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?

@NeverGoingToMove how weird! Ours came over to sign our contracts etc and he definitely said we have to give authority and we all made a joke of it as it’s been ongoing so long! It would be so much easier if it wasn’t like that…..

@NeverGoingToMove I will have to see what ours does then. I mean we've signed the forms but because they date them I can kind of see why they may need to check. I don't really care either way.

We've started packing our house up today. Everything takes so much longer than I thought it would but we've got a fair amount done! Feeling knackered 😂

@Trying81 fingers crossed you don't lose your buyer. Some people just don't think about what needs doing and others just want it as an excuse to save money.

@OtiMama yeah it’s seems a bit weird, would be interested to hear what happens with yours and if they do ask? I’d rather they just bloody got on with it to be honest!

@Trying81 oh I hope you don’t lose your buyer, have you heard anything today? 15k is such a lot of money too so it’s understandable why you can’t agree to it. We agreed to 5k and it stung us tbh, we just loved our onward so had no choice

@Trying81 I hope you find a solution. We have issues too - further down the chain a property was down valued so it’s been asked up chain if there’s any flexibility. We accepted a low offer because they could proceed and we are motivated to move but now we are faced with possibly having to take even less. It’s frustrating and infuriating and so bloody stressful. Never again.

Thanks everyone - we want to see the survey before we think about lowering our price. Hoping to get that tomorrow.

£15k isn’t an amount we could drop by, as we lose our onward purchase if we do. But we are open to negotiation rather than have the chain break, we’re a good few weeks in and it’s a small chain (3 houses) so we’d expected to be moving early September based on conveyancers estimate. We accepted slightly lower than other offers as our buyer had sold to someone renting so no chain and the house we’re buying has no chain - we’ve previously had issues with a bigger chain falling apart close to exchange which turned into a nightmare

Absolutely no point at all.

Exchange should happen at the earliest point where all parties are ready, it doesn't need to take place on a pre-arranged date.

Losing the will a bit now.

Our sellers have been pressing to complete asap, for the last month at least. They weren't happy waiting till July even, wanted it all sorted. Finally got the whole chain in agreement, and it turns out sellers are not actually ready to exchange as they haven't signed everything. And now someone else in the chain wants to renegotiate the completion date again as we didn't exchange when they wanted.

Breezed through up until now, but I can finally see why this process is up there with the top most stressful life events.

Due to a dodgy survey and now a report from a structural engineer we need a drain survey. It could be make or break. Obviously they’ve paved over the manhole covers so we are going to need to cut pipes so just waiting to see if we can get permission for that. If not, we may have to walk away.

if we don’t walk away we are going to have to renegotiate on price regardless.

Still absolutely no idea what is going on with probate. Sick of it all.

I could have written this post, except it is our buyers who haven't signed something. The buyers who are (or certainly were) desperate to complete ASAP and wanted as much notice for their rental as possible.

We've not heard from our agent since the 1st of June so I'm chasing through the seller's agent and our solicitors.

I've convinced myself this is all going to fall apart and am slowly driving myself insane 😂

I am also losing the will to live so feeling the pain of everyone here.

We sold our flat in March - it went up on Monday, we did viewings on the Saturday and had accepted an offer on the following Monday. We offered on our house to be the same week. And now it is coming up for the end of July and four attempted exchange dates have come and gone because at the very last minute on the day itself one of the two buyers above us needs a new mortgage offer (this has happened twice), or hasn’t signed some paperwork and their solicitors haven’t told anyone else in the chain this.

The estate agents we are buying through are incredibly aggressive as well, which really leaves a sour taste, especially as we and our buyers have been ready to exchange since mid June. Their clients (they represent the two above us) have vetoed multiple completion dates and when we said no to just one the EA kept telling us we had to rearrange our plans for that day (obviously we did not!)

We have until Weds to exchange and then we’ll need to find a whole new completion date so really hope that doesn’t happen.

@UndertheMapleTree - share your frustration - offered on house beginning of March - 3 in the chain - ready to exchange - FTB at bottom needs to get a mortgage extension - allegedly according to EA would take 5 days - 10 days later still waiting. We have already passed one set of exchange/completion dates. Such a lack of transparency on what is going on. There's me thinking we should be in by July - I am now thinking September!

@kirinm We had to have a drain survey after our main survey. Our vendors paid. First one came out did tests said all was fine but didn’t produce a certificate so they had to get a second firm out who did another survey with certification.

We moved in last Wednesday! Viewed this early April. Felt like we’d been sorting packing and cleaning for ever but we made it!

Good luck to all of you still waiting and dealing with the stress of it all! It’s worth it in the end to be where you want to be.
We had a fabulous local independent Estate Agent and they were really supportive and kept us informed.

Good lord, this house malarkey is not for the faint of heart! Long post / rant alert.

We went on market early April for £275k, accepted an offer from FTB’s end April for £273k, offered on our dream home and got accepted after a few days of haggling, all good! Fast forward 8 weeks and our buyers decide they want to live closer to mum and dad and withdraw. Wouldn’t mind but it took them 4 weeks to get their mortgage application submitted and another 3 to decide which solicitor to use, and EA was telling us this is totally normal and be patient 🤔 Back to market, get another buyer within 10 days, accepted £3k less than FTB’s to keep our chain together. 48 hours later they pulled the offer as the house was leasehold (marketed as, and told them all the info at the viewing BEFORE they offered!) FML. Back to market again and price dropped to £268k and starting to eat into savings.

