Chain complete conveyancing support thread

[BakedPotatoBeansCheeseColeslaw]

My chain completed on Monday. I’ve booked my survey, instructed my solicitor and applied for my mortgage. Now begins the anxious wait to see if we will actually get to complete.

My friend once likened moving house to the first trimester - don’t talk about it to many people until you’re sure it’s happening.

Anyone else in the same boat? We are hoping for an August completion as chain short, and onward chain was already a way through the process before falling through and us joining 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Totally agree, it is so obvious that the system needs to change and it wouldn’t even be that hard to do it! Put routine searches on a central council portal that can be accessed immediately. Certification of title could be done independently before a house sale is even agreed. Surveys should be done within a week of an agreed sale or not at all, like in Australia - or alternatively the Scottish home report system where it’s done independently before the house is even marketed. Any of this would make it SO MUCH QUICKER and cheaper and more reliable than this ridiculous Heath Robinson / pigeon post system of a million messages being back and forth about random things that could have been sorted out months ago.

@Emoemu absolutely! It’s the inability to speak to anyone directly that drives me mad. I want to be able to phone up my seller’s solicitor myself and ask them why they haven’t sent back this bloody form we are missing but I’m not allowed to do that so I have to call the estate agent who calls them who then calls me back.

It is madness. We are buying a new build so have basically been told the searches will take 3 weeks but my solicitors already know the answer to any queries as they are the same for all the other houses on the estate so that will speed it up! But why are searches just not an instant download!?

We are all ready to sign and exchange contracts. Us and seller have agreed 7th August for completion, found out yesterday buyers solicitor said they are in the US all summer and want completion 28th August!

Not going to work for us or our seller, we have a disabled child who needs settled in the new house before starting a new specialist setting at the end of August and a little one starting p1 in a different school the same week! Our buyers are moving across the country with 4 young kids and need their children settled before new school also.

I feel like this has thrown a massive spanner in the works for the rest of the chain. Our solicitor is calling buyers solicitor on Monday to see about digitally signing the contracts. Has anyone heard of this before? We will be pushing for completion 7th August as it just is not feasible to do it end of August for the rest of the chain. Our buyers are first time buyers so do not have a property to sell or vacate while they are away.

That should say our SELLERS are moving across country with 4 young kids. Buyers have no house and no kids to work around!

God that’s infuriating. If you’re in the middle of a house buying process, surely it’s common sense to tell everyone well in advance if you’re going away for a bit!

It has totally ruined our weekend Emoemu, everything has been smooth sailing up until now. I’m really stressing all weekend as it is just not possible for us to complete and move the last week of August and I’m now fearing the whole chain may collapse due to buyers being abroad until then. I hate how it has been left over the weekend when nothing can be resolved.

I hope everyone else is making a bit of progress with their purchases

I think our sellers will be signing the contact digitally as they live overseas, but if that's an issue for any reason, our solicitor said they can send hard copies via DHL.

The bottom of our chain broke down in April at about the same time as we pulled out of the house we were buying because it needed a complete new roof structure and the seller wouldn’t reduce the price by anywhere near the cost. We thought we had plenty of time to find another house. The house at the bottom of the chain was sold again last month and the agent told us thst they were first time buyers and it would take a while to go through. We had an offer on the house of our dreams accepted on Friday of last week and were then told on Wednesday of this week that our buyers’ mortgsge offer expires on the 15th and they can’t renew it again at the same interest rate, so we’re now being pushed to complete in under three weeks’ time! Fortunately the house we’re buying is empty so we’re at the top of the chain, but it’s going to be very very tight to get everything done in time. I’ve had to book the removal company to secure the date, as they’ve allocated four days in total for packing and moving and were running out of availability.

@Growlybear83 4 days for packing… that’s a lot of stuff! We’ve been told it will be about half a day for all of our things!

I know - Weve been in this house for 35 years and have accumulated so much stuff thst we don’t want to get rid of. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds - the first two days are for packing, day three is to finish off packing on the day of the move and unpack essentials, and day four is delivering the rest of our stuff. 😆

@Growlybear83 if it includes moving and unpacking that isn’t bad at all! I was imagining 4 days of just packing and wondering what kind of amazing manor you were packing up? 😂

@PyjamasForeverWe’ve never used a removal company in any of our moves in 50 years, and thought we should get someone to do it for us this time 😆. I would love to hear what people do with removal men. I’ll obviously have loads of tea, coffee, and juice available for them, and will offer them a sandwich at lunchtime, but is it normal to tip them at the end of the move?

