People buying a probate property

[kirinm]

How did you cope? I know there has been a problem with probate but nobody will explain what it is. We’ve been strung along for months. We really have no choice to hold on as the market is extremely slow (houses sell quickly, very few come on). We’ve seen literally everything that has come on in our area.

Anyway, are we entitled to know what the hold up is? What they’re doing about it. I know they’ve been asked for more info which was supposedly sent in April. My solicitor isn’t engaging much. Their conveyancer has been utter shit from day 1.

Having absolutely no insight into what is happening is driving me mad.

Ask the estate agent to chase. They will not want to lose you as buyers and so should be good at communicating with you.

I ask them to chase a lot but they either don’t return calls or send emails which don’t get responded to with any clarity.

You won’t be able to complete on the property until probate has been granted
so you are in limbo until then. Ask your solicitor to chase re probate hold up. HMCTS was pretty slow last year and you could only contact them if you had been waiting for more that 16 weeks but I thought things had improved?

I think it’s reasonable to ask what the hold up is and how quickly this issue can be resolved.

We are selling a probate property. It's just as frustrating for us. We have been told the backlog for rubber stamping probate is over six months. We will be extremely lucky to be able to sell before spring. Fortunately (I suppose) we do not have a buyer yet.

I have just sold a probate property. The grant of probate was issued within two months of application. Is it area dependent, I wonder?

We had a nightmare getting probate - not once it was actually applied for, that was relatively quick (2ish months), but our solicitor was terrible. From giving them all the info they needed to them ACTUALLY putting in the probate application took 4 months, and no amount of chasing would get them to go faster. I thought I was going to a local solicitor, but unfortunately the “local solicitor” dealt with all probate cases through a national chain which was clearly over allocated and staffed by trainees and numpties. You couldn’t speak to anyone directly, had to go through a switchboard which fobbed you off every single time, and you had to pay upfront to get them to do anything, so there was zero incentive for them to get it done. Never. Again. Always check the solicitor very carefully - lesson learned. Unfortunately we did lose our buyer, but luckily have since resold.

Your sellers could be struggling with the admin overload that probate can sometimes be, and/or dealing with horrific solicitors. Either way, I do feel sorry for you, but sometimes it’s just shit and there’s not much that can be done about it

They applied last July! I’ve read about delays and the whole process seems ridiculous. They really shouldn’t have put it on the market without probate having been granted but we’d been assured it was expected in March and then April and now who knows!

I get the feeling their solicitor is rubbish. They talked about changing solicitors in the early days (they obviously haven’t).

Crikey that’s a ridiculous delay! It took five months to get probate for my dm’s estate last year.

Although I didnt have a properrty to sell I did have two probate applictions I did that were complex. One had AIM's shares and the other was applicable to pay inheirtance tax so not simple. One took 12 weeks and the other 10 days!

In my view if the application and paperwork has been filled in properly then there shouldnt be a huge delay. However a lot of people are avoiding using a solicitor (for cost reasons or because they think they know how to do it themselves) even when there is a house to sell and one error on the forms and it goes to the back of the queue.

There was a thread on MoneySavingExpert the other day where the delay ended up being because the witness of a will many many years ago didnt respond to the Probate Office with some queries because he didnt do email and they had to write to him. Even then he was struggling with the questions so just ignored.

What EA doesnt want the sale to complete. You could drop out! Ask to speak to the Branch Manager.

I feel your pain ! We bought a probate property and completed in February 2024. It was really awful the sellers solicitors were less than helpful, estate agents appeared to be frightened to ask the solicitors any questions. Our solicitors would get curt responses from them ... we finally exchanged and are still in the midst of the renovations. Solidarity and fingers crossed, unfortunately it is a waiting game :( BUT we are pleased to have moved :)

Ours is also a renovation and it’s so annoying not to be able to plan anything. My DP will do a lot of the work with labourers to help - certainly the clearance and demolition side of things (he’s an electrician) but he’s now booked up until September. We can’t live in it as is. We were told we could be in by June!

I did use a solicitor to check the paperwork on both applications.One wasnt great but once I had corrected some typos it went in and was approved without further queries.

The other solicitor came highly recommended and was fab (that one took 10 days and it was the quickest he had ever seen (that one was liable to inheritance tax).

Quite honestly I suspect the executors are struggling with the paperwork and if they dont really know what they are doing and dont chase it just gets left.

Ask to find out EXACTLY what the delay is. I would bet its outstanding queries that are with the executors rather than the Probate Office themselves.

The fact that they put it on with no real idea of when it was ready to be sold was their first error.

They have a solicitor. The death was two years ago so they’ve now has 2 years to gather the info together with the help of a solicitor.

The most recent update was ‘major documents for partition complete’. I asked what that actually meant and got no response.

Our next door neighbours probate was applied for by his daughter online. They did not use a solicitor. It took two months and all they had to do was go somewhere to sign something. When my father died I looked online to do that as well. It seemed relatively straight forward. There were numbers to ring if advice was needed. However
my brother had been named executor only and this was because my dad thought a man should handle it. My brother has always been unsure of any paperwork and wanted to employ a solicitor which he did. However, the more I looked into it the more straight forward it seemed. However, there were no complications. It was a straight forward situation as was my neighbour’s probate.

Exceptionally bad for for the estate agent to market prior to receiving evidence that probate has been granted - this is entirely on them!

When I sold my mum's house that was the one question that all the agents asked.

You need to make yourself very annoying op - go to the office and speak to someone in person to request an update. Every enquiry you make of your solicitor is potentially costing you money - the agents have a responsibility to ensure that the vendors actually have legal permission to sell the property!

We had this hold up with purchasing the house we’re now in. Our seller was buying the probate property and refused to consider rental themselves. Took 9-10 months in the end (we were in rental as our previous house had sold from under us). However rental was costing us money so we threatened to pull out of this purchase and meant it, and finally our seller did go into temporary accommodation themselves. You obviously can’t do this as you’re buying it.

I do feel people selling houses before probate is finalised and not declaring it, is a blooming nightmare and should be stopped. To be fair the 9-10 month it took in our case was just post pandemic. However some estates can be legally very challenging or disputed so could take forever. Asking how long probate takes is impossible really, as every case is so individual. Personally I feel properties shouldn’t be marketed until it’s through and actually sellable.

you can market the property before probate is granted. The agent does need to make potential purchasers aware of the situation.

I think it’s often hidden to those further down the chain or I’ve seen many threads on here where the EA have said it’s a probate property but not made it clear it’s not actually been applied or granted yet. That’s also what our sellers claimed wrongly or rightly.

However in our case I do think our sellers arrogantly thought as we were already in rental we’d just sit there for as long as it took throwing monthly rental money away and living in limbo. House moving is so stressful, I’m planning to stay here forever!

We applied last July for probate. Still waiting! We've been told it should be completed next month.

Oh wow. Were there issues or is it just been slow?

My uncle died in March. His executor had had poa before. He used the online portal and probate took 10days. He's in Kent if that makes a difference.

There weren't any particular issues as such but it involved various investments/accounts etc. Ridiculous amount of time to take although the probate solicitor said it would pretty much take this long.

I don't mean to be the barer of bad new but do NOT hold your breath for this house.

We wasted over a year on the same thing, probate never got sorted and eventually the bank repossessed it to pay the estates debts, they refused to uphold the agreed sale and we lost everything we put into it.

It eventually sold for LESS than our agreed offer too, whole thing was a shit show that cost me a fortune and I have nothing to show for it.