EA’s been awful, slow, reactive and essentially a call centre for viewings off Rightmove. Turning up to viewings without keys, losing details of viewers, letting buyers slow walk us etc and just generally not acting for us as the people paying their fee!

Lost my sh*t with the director last week, he told us we needed to drop the price by £25k to get it sold, I did not react well and he ended our contract on the spot so we signed with a new EA 2 days later and started process for buying freehold. Fast forward 24 hours, 2 viewings, 2 offers, both well over new asking price and we’ve just accepted an offer for £283k with 8 more viewings in pipeline. Absolute night and day by comparison. The couple were lovely, we got what we needed and I’ve not been sleeping well at all the last week so we accepted and we’ve now reached level 5 of Jumanji!

What a whirlwind! I’ve opened a celebratory bottle of wine (even though I know we’ve still got a marathon ahead!) My nerves can’t take anymore.

Can I ask how long everyone’s mortgages took to come through? We’re using a broker, I can see that the mortgage company have checked my credit file and a payment of dh’s was queried and proof sent almost three weeks ago and we’ve heard nothing since. Is this normal? It’s years since I last bought a house and the whole thing was completed in six weeks back then! [old emoticon]

We finally have some progress! 3 weeks since we had our mortgage appointment and the lender has finally managed to send the email with our application paperwork. Needless to say I had it filled in and returned within the hour. Now to see how long it takes for them to arrange a valuation. Had our survey done today so waiting to hear the outcome from that. Our buyer’s buyer is pushing for completion at the end of next month but as of yet our vendor’s solicitor is still ignoring everyone…

@Pony86 that’s some rollercoaster! Thank goodness it worked out in your favour in the end.

About a week with natwest - most of the waiting was for the valuation to come back

@24Dogcuddler congratulations, enjoy your new home.

@Pony86 what a faff! Shows the difference in a good EA though doesn't it.

@YourUglySister we got ours within a couple days or so but we do already have a smaller mortgage with the same company so maybe that makes a difference, although I don't recall it taking very long first time either. Just ask your broker.

We are meant to be exchanging tomorrow. And for those discussing it earlier, we do have to call our solicitor in the morning to confirm we are happy to exchange. It's been so stressful, last minute our mortgage advisor realised we hadn't done a form linked to some gifted money so we had to submit this and get a new (same) offer. Why couldn't they have done this week's ago!! Hope it all goes through tomorrow. Our buyers moved their deposit last week so must be itching to get it sorted and our EA was chasing an update today. I was like believe me we also want to exchange. We can't confirm removals until exchange and we are meant to be completing next Thursday! Have already started packing so it better all be sorted ASAP!

@YourUglySister ours took a while actually. It isn’t the easiest house to buy and we could only get one high street lender to consider it. I think also the fact my partner is self employed meant that they continually asked for documents but drip fed the requests. They also wanted proof of where we got our deposit from and proof that we still had it but wouldn’t accept screenshots of funds being transferred by our solicitor (when we sold our flat) or screenshots of the money still being sat in our accounts. Unfortunately as the accounts are savings accounts our bank doesn’t provide statements online. I think it probably was about 6 weeks or so.

Thanks for the replies, it’s a high street lender so should be straightforward but I’m self employed too so perhaps that is the hold up as know it complicates things slightly. Hoping to hear something back soon!

They wanted my bank statements and 3 months payslips. They wanted 10x that from my partner who has been self employed for 16+ years.

We’ve finally got to the point where everyone is ready to exchange and it has to happen today: we need a week between exchange and completion for our mortgage and our buyers’ mortgage and we can’t move completion on because of availability, and our solicitor is now not answering any emails from the rest of the chain and his phone just goes straight to voicemail when I call. Ahahahah. He’s been hopeless throughout but this is making me feel sick.

Good luck today @OtiMama thinking of you!

good luck to you @UndertheMapleTree hopefully your solicitor gets it done today! Such a stressful time, I’m seriously aging!

Can I offer some top tips for anyone in this process!

1. Anything you tell your solicitor, tell the estate agent/s and vice versa. We've been discussing completion dates since we first met the EA, agreed it with the solicitor but it turns out the rest of the chain were clueless. So just, tell everyone everything!
2. It seems the authority to exchange is only valid until 5pm on the day you grant it. Though from this thread this isn't how every solicitor operates, in case yours does it might be helpful to know that with ours if you grant authority and it doesn't go through then you need to continually grant it until it happens. You can see up a recurring email so it sends automatically and you don't have to think about it. We're currently on our third week with still no exchange 😅

I am so fed up with this process, I feel so drained.

we got as far as discussing completion dates on Tuesday and the last we heard was it was being communicated down the chain for agreement. Now it’s just radio silence. I emailed the estate agent yesterday and she’s not replied and again first thing this morning (still no reply). I am just beyond frustrated now. We don’t know the status of the renegotiation further down the chain, the last we heard they needed a revised mortgage offer but don’t know when that’s likely to be issued at all.

im back to just never thinking this is going to happen!

Delighted to say we finally managed to exchange yesterday, the relief!

And adding to what @notanarchaeologistsaid, our EA told us the the process had to be completed by 4:30 or we wouldn’t have been to able to proceed. I’m not sure if that’s finances wise or what but we were pretty close to that!