The nervous wait to exchange....

[Mr Badger]

After starting the whole process at the end of May, we're now a week into our new house. In a lot of ways, I'm grateful that it completed within 5 months despite being at the bottom end of a chain of 5, but there was a lot of headache and stress from our buyers and our own estate agents, especially in the weeks prior to exchange and completion.

On our end, we were selling our flat to cash buyers and buying a house. They were actually the first people to view and made an offer on their second viewing. Initially they offered £15,000 less than what we had put it on the market for, which I refused despite our estate agent's insistence we accept simply because they were cash buyers. In the end, we agreed to meet in the middle. The enquiries on both the sale and purchase were going fairly smoothly until August. Since our flat was a share of leasehold, there were obviously more enquiries for the management company regarding the building and communal spaces, and our windows... I did my best to respond to them but with the managing agents going on holiday, it delayed the official replies. I had to chase them at the start of September to finally get a response.

Thinking that was it, my solicitor replied that there had been another long list of enquiries that the managing agents hadn't replied to, which I wasn't even aware of. Once again, I replied to most of them but needed our management company to officially respond. The buyers were getting nervous at this stage due to the lack of responses so I had to personally chase again and again. What annoyed me though is that their enquiries were things that had already been sent to them and they even claimed things I never said; they suggested that I had told them that the building had cladding when the management said there wasn't, except that in the form that I filled in, I had said there was no cladding... Our solicitors weren't pushing for responses and our estate agents weren't reassuring our buyers so I was having to do a lot of leg work and manage expectations. At this stage in September, we also wanted to settle on a completion date and mid-October worked for everyone assuming all enquiries were answered.

By the end of September and start of October, they started enquiring about an asbestos inspection and repairs to the building's roof. The inspection was booked so that was ok. The roof on the other hand became a complication. Earlier this year, we held an AGM and people from the other blocks had complained about leaks, water ingress and roof repairs not being completed by contractors. However, none of these actually affected our block (there are 4 blocks). There was also discussion on the costs of replacing fire alarms and potentially doors. All these had been budgeted for and I had already paid my service charges and contributed to the reserve fund for the rest of the year. However, our buyers weren't satisfied despite us assuring them these costs either wouldn't get passed to them or building issues didn't even affect our block/flat (each building has its own budget and we actually had a surplus on ours). At this point, they wanted to leverage this to get the better of us. They kept wanting detailed budget reports from the management company which they already had documents for, and they would never have received anything else anyway as no costs had been finalised. Once again, I chased the managing agents to get official response to forward to the buyers. In the meantime, the buyers wanted another £4000 off, two weeks from when we had proposed completion and 1 week prior to exchanging. I refused but offered £1000 off if they finalised that day, they didn't accept. They were using the aforementioned reasons as justification when there were none. My estate agents never bothered fighting for me and started panicking. Meanwhile, my seller's estate agents was reassuring us telling us that we don't need to back down while our own estate agents were pressuring us. But because the latter had another link in the chain, they actually had to do some work now, not understanding how complicated it would make everyone else's life. It also turned out that while everyone had already signed their documents, our buyers hadn't and were trying to exploit their position.

In the end, I agreed to £1000 off and the others in the chain also dropped their prices by £500/£1000. We all ended up having to inform the banks and get approval of the price changes, even if the agreed mortgage amounts didn't change. To make matters worse, we suffered a water leak that same weekend in the flat, and water was going to the downstairs flat. The neighbours were not exactly happy and getting paranoid we might leave everything like that, which we weren't. We got the emergency plumbers in, fixed the leak and informed the solicitors, but thankfully nothing more came of it apart from the downstairs guys going through the building insurance to do some repairs which we agreed to pay the excess for. That week, the buyers were still sending enquiries even though we all wanted to exchange on the Friday, things we had already answered. Finally, they signed their contract but sent it by mail, further delaying the process.

On the day of the exchange, we were still waiting on the confirmation from the bank, with various delays because they kept forgetting to update the paperwork to reflect the new price of the house we were buying. Confirmation finally came in the afternoon and not even a minute later, our estate agents called saying the buyers can't exchange until they get a copy of the building's insurance, which luckily I had handy so I could send within a second of receiving the email from the solicitors. It turned out that we had already sent them a copy back in June/July except it expired at the end of July. Their solicitors hadn't bothered to ask for an updated copy in 2.5months until the last minute. The delays meant that exchange couldn't be finalised on the Friday and had to wait until Monday. We then essentially had 5 days to book movers etc. for completion at the end of that week.

