Selling leasehold flat delayed by FirstPort and late buyer enquiries

[Paulafernalia]

We are selling our leasehold flat. We accepted an offer in December and there’s been so many delays mostly due to chasing First Port to respond to the buyer’s solicitors’ enquiries. I wonder if anyone can advise on how to expedite the process at this point?

We are waiting on two things:

• buyers solicitors to say they are happy with the response to their last enquiry and to confirm there are no more enquiries
• Get an up to date statement of accounts from bloody First Port

Re the first point, the last enquiry was raised 4 months into the process and was completed unrelated to everything else, there was no reason why it couldn’t have been raised at the start of the process. We are thinking of telling our estate agent we are not going to respond to new, unrelated enquiries at this point, so he can mediate. Is this a reasonable to say?

We moved abroad and are currently paying rent and mortgage, which we can’t do for much longer. I understand this is not the buyer’s fault, but at some point we’ll have no choice but to pull out and rent it out, which doesn’t benefit anyone!

Also, any tips for getting anything out of Forst Port? 🤣

Re Firstport, make a formal complaint finishing with the property ombudsman.

The statement of accounts should be available via Firstports online portal, but it may not be acceptable to the buyers solicitor as it would not have come direct through firstport to the solicitors (it's a question of insurance).

First Port are a bloody nightmare. They used to be the management company for the development I live in but fortunately were ousted a while ago. Not that the new lot are any better!

You could try posting a poor review of them on Trustpilot - I’ve seen a few people using that to complain about delays while selling and FP seem to respond pretty quickly.

It was worth a shot, but there is nothing useful on the portal. Just a budget for the following year for the whole development. They don't even seem to be in a hurry to get our money, we paid service charge last year for Mar 2025-Mar 2026 and haven't had an invoice yet this year...

I had a flat sale that went on for nearly two years because of First Port delays, both to enquiries and the origing repair that caused all the issues.

Try your development manager and see if they can assist...