The nervous wait to exchange....

  • Thread starter Thread starter noj
  • Start date Start date
Feel our situation has just gone completely silent for the last week or so, with the exception of me having a survey carried out.

I feel we have done everything we need to do now, so I guess this is the norm while the solicitors get cracking.

Still imagine it won't be before Xmas, which I do struggle to understand when the chain is, first time buyers, then us, and us buying off property management company (end of chain)

But no rush etc, just already getting anxious.
 
Buying and completing on a house should take about 2-3 weeks for the average sale. Everything should be digital now and available. Surveys should be done by the seller. The majority of it should be automated. Whole thing is a complete mess.
 
fez said:
Buying and completing on a house should take about 2-3 weeks for the average sale. Everything should be digital now and available. Surveys should be done by the seller. The majority of it should be automated. Whole thing is a complete mess.
Click to expand...

Surveys should be done by the buyer, they are the ones who must ensure the scope, accuracy and validity of the report and the qualification of the surveyor.

I agree however that the process should be quicker and streamlined but obtaining a survey is not a bottleneck. Obtaining and approving a mortgage is.
 
Last edited:
Hagar said:
Surveys should be done by the buyer, they are the ones who must ensure the scope, accuracy and validity of the report and the qualification of the surveyor.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Surveyors are bound by professional bodies and the average bear has no capability to determine the accuracy or depth of a report whether they have paid for it or not. There should be a certain required level of survey completed based on the type/age of the property and it should be available to everyone looking to buy.

If a buyer wants to get their own thats fine. The fact you can drop thousands of pounds before you get to the point where you find out the house is a structural mess is crazy. Its equally crazy that you can do this same dance with multiple people with each one being left completely isolated and not knowing until they too hit that point.
 
I appreciate that this might be a controversial view, but as a (recent) seller, I would have preferred to have the results of a proper survey of my house before I had a buyer, just to avoid any unpleasant surprises that might turn up during the selling process. If this had been a legal requirement (i.e. seller has the survey done before the house goes on the market), and something had cropped up, I would have been able to decide how to tackle it - with remedial work, or a price reduction, for instance - in advance.

If the law required sellers' surveys to be conducted by professionally accredited surveyors, as fez mentions above, then I don't really see any increased risks for the buyer, and as a seller you would have the advantage of not anxiously waiting for your buyer to arrange a survey where something nasty might crop up :o
 
Last edited:
arty said:
I appreciate that this might be a controversial view, but as a (recent) seller, I would have preferred to have the results of a proper survey of my house before I had a buyer, just to avoid any unpleasant surprises that might turn up during the selling process. If this had been a legal requirement (i.e. seller has the survey done before the house goes on the market), and something had cropped up, I would have been able to decide how to tackle it - with remedial work, or a price reduction, for instance - in advance.

If the law required sellers' surveys to be conducted by professionally accredited surveyors, as fez mentions above, then I don't really see any increased risks for the buyer, and as a seller you would have the advantage of not anxiously waiting for your buyer to arrange a survey where something nasty might crop up :o
Click to expand...

Exactly. And from what I have read, far too many people drag their heels about surveys, don't bother with them until well down the line and then suddenly decide they want one and want to renegotiate the price.

At least if the seller paid for an independent one that was available to everyone, the buyer and seller would be on the same page insofar as saying "the house is priced in the knowledge that the rendering probably needs doing in the next 5-10 years, the external woodwork needs sorting and for some reason the previous owners took out the chimney in the living room and prayed the rest of it above wouldn't fall in."

We know that certain things will probably need addressing in the next 5-10 years on our house and perhaps some things should be addressed sooner. We have a price in mind based on that knowledge and it would be absolutely fine for us to have a survey that says the same.

The whole process at the moment is designed to waste peoples time and money and give no one any piece of mind or security.

A house has just come back on from April time near us. I wrote about this earlier in this thread saying their valuation was nuts. Turns out the buyer did their surveys and got quotes to do the work and realised that it was going to cost way more than expected so they pulled out. Perhaps a survey from the start would have solved part of this issue.
 