Thankfully the move went pretty smoothly. However, the day before completion, I got another phone call from my estate agents saying the buyers were angry because they were going to have to pay for the service charges until the end of the year. I had seen in my final statement before transferring the rest of the deposit that I was going to get a refund for the remaining time which meant they'd have to pay on their end. Spoke to my solicitors and they said I don't have to get involved, so I told my estate agents that after all the pain they had caused us, I'm not giving the buyers one more penny, and that was that.

I genuinely feel your pain. Good to hear you got there in the end! Personally, I hope some karma catches up with the people who bought from me...

 

[Helios1234]

I genuinely feel your pain. Good to hear you got there in the end! Personally, I hope some karma catches up with the people who bought from me...

That is literally what my seller's estate agents said. She was more on our side than our own estate agents. It frustrated me that despite the money I pay them, I had to do all the chasing and reassuring. They were glorified messengers.

 

[cokecan]

sorry to hear you had to go through that but very glad you got there in the end. 5 months is rough. Another story of nightmare buyers combined with useless "professionals". Also the lack of attention to detail is something I keep coming up against....these same "professionals" asking for the same information that was sent weeks/months ago. It does make you wonder what you're paying for here

 

[fez]

That is literally what my seller's estate agents said. She was more on our side than our own estate agents. It frustrated me that despite the money I pay them, I had to do all the chasing and reassuring. They were glorified messengers.

Thats the trouble with estate agents, good ones are worth their weight in gold, crap ones make you feel like you have been absolutely robbed. I think they are all pretty dodgy but the good ones at least make the whole process as good as it can be. Consider yourself lucky that you didn't have crap estate agents on both sides of the sale/purchase eh!

 

[Helios1234]

Thats the trouble with estate agents, good ones are worth their weight in gold, crap ones make you feel like you have been absolutely robbed. I think they are all pretty dodgy but the good ones at least make the whole process as good as it can be. Consider yourself lucky that you didn't have crap estate agents on both sides of the sale/purchase eh!

Absolutely, not sure what I would have done in that case. I'm normally pretty calm about things but I was reaching my limit at times.

 

[fez]

Absolutely, not sure what I would have done in that case. I'm normally pretty calm about things but I was reaching my limit at times.

Its a lot of time, money and stress buying a house. Its really hard not to reach your limit. You're in limbo and live continues as you try to make a massive change.

 

[cokecan]

Its a lot of time, money and stress buying a house. Its really hard not to reach your limit. You're in limbo and live continues as you try to make a massive change.

That's the hardest thing for us right now. We've basically got our lives on hold while this gets sorted out. We've already packed/boxed a large portion of our house up as we were expecting to move at the beginning of October and wanted to reduce last minute stress as much as we could because we're moving ourselves. It's harder with my 6-year old daughter because she obviously doesn't understand the frustrations involved, all she knows is that we're moving house but it's taking forever.

I've reached a kind of zen state. it's clear that no amount of pushing gets you anywhere. My agent/progressor is "pushing" but I seriously question how they are pushing as it honestly just feels like they're only chasing for answers rather than trying to hold solicitors and buyers a little more accountable to deadlines. I've just had enough of my attempts resulting in no change. The solicitors involved clearly have no empathy here and are just following their process as they always do to the usual timelines they follow.

 

[fez]

That's the hardest thing for us right now. We've basically got our lives on hold while this gets sorted out. We've already packed/boxed a large portion of our house up as we were expecting to move at the beginning of October and wanted to reduce last minute stress as much as we could because we're moving ourselves. It's harder with my 6-year old daughter because she obviously doesn't understand the frustrations involved, all she knows is that we're moving house but it's taking forever.

I've reached a kind of zen state. it's clear that no amount of pushing gets you anywhere. My agent/progressor is "pushing" but I seriously question how they are pushing as it honestly just feels like they're only chasing for answers rather than trying to hold solicitors and buyers a little more accountable to deadlines. I've just had enough of my attempts resulting in no change. The solicitors involved clearly have no empathy here and are just following their process as they always do to the usual timelines they follow.

Yeh, the whole process is fantastically opaque and you have no idea if what you're being told is true or just ******** to string you along as people make decisions entirely in their own best interest or who have no real urge to complete the process.

We had this with our buyers pushing us to set a completion date when they weren't able to complete. They wanted to set a data for exchange that was the day before completion and that date was in 3 days time and they still hadn't sorted out some issues with their help to buy mortgage porting. They made out like we were the issue and holding it all up.

We basically told them to **** off and that we cannot live in limbo in the hope they sort themselves out and that unless we could have at least 3 days notice of a guaranteed exchange/completion then we didn't want to know. We weren't hiring movers, finishing our packers and getting ready to move out without actually being ready.

 

[cokecan]

Opaque for sure. For nearly two weeks I've been waiting for the solicitor on this ridiculous parallel chain to send enquiries to our buyers solicitor, and for two weeks I've been pushing my agent find out when this will happen. For two weeks all I've got is promises and BS likely designed to keep me quiet rather than actual dates and confirmations. In that time my solicitor has been just radio silent despite me chasing until today randomly when she pipes up to say she's confirmed from our buyers solicitor that "they are waiting on outstanding enquiries".....WTF does that even mean?! it's so ambiguous that I'm sure she's doing it on purpose. Does that mean the enquiries haven't been sent yet, or does it mean they are waiting for a second round of enquiries? I just need a simple yes or no answer lol why is it so difficult. Obviously no enquiries have been sent, but there's no need for cryptic messages right now

 

[mattyfez]

I'd make a formal complaint, you should have had details of the firms complaint process when you first instructed them, I believe it's a legal requirement for them to do so.

 

[cokecan]

Agreed, though a formal complaint can take weeks to investigate which won't help right now and may make our solicitor defensive right at the point I need her to sort exchange/completion. My wife works at the solicitor we're using which is why we used them. there's a bit of discount available and we were hoping that they might look after one of their own a bit, especially given my wife's boss is head of business development and reports directly to the partners that own the company. You'd think our conveyancing solicitor would at least try to put a bit of effort in as it's pretty obvious we're going to be reporting things up to the partners. Clearly our conveyancing solicitor doesn't care about any of that. We have fed back things like this already and they have reached the head of conveyancing who seemingly doesn't see a problem with anything (which is probably the main issue in this bit!). We've been advised to submit a formal report with evidence, details and examples which we've been doing but so far nothing has come out of tha, at least nothing I've seen or heard about. Yet another way for me to shout into a void.....

I'm just surrounded by idiots. A solicitor down the chain who seems incapable of doing anything quickly and then a bunch of other people above that part of the chain who are equally as incapable of asking simple questions and chasing on answers. Not a single person in this thing is doing their job well from my perspective

 

[SpeedFreak]

We are similar, more piecemeal requests. Query from buyers solicitor that resulted in ours having to contact the council. Response from council took one week and was provided immediately to the buyers solicitor. They then came back with a follow up question, which had to go back to the council, another week for a response...

Here's a thought, you are an experienced firm of conveyancing solicitors, when structuring your queries, anticipate the two to three possible responses and at the time of original ask, frame your conditional follow up questions so that we can avoid ridiculous ping pong of emails and get a single reply that covers all avenues!

 

[Hilly]

I hear a lot of what everyone is saying in this thread and can only echo my recent.

Last June a property came up for sale - we'd been looking for a couple of years at this point - a rough area, but the right house; Somewhere closer to my little girl's school, and a bit toward where my missus family lives - as that helps out everyone; So a property came up, which looked great; We contacted the agent, who refused us to look at it - as our house wasn't on the market. We were on a pre-list, but because we we're officially live, we weren't allowed to view the place.

The place sold, we looked at some others, but didn't find the right one; In October/November time, it came on again as the previous buyer pulled out - something happened - and we again asked to view, and we viewed, liked it and asked the offering (4 others had also asked the offering, but none were in a proceedable position). So it was a race to get the house sold - first person to sell their house, can carry on with this one; Luckily (or so we thought at the time) our neighbour's son wanted to buy the property; He met us just under asking, (315 asking, 307.5 offered); we agreed and went through the motions; He sent an evaluator around, who valued the house at 280, which caused the offer to wobble; So he got another valuation, this time it came back at 285, and he said he'd offer us 5k more, to 290, but no go any further; I offered to get a new valuation, but this was over Christmas, so didn't hear anything back. I new the value coming back was low, as 2 years previous I got the place valued as part of the HomeBuy redemption, and they valued it at 285, two years prior and prices were going up still, plus other properties were selling around what we were asking for.

