

[NeverGoingToMove]

Huge apologies if I have missed this thread, I have searched high and low but don't think another was started after number 8 ended in May.

After a seriously stressful encounter with building control, I think we are almost ready to exchange. After going on the market last July, I'm hoping we'll move before our year anniversary!

How is everyone else doing?

If her sale is 6 weeks in, then surely the same solicitor is going to deal with the purchase?! That's even more bizarre!

That is weird, I agree! If she is already 6 weeks in she should already have a solicitor.

Ours took nearly 3 weeks and we ought to have taken that as an indication of how they’d proceed. We pulled out of our purchase last week due to being 5 months in and very little progress made. Slightly different as it was a probate sale (without probate) but the sellers were just far too slow.

Sadly looks like we are about £50k short to purchase the ‘new’ house that we’d previously offered on. Stamp duty is so high and that combined with increasing the mortgage just makes the numbers too frightening. I know £50k sounds a lot but we are in London and it’s only about 4% of the purchase price - estate agents seem to think you can just find it down the back of the sofa. It’s such a shame. We can borrow the money but our repayments would be so high that it would impact every other aspect of our life in terms of being able to afford to do much else!

Our offer wasn’t unreasonable so it all comes down to how desperate to sell quickly the seller is.

I called the agents this morning who rang her up to chase and she said she's appointing a different solicitor to the one she's selling with for some reason and she works in a hospital so has just been really busy, but will sort it all out tonight! I feel like it is an omen as to how the sale will be though..just going to try and stay positive..!

@kirinm that's so disappointing. We're in Wales and the stamp duty (Land Transaction Tax here) is even higher than England and I don't understand how people can afford to move house! It's not worth stretching too much and then meaning you can't enjoy other things. Hope things start looking up soon, just catching up and it sounds like it's been a tricky road for you

It’s the one tax I can’t really fully understand. It just prevents people moving surely? Ours would be nearly £60k. Insane.

Just checked and it would be £71k in wales!

@kirinm it's insane isn't it 😂 it adds around 23k to our purchase that we just don't really have and COVID and the stamp duty holiday really rocketed some prices everywhere and in South Wales so it just seems unfair! Although I now very much understand why the market went insane during the stamp duty holiday 😂

SO ANNOYING. Been wondering if we should just increase our offer by £50k so doing a lot of number crunching with our broker and discussing risks etc with DP.

Decide to call the agent to check that the seller is properly motivated, what she’s buying is chain fee etc before I run around trying to get further info for our broker. Only to be told that the seller wants another £100k at least - so twice as much as I was told yesterday. I’ve wasted too much headspace on this the last couple of days and they’re so flippant about it. If I’d have known it was an extra £100k they wanted I’d have said no straightaway.

so so sick of this awful process and dealing with awful human beings.

That could be the agent spouting shit. Surely if their buyer has dropped out, they'll want to move fast? If you can offer the £50k extra, I'd do that. They have to pass all offers on.

I agree and also think estate agent is probably pushing their luck! I'd also offer the 50k extra and see what happens! People are awful though, I'd hope they wouldn't try and money grab further during the fixtures and fittings stage if they did accept the 50k

This is also a concern. I know that if the previous buyer managed to sell their house they’d offer whatever they offered before and the seller would take it. It’s such a precarious and expensive risk.

@kirinm if they end up selling their house for less, they may not be in a position to offer the same! It does sounds a bit risky though 😫

For control freaks like me this house buying and selling business is anxiety producing. Our buyers survey was today. A stranger having a detailed look around the house I’ve lived in for 20 years, asking questions then leaving me zero feedback. I know I’m not their client, but now I twiddle my thumbs waiting to find out what expensive issues they’ve potentially found. It’s going to be a long weekend. How’s it going for everyone else?

@moving300m thats so annoying, feels like they’re picking apart your house that you love? I wouldn’t like it either!

atrocious our end tbh, our buyer is threatening to pull out. She’s very odd tbh. She sent an email saying if we didn’t exchange today(!) she was pulling out, no prior warning, no nothing. She’s right in that the lower chain are taking the absolute piss now and they absolutely need to either commit and stop raising enquiries or pull out, but that’s not our fault. My husband spoke to her and has managed to talk her down off the ceiling but she wants to complete on the 26th August and I don’t see how we can, we don’t even know if the bottom two are ready and even then, our developer wants ten days between exchange and completion, there is some flexibility I think but we won’t even know everyone’s status until monday, and it could take a couple of days to decide a date even if everyone is ready. It’s just yet another headache that is completely out of our control and I do believe she will pull out at this point. I’m going to call the estate agent that is dealing with the two at the bottom tomorrow and just pass on we absolutely need to exchange on Tuesday/Wednesday else the chain will collapse. I just can’t believe we are potentially staring down the barrel of another failed transaction, we can’t afford to go again I don’t think.

@unicornpower Oh god I am so sorry. I am absolutely with you. We were in a similar position but it was the top of the chain that has now collapsed for us and we have lost our forward purchase. But a similar situation to yours but it was OUR buyers raising enquiry after enquiry after enquiry. Then the irritating thing is that after each enquiry has been dealt with extremely swiftly by ourselves and our solicitor (think same day) they then have to have a zoom meeting to discuss the answers given which is always scheduled for a few days away. After the zoom meeting they they come back with more enquiries, then have to schedule another zoom meeting to discuss and so on and so forth and this merry dance has been going on now for 11 weeks!!!!!!!! In the meantime our buyers won't book a survey because their solicitor has advised them not to until all enquiries are answered. We finally got to a point where there are no more enquiries. It was left after their last pointless zoom meeting Wednesday morning that the solicitor wanted to make a few tweaks to a few things and would email our solicitor with that information. As of close of play yesterday he was STILL waiting for that email. This has been the most frustrating situation to be in. We were getting massive pressure from the top of the chain and our sellers, to proceed or pull out and we kept telling them we CAN'T because its NOT US delaying things. And we practically pleaded with our buyers to push their solicitor to be quicker or we would lose our onward sale. And lo and behold, we have!!

