Spring house selling/buying support thread

[PyjamasForever]

After quite a lengthy time on the market I finally have an offer on my house and have had an offer accepted on a house I want to buy. I’m feeling a bit uncertain it will happen with the current financial situation and wondered if anyone else in a similar position wanted a thread for a bit of moral support?!

We’ve instructed solicitors, filled out our TA6 and TA10 forms, applied for a mortgage and have some documents to send them… I then find the next bit the hardest bit about buying and selling when you have all those uncertain weeks with searches/surveys etc and it could all fall apart at any minute!

@WWBWBapparently omg, shame shame on his solicitor, its his duty to make sure the funds are available and he should never have agreed to exchange unless he could 100% guarentee the money was in the bank. When I asked my solicitor how we process the money when we buy he told me I had to give evidence of where the money was coming from and it had to be in his bank day before exchange. The solicitor going radio silence is unprofessional, if hes facked up just say. You are in the same position we were in this week, absolute bs lies been given about the chain. Just depends on when he applied. Worst case senario its a delay of about a month.

Id not worry about your onward, new builds are not exactly flying off the shelf but they say stuff like this to put the frightners on you, like you can do anything about 🙄. They should be used to chains.
After finding out about my own chain this week, I wanted to know who is exactly responsible for informing people of the chain, surprise surprise no one and more surprising people have no legal right to know everything happening in the chain. Yet we are expected to shell out thousands on that weak basis. Therefore people can do what the hell they like.
When we first sold getting any info out of anyone regards the chain was difficult, msgs were vague and wholly, we dont have endless money to throw around and i said to the estate agent how can i confidently go forward and look for an onward property when i cant even get basic info of important stuff like my buyers having a mortgage offer. They talk to you like a child , like oh dont be silly. Wtf are these people on.
Despite the agro of this week, im still no wiser if a mortgage offer has been granted or how close we are to ever exchanging. Ive thought fuck it this week, ring me when you sorted yourselves out. I dont really want to know about anything unless its exchange or they are pulling out, ive stopped packing too. The system is antiquated. There needs to be a centralised figure who oversees the whole chain and info passed to all parties at the same time. No one is interested in personal info but things that affect the chain should be made public.

I’ve been so stressed these past few weeks and it’s a come to nothing. My solicitor and estate agent have been nothing short of amazing. The EA down the chain I actually called earlier to ask him why they lied to us about the bottom buyer being cash. He was still insisting at the point that we was a cash buyer. He is not. I told him that we could lose our onward purchase - not my problem he said. Of course it’s his problem as if we don’t have anywhere to buy we aren’t selling and then his clients can buy our home and can’t sell theirs - we collapse the chain top down. He would not accept any responsibility for not checking that his clients buyer was able to fund the sale. In fact he got all offended that I even accused him of it. Someone somewhere has dropped a bollock by allowing the sale to progress to this stage and not ensuring funds were possible and on the way.

@2longinthetooth I hope things start to move for you soon, what a horrible, stressful and tiring process this is. Solidarity to everyone in this awful situation

@WWBWBapparently how the f is a remortgage a cashbuyer, think he needs to go back to estate agency school, this is what im saying there is zero legal redress and of course he couldnt give a shit, you are just another chain, another house sale, he gets to go home and collect his pay packet at the end of the month. If you pull out as far as hes concerned thats your choice. These people cause this mess. Doesnt have to be this way.

@WWBWBapparently plus they will say he told them he was a cashbuyer but then decided to remortgage, apparently that is none of our business.

@WWBWBapparently unbelievable. We have had to supply endless bank statements to our solicitor proving we can afford our purchase.
How many weeks has your chain been complete? Our new build was meant to have completed last week, nothing they can do about it, I am just updating them all the time so they know we are being proactive. As @2longinthetooth says, new builds are not exactly being snapped up at the moment.

Our chain has been complete since mid June. Us and our buyer have been ready since mid August. The bottom buyer (our buyers buyer who we were told all along was cash) has dragged his feet since mid August. Started to say he was under pressure from the chain down and if we didn’t back off he was pulling out. Both the EA for him (our buyers EA) and his solicitor have facilitated his dithering. He agreed completion for Monday coming but every day there has been no move to exchange. We find out at the 11th hour yesterday that he doesn’t have a deposit to send to the solicitor as it’s tied up in a remortgage that he’s going through.

Why weren’t checks done? Didn’t alarm bells ring with anyone when he wasn’t forthcoming with the money?
My fantastic solicitor has now sent a firm, bullet pointed email to them asking when they were aware of this and for full and frank disclosure of his position and how long the remortgage is likely to take.
DH and I have agreed that if we don’t have answers to all the questions and a clear take on his position by COB Wednesday we will pull the plug and collapse the chain from top down. We are now sick of living in limbo and being strung along by someone at the bottom who either doesn’t know what he’s doing or is stringing us along himself. We want to take back some control of our lives now.

Hope things improve for you too, what an awful, stressful process this is - everyone just relying on the person below to be decent, honest and able to proceed as planned.

Why weren’t checks done? Didn’t alarm bells ring with anyone when he wasn’t forthcoming with the money?

massive empathy for you @WWBWBapparently thats an awful situation. Well done to you and your DH for not being averse to pulling the plug if they don't shape up.

to your questions, EAs are utterly infuriating. They come on the phone to us saying we have a "cash buyer" wanting to view your property. When we tell them we need validation of that, the supposed cash buyer does a disappearing act. We even had someone who said they'd buy a property before selling theirs.

all bullshit,

We don't want to work with time wasters or liars, it will only get worse. People who claim to be cash buyers 95% aren't or they have asset tied up in investments that they will never in a million years liquidate to buy a property. the EA doesn't dare ask them searching questions, they tell us they "trust them" and we say we aren't prepared to and it's our property we're selling, so we need the truth not words. We want to scare the time wasters off, because they will let us down later. We want serious buyers who don't play games,

@daisychain01 This is what happened when we put our house on the market, EA was saying people were proceedable and yet we find out their home aint even on the market. Told them I dont want people coming round like that i want fully proceedable, like sold their home. EA said he doesnt advise that, I thought couldnt give a hoot mate, you aint doing the cleaning for the viewings. Its that or bugger all. He was quite put out. They dont mind putting me out, sending round people who have no intention of buying my home, just for them to say to me they have produced viewings. Its all bs.
Again when we had our offer, it had been 4 weeks no sign of surveyor, when i was asking EA to ask buyers where they were, instead of just being a bloody adult and ask, they said they didnt want to spook the buyer wtaf, how old is my buyer ffs. Who are my EA representing. They do realise they are buying a house and expect people to ask questions, turns out my buyer is porting their mortgage and they wanted to wait for the lender before the survey. That is all i needed to hear, facts of how they are proceeding. How the f is that spooking people. No EA want you to stfu.

I'm sorry to hear that you're still waiting @WWBWBapparently . This is honestly such a piss take on many levels. There should be punishments for unnecessary lies/not disclosing information that holds up the process! I'm over ready for that type of reform!

On a positive note, we managed to complete (chain of 3), with zero issues (except me underestimating how much time should be allocated for packing and cleaning, my body is so sore!!!).The process lasted just over 4 months from the day our offer was accepted (which isn't terrible but the delays were so so dumb, I can't feel too joyous over it).

The main solicitor who dealt with our sale/purchase was actually on holiday the week of exchange and completion, but the handover was so so smooth. I will be giving them a glowing review wherever I can. Our buyer will certainly not be doing that for his solictor!!! I still feel a little startled that nothing went wrong, house-buying in this country is too damn stressful... You just end up expecting the worst outcomes.

I wish everyone a good week ahead in this process!!

(Feel free to PM me if you are reading this and looking for a solicitor/conveyancer in Essex)

That’s great news @GlaceCherryFromThePast, hope you settle quickly into your new home and you are very happy. I imagine the torture of the process will be a distant memory soon

Morning all, how long should it take for the seller / solicitor to complete the draft contract forms? There’s only two ppl in the chain; the buyer and seller. We had the offer accepted 6 weeks ago, mortgage approved, survey done 2 weeks later, so 4 weeks ago. Seller only did ID checks 3 weeks ago but nothing has happened since. EA has said that seller posted the forms but solicitor never received them so they’re now being emailed. This was last Monday. We are worried the seller is stalling or is this just us being impatient?

@NotDonna some sellers are so slow, if the house is a probate they see no urgency because there is little skin in the game. Today the length of the chain means nowt. There is 1 person on here that took a whole yr, just buyer and seller. Unfortunately its difficult trying to manage the otherside. You have zero control. All you can do is keep asking for updates and requesting solicitors/EA to ply pressure. If the seller is relying on posting stuff then you are in for a long wait. Only you can decide is the house worth the hassle and wait. As sellers we signed our contracts ready within 4 weeks. Mind you our id checks and all paperwork was done in 3 days.

@2longinthetooth no it’s not private - a chap in his 40’s moving to a different city and who has apparently already moved most of his stuff out. So hopeful he’s still committed. No clue why he’s posting things rather than emailing.

I don't think it is unusual to post the draft contract forms. That is what we did last year.

@NotDonna there could be lots of reasons, working long hours, could have gone on hols, some people just aint in a rush or see it as important, especially as hes already moved out. Again, nothing you can do, buyers and sellers are always at the mercy of the other side. We have been pro active so has my buyer but bottom of chain are pissing about, annoying and frustrating but not much we can do but wait.

Yes, exactly. Just waiting. I’m thinking once the draft contract forms are sent he may take a while finding all the relevant paperwork for an extension - or will that already have been forwarded?

Again depends on how organised he is, we had all our paperwork ready before we even put it on the market, so we just sent it all in but on the forms you can send them in later.

@2longinthetooth ah thank you! I’m thinking he’s likely unorganised / super busy and they will follow.

All the best for everyone on the treadmill of conveyancing this week. Hope you get answers or ability to move forward towards exchange.

Yes, happy Monday everyone! I’m daring to hope that by the end of the day we might get some agreement about exchange, calls have been booked in for the afternoon with solicitors across the chain so although it looks like exchanging today is off the cards I don’t see why we can’t set a date.

Hi all,
Radio silence from the bottom buyer so we’re still none the wiser whether he is able to get the deposit in place.
It’s sickening that he can just string us along now and stay quiet until he decides what’s happening. There has to be a better way of doing this .

@WWBWBapparently same here, mind when I spoke to my solicitor last, they said they would follow up in 10 days so I didnt expect to hear today. By Thursday I will want info. Tbh knowing how slow my chain has been its anyones guess when they will get round to exchange. Hate being in limbo. Ive been trying to do jobs that will help me in the future like deep cleaning the oven. Ive got this awful feeling now my buyers buyer has completed she will want to exchange asap so the situation will flip dramatically, she may pull out altogether of she cant get a mortgage offer. Its just a shit situation all round but at least I will have a clean oven.