So, Christmas happens, still nothing; turns out he'd gone and bought another property, without telling anyone - so we waited weeks for communication - even though he was living next to us, and when pushed on what was happening, he pulled out. Spoke to the vendor who we were buying from and he gave us 2 weeks grace period - which was great. We sold again (310), to new buyers who also weren't in a chain and everything proceeded.

During the process our solicitors were pretty good - however, his solicitors (vendor) weren't, and the estate agents were constantly on at us for updates; The major problem with buying the property is that the vendor got very defensive and started throwing around accusations when our solicitor pointed out that the boundary on the title deeds were incorrect and the extension he built was actually on someone elses land (farmers field to the back). Now in reality, this isn't the case, as there's a 5ft wall, around the rear of the property and the lines are the same - it's just the deeds which were wrong; but he refused to do anything about it - and since the lines were wrong on the deed there was no way to the rear of the property without crossing over someone elses land (and the boiler is to the rear); Our mortgage company refused to carry on with the offer unless changed due to this. After 6 weeks of wrangling, back and forths, he turned up with the title deeds completely changed as per the border on the floor - as it should be. But he left the place in a bit of a state - not with things inside - but the house just wasn't looked after; he had clocked out and were aware of issues, but didn't get them fixed (e.g. oil leak - boiler is oil fed, roof leak - he had painted over it - we had the full survery and there was no issues at the time - but since the survey and then a leak had occured which went into the kitchen - and he then painted over it; Other things like the house was held together with mastik. He had used expanding foam to seal the letter box hole, putty all around the windows to seal them, the list goes on;

So yea - moved in June, during the heatwave, I never want to move again - even though I don't love this property (missus and little girl does), so I'm stuck here now! Hope the Dons are ready for a bbq next year!

 

[Helios1234]

Yeh, the whole process is fantastically opaque and you have no idea if what you're being told is true or just ******** to string you along as people make decisions entirely in their own best interest or who have no real urge to complete the process.

We had this with our buyers pushing us to set a completion date when they weren't able to complete. They wanted to set a data for exchange that was the day before completion and that date was in 3 days time and they still hadn't sorted out some issues with their help to buy mortgage porting. They made out like we were the issue and holding it all up.

We basically told them to **** off and that we cannot live in limbo in the hope they sort themselves out and that unless we could have at least 3 days notice of a guaranteed exchange/completion then we didn't want to know. We weren't hiring movers, finishing our packers and getting ready to move out without actually being ready.

I had a similar issue in September where my estate agents were suggesting that I was holding up the chain. I had to answer back saying that I'm doing my best to chase things myself and that she's not helping the situation, especially as it was the buyers constantly making enquiries about things they were already provided information for.

 

[fez]

Snip

To be honest, the warning signs were there mate! Previous buyer pulled out, guy was trying to avoid sorting out serious issues on something as serious as the title deeds etc.

 

[alexakasloth]

In more positive news we have had our offer accepted, fingers crossed the legal stuff doesn't take too long.

 

[SpeedFreak]

In more positive news we have had our offer accepted, fingers crossed the legal stuff doesn't take too long.

You've read this thread right?

 

[alexakasloth]

You've read this thread right?

Fortunately we will not be in a chain although like everyone else we rely on solicitors!

 

[Hilly]

To be honest, the warning signs were there mate! Previous buyer pulled out, guy was trying to avoid sorting out serious issues on something as serious as the title deeds etc.

not wrong; but all sorted in the end.Just took forever, and the stress levels involved

 

[fez]

not wrong; but all sorted in the end.Just took forever, and the stress levels involved

Yeah, its always easy to look back in hindsight as well. Our current house is a do-er upper and the stuff we are finding is quite amazing. Strangely though, we think we need a new roof because its visually falling apart, all the old metal guttering is leaking etc but from what we can tell, there aren't actually any leaks. We were sure we would have to patch it before winter but fingers crossed it will last the year. The recent storms haven't shown any leaks so...