So sorry this is happening, I really sympathise as our seller’s solicitor has buggered off on holiday without telling anyone and we’re in limbo too, waiting over the weekend without knowing what’s going on or when anything might be resolved is maddening

That’s so frustrating about the holiday, we had to specify the dates we couldn’t move right at the beginning so everyone was well aware of what restrictions there were for timings. We’re still in limbo with no update from our buyers about their surveys so fully expecting to have some awful email next week about them pulling out! My husband is so matter of fact about it, and that what will be will be, but honestly not sure I’d be able to take another collapsed sale!

@Growlybear83 I tipped £50 last time we moved, but it was a longer distance and they were much cheaper. We’re paying £2.3k to move a 3 bed down the road this time so I’m not sure what to do with tipping.

I’ll go and get ice creams/cold drinks during the day but I feel like I should give them something.

Had an email form our agents and all the additional surveys came back satisfactory, the only thing they wanted to check was that a leak on a sink (that we flagged to them already) is fixed prior to exchange…..starting to get a slightly more positive feeling now! Just got to actually pack and sort removals as haven’t dared do it yet because of the anxiety from when it all fell through the last times!

We’re in a chain of 4, second from bottom. Last searches scheduled to be back 2nd August - what is left to do after this?

Hound the people who will start ghosting you at exactly this point has been my experience!

All the searches are back on all the houses in our chain (three) but we have had zero momentum for about 10 days at this point!

My estate agent is on phone calls every other day.

Our estate agent rang me late yesterday to tell me that it will cost our buyers around£20,000 in total if they have to get a new mortgage if they can’t complete on our sale by the 13th, and their mortgsge offer expired, and he asked whether, if we’re not ready to complete on our purchase at thst time, we will either move out into a hotel for a few days or reduce the price on our house to compensate them. I pointed out that the first time we had been made aware of their deadline was Wednesday of last week at 6pm! If we had been told even a couple of weeks earlier that this was happening, there was another house that we would have bought and could have managed to meet their deadline. But we were waiting fkr a number of questions to be answered before we instructed the solicitor to start work and then foubd the house of our dreams thar were buying now. if everything is straightforward with our purchase and the sellers solicitors pull their fingers out, it’s technically possible for us to meet the deadline but it’s going to be very touch and go. I had forgotten just how stressful this is!

Oh how infuriating! I’m losing the will to live with other people’s slow solicitors. I honestly can’t fault mine but others are taking 10 days to forward on an email!

I’ve never bought a new build before, but weirdly my new build sales agent knows everything about my whole chain. Hoping his chasing will speed the whole chain along! He has been the only person updating us so far.

Our buyers have been uncontactable since we heard on Friday they want to postpone the completion date to 28th August when the rest of the chain are ready to exchange and complete 7th August. Our estate agent has been trying to contact them with no luck and our solicitor has been on at their solicitor. There will be an issue with time difference if they are in the US but I get the feeling they are intentionally ghosting to delay exchange.

I barely slept last night for worrying about it all and am thinking of re marketing asap if they continue to ghost us as I am losing faith in their seriousness of their purchase. What a hideous process buying and selling is!

Found out today that our chain is complete!! Only 3 of us too so hoping it will be fairly straightforward.

I've already sent all forms to our solicitor for our purchase and sale and they ordered searches as soon as we instructed them just over a week ago. Hoping others are quick with the paperwork.

Our current home is a new build so was a very easy process as we were also first time buyers. This is our first time selling and buying so a bit apprehensive about all the things that could go wrong!

I think we might just hand in the towel at this point and try again next year. I thought the hard part was getting a buyer but everything is overpriced and needs a crazy amount of work!

We put an offer in on one knowing it needed a lot of work so budgeted within our offer and asked for 5% off. We’ve had a response that they want another 10k and listed some known issues and a roof report with some pretty big work needed that we didn’t expect as well as some movement years ago which was apparently due to drains and fixed.
So I think even if they dropped a large amount I’m not sure we’d go for it still. Can’t believe they’ve not bitten our hands off for the offer we’ve made now!

Feeling a bit disheartened but glad to see lots of you are getting further along and some houses are worth all this hassle!

Against all odds, we've exchanged!!!! I had reached the point where I thought it would never happen. My hair is now significantly more grey than it was when our house first went on the market, what feels like a million years ago (well, it was over a year ago). I've never done completion day in a chain before so obviously I am now panicking about that. But a big step!