We are gutted we have lost our house and this sale collapsed through no fault of our own. We knew it was going to collapse, they kept threatening it, until they finally did. But even with the threat of collapse there was no sense of urgency from our buyers solicitor to try and keep this chain together. I could have cried with frustration. We are now doing nothing to look for an onward purchase until they have made proper steps to buy our house and have a survey done. So now we wait.

@moving300m I am glad you have managed to get to the point of a survey at least. We are still waiting for ours to book one. Can you believe it? The weeks and weeks are passing and there is just so little work being done, or movement being made it feels we will never get there. It worries me that our buyers are this picky and precise at this stage, what the hell are they going to be like when the survey comes back? We all know that surveyors will pick apart your house and pick up every tiny little negative thing. Its so worrying. When do you think you will hear how the survey went? Do you have any idea?

We’ve bought some time and hopefully our buyer will just wait, we are so nearly there and others are pushing to complete ASAP so I hope that’s enough. But equally I am thinking it’s over to prepare myself. I just can’t believe how this system is even allowed to happen, there needs to be commitment MUCH earlier in the process, we worked out if this fails we will owe almost 4K In solicitors fees with nothing to show for it, how is that fair? None of this is our fault.

I’ve come away to my parents for the weekend with the kids to just try and separate myself from it, it’s been so nice, just to have a change of scenery and forget what absolute world of hell waits for us next week. Ughhh

Can i join please? I'm trying to buy a little house for my Mum to move to (shes renting 400 miles away, has poor credit history and not in the best of health). Found the perfect place for her and had an offer accepted 3 weeks ago, a bungalow that's a probate sale. Things were going fine or so I thought, until Friday when I had a voicemail from the estate agent telling me there's a holdup as there's a 'missing probate certificate' from the sellers. I'm not in a rush to buy but options are limited in terms of what I can afford and I've spent all weekend dreaming up nightmare scenarios.

If the certificate of probate is just missing then they can get another copy quite quickly. If they haven't got probate yet then that could take time.

That's my concern. The estate agent was vague on the phone (aren't they always!). I'm going to ring them today to find out what the situation is.

Our chain has collapsed. The people at the bottom have pulled out after holding everyone up for weeks. We are so so gutted and I just feel sick constantly. We are going to contact our developers tomorrow and ask if they’ll wait will wait for us, I’m pretty sure they won’t but we are going to ask as they have cancelled the next phases of the development and they are pulling out of the midlands totally so I’m hoping as we’ve signed our contract they will hang on. Our buyer is gutted and has relisted her property immediately and apparently has someone interested but I’m so jaded from all this I really am.

Weve decided if our developers say no, we are putting the property back on and then going on holiday for two weeks.

this system is so broken, our buyers buyer was relocating from wales and her child is due to start school here on September and now her buyer has pulled the plug it’s all up in the air. We are so devastated

@unicornpower oh no!!!! I am so sorry to hear that your worst fears have materialised. You are right, the whole system sucks!

Its weird because we knew and just kept saying over and over that our sellers were going to pull out and no-one seemed to care. And then it happened. It is awful.

It is just horrible for everyone involved who is affected down the chain. That poor woman relocating and her child due to start school. What the hell is she supposed to do now?

I really hope that your buyer finds another buyer quickly and that your developer will wait for you. What is the market generally like where you are? Are things selling quickly?

This may not be over yet so stay positive. It may well still come good for you.

@unicornpoweromg I am so sorry to hear that. I really hope your developer is willing to wait and that it all comes good. It is so awful to get this far into the process and one link in the chain ruins so much for so many.

@ErlingHaalandsManBun have you had any further update from your buyers? Survey booked?

We have had nothing so far following our buyers survey. Just hoping all ok and we can proceed with the dates requested by our sellers which my solicitor says are perfectly achievable and reasonable 🤞

@moving300m nope. No survey booked as yet STILL. We now have all the information and all their queries answered. They want us to apply for adverse possession over parts of the title that are slightly 'out' (we live in an old property and the title is old)

Apparently there was one small tweak their solicitor wanted to make and that their solicitor would email ours to let him know so he could now just get on with the applications. This was last Wednesday. We got a call Friday afternoon from our Solicitor saying that they hadn't received the email 🙄So we had to call our buyers and ask them to chase their solicitor. Our buyers told us that they would book the survey once we were in agreement to do the title changes. We asked them on Wednesday if they would now book the survey, since we are now in agreement and they have said that they will book it once they have proof that the applications have gone in. So once again they have changed the goalposts. So we have said okay but we can't/won't look for a new forward purchase until they have booked the survey and its been carried out.

I still have no confidence that they will actually go through with this bloody sale and I am starting to get to a point where I don't care, which is sad.

I hope you don't have to wait too long to hear back from the survey. Its like torture waiting as its the last piece of the puzzle now isn't it? So near, yet so far. Let us know when you hear xx