Building control have signed off my building control regularisation certificate so that should be all the stuff done on my sale, now just need to sort a moving date along the chain.
 
arty said:
I appreciate that this might be a controversial view, but as a (recent) seller, I would have preferred to have the results of a proper survey of my house before I had a buyer, just to avoid any unpleasant surprises that might turn up during the selling process. If this had been a legal requirement (i.e. seller has the survey done before the house goes on the market), and something had cropped up, I would have been able to decide how to tackle it - with remedial work, or a price reduction, for instance - in advance.

If the law required sellers' surveys to be conducted by professionally accredited surveyors, as fez mentions above, then I don't really see any increased risks for the buyer, and as a seller you would have the advantage of not anxiously waiting for your buyer to arrange a survey where something nasty might crop up :o
Click to expand...

The property I'm buying was marketed as being fully renovated and not needing any work doing for years. My survey came up with a list of problems and it seems to have taken the vendor a while to get past the denial stage and come up with a plan for addressing most of the issues. Annoyingly, another house that I really liked but sold before I was in a position to proceed, has come back onto the market due to a chain collapsing. And it's looking tempting...

Back to surveys, we are quite a few months into the process of selling my property and the buyers are still talking about getting a survey booked. I'm amazed they haven't done it yet.
 
Mr Badger said:
The property I'm buying was marketed as being fully renovated and not needing any work doing for years. My survey came up with a list of problems and it seems to have taken the vendor a while to get past the denial stage and come up with a plan for addressing most of the issues. Annoyingly, another house that I really liked but sold before I was in a position to proceed, has come back onto the market due to a chain collapsing. And it's looking tempting...

Back to surveys, we are quite a few months into the process of selling my property and the buyers are still talking about getting a survey booked. I'm amazed they haven't done it yet.
Click to expand...

Seems mad to wait, as a survey can be a reasurance or a total deal breaker, so its just wasted time?
 
I wouldn't expect someone to do a survey until there was a complete chain in general but after that is ready I would expect someone to make that almost the first thing they do. If they don't do that it would be a red flag for me.
 
When we bought this last house as soon as our offer was received we instructed a solicitor and a surveyor the next day. Both are readily found through their respective professional bodies. The solicitor was local to our rental address and the surveyor was local to our prospective purchase about forty miles away.

In retrospect we should have had both local to the purchase as the solicitor who was conversant with coal mining areas was not so with Brine surveys and missed a key search only discovered at the last minute by me asking the question.
 
Casdawer said:
And we've exchanged!

Completion date of the 7th November :D

I'm both excited and scared at the same time. It's a big jump up house wise (and cost!) but really looking forward to having more space and our boys having proper sized bedrooms and not little Harry Potter rooms.
Click to expand...
Congrats, not long now
 
I was discussing houses on reddit yesterday and the overwhelming opinion is that buying is the right thing to do and worrying about the market is pointless. I did the sums and broadly speaking, the only time it really makes a lot of sense is when house prices are rising relatively quickly. Outside of that theres very little in it and its probably financially safer/better to rent.

I know a house is a home and you don't have the risk of being kicked out of your own home but there are obviously positives and negatives to renting outside of cost. Especially now there are far more protections in place for renters coming in.

If the market doesn't rise and rates don't go down for a few years you would almost certainly have been better off renting.

All this is caveated with the fact we are looking to move at the moment and will be buying :p
 
"If the market doesn't rise and rates don't go down for a few years you would almost certainly have been better off renting."

Can't make that work for me. regardless of the ups and downs of pricing, when you are paying your mortgage (for now matter how short a time) you are buying some equity, paying rent is just paying a bill. Obvs, if you have to move around a lot for work (as I did) renting allows you to keep costs down, so long as your expectations of how you live are in line with what you're willing to pay.
 
Nigel Kingdon said:
"If the market doesn't rise and rates don't go down for a few years you would almost certainly have been better off renting."

Can't make that work for me. regardless of the ups and downs of pricing, when you are paying your mortgage (for now matter how short a time) you are buying some equity, paying rent is just paying a bill. Obvs, if you have to move around a lot for work (as I did) renting allows you to keep costs down, so long as your expectations of how you live are in line with what you're willing to pay.
Click to expand...

This tracks with my thoughts. I rented for far, far longer than I needed to - primarily for the flexibility of moving/work without having to do that - but rents were rising so quickly, and each year it was either fighting with a landlord/estate agent over stupid % rent increases, or major issues in houses, went over 2 weeks without hot water in one place.

So yes, positives, but I can't ratify any financial benefits when you're building equity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom