The nervous wait to exchange....

Soldato
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10 Jul 2008
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Trust your solicitor that’s what you pay them for.

Mine have been mixed. I had to open an official complaint at one point due to major administrative errors. The person I've been assigned now seems sound. SIMS actually increases risk in other areas as I understand it hence why I'm challenging this.
 
Soldato
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15,763
My solicitors are advising all clients to go with SIMS (Simultaneous Exchange and Completion on the same day). I don't really understand why despite that they have tried to explain it to me. They state it is due to COVID and that if we exchanged with say a week gap, if I got ill and had to go into hospital and could not complete on the day, then I would be liable to huge costs etc. I understand that... but the other example used was that if a lockdown occurred and I could not complete. Surely in that case all members of the chain could also not complete and therefore would all be in breech of contracts? So how does that work? SIMS is stated to me as recommended for my own protection and my solicitor are saying that they will proceed with a week gap between only if I sign a disclaimer that I have gone against their recommendation. My sellers solicitors have proposed a one week gap.

This has been a rollercoaster since January and I'm absolutely sick of it. :( So close to the end now. Welcome any advice.

I don't know what you stand to gain from a week between exchange and complete. If you read the conditions of sale, it exposes you to risk.

If you exchange, then end up in a medically induced coma on a ventilator, you can lose your deposit.

I'm still waiting to hear back about my complaint with my solicitor....
 
Soldato
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7,684
I don't know what you stand to gain from a week between exchange and complete. If you read the conditions of sale, it exposes you to risk.

If you exchange, then end up in a medically induced coma on a ventilator, you can lose your deposit.

I'm still waiting to hear back about my complaint with my solicitor....

Thanks. I don't stand to gain much, but others in the chain stand to gain sanity and the ability to have a move that is not unnecessarily stressful by waking up on the day and packing all your things into a van not knowing whether you will be unpacking it all later if it breaks down. Not knowing where you will be sleeping that day with certainty etc. I can totally understand someone preferring not to do SIMS. To me personally it makes no difference based on my circumstances and I can accommodate either.

I would probably help for me to actually know what "unable to complete" is actually defined as. Does this mean I was "unable to pick up a phone and say yes go ahead". Or is there a lot more to it than that?

I'm not being a ****, I'm a FTB and don't know any better hence asking here how it all works. :)

Cheers
 
Soldato
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Nelson, South Wales
What are my rights to pulling out of the sale of my property due to the estate agents being absolutely no help at all? Ive been chasing them all week and not had a single reply as to where we are with the sale and its starting to annoy me.
 
Soldato
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North Yorkshire
Estate agents from my experience are little to no help after the initial viewing. Have you tried getting in touch with the buyer directly? That’s what the seller did to us, looking back it saved the sale as we were ready to cut our losses.
 
Soldato
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I will try that approach, I guess I was just hoping for a better service, especially at how much they get!

The solicitors are the people who should be handling discussions on sales progression.

Of you can’t get an answer from your own solicitor (they might be the problem!!) then speak to the sellers solicitor or the seller directly to try and move things along. That’s all the estate agent can do, if they bother to do it.
 
Associate
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Looking to put our house on the market to buy another. Agreed 1% plus VAT with the estate agent. However they are trying to push there solicitor on us to sell the house. Quoting £1278 and with that we get FREE (lol) professional photographer for the pictures of the house as opposed to the standard estate agent pics on a cheap camera and get a featured listing on Rightmove rather then a standard listing.

Too much?

How much should I be looking to pay for a solicitor to sell and also to buy a house?
 
Soldato
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14,056
What they mean by ‘professional photography’ is a few preset instagram type filters to make it look bright and vibrant and replacing the British over cast sky with some sunny blue sky. It’s nothing you can’t do with a few mins on almost any photo editing software. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a phone app that can just do it all at the push of a button.

The ‘quality’ of the photo for Rightmove doesn’t need to be anything better than what you can get off a phone. There tiny, low resolution and heavily compressed. DSLR not required here. If they are taking the photos I’d expect them to be decent as a part of the service.

For a solicitor I paid £1155 to buy and £655 to sell last year for a straight forward sale/purchase with a mortgage. The same solicitor did both at the same time, they just quoted separately for each part. The solicitor I used were on it and made it so easy.
 
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Man of Honour
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20 Sep 2006
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33,884
Is there a general rule of thumb of offering below asking price, say a certain percentage? We're looking at a house that's up for £475k however the kitchen is dated and needs new units, flooring etc. The rest of the house just needs redecorating and maybe some new tiles in the bathroom. Would £450k be offensive? Or even lower? We don't want to annoy the seller but we also want to pay as little as possible so we have money to do the work we want.

There was another house of similar size which sold for £475k, the kitchen was perfect as was the rest of the house, however we think it was listed around £25k below what similar properties go for.
 
Soldato
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East Sussex
Depends on the property - is that stuff already factored in within the sellers mind, and had it been priced accordingly?

What kind of percentage below asking is stuff going for locally? If its been on a long time that can be an indicator of a seller who won't negotiate anything off if the house looks OK.
 
Man of Honour
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Most of houses for sale in the area are IMO overpriced and have been on for quite some time. The only ones which have gone quickly have been fair priced but as they're only STC I'm not sure how I can find out what the price was? This one has been on a little over a week.
 
Soldato
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Sandwich, Kent
I doubt we'd have accepted a lower than asking price offer. But then, our house wasn't over priced and we were inundated with viewings.

Ultimately, you can offer what you like, but I can only imagine the seller accepting it if they're desperate. Maybe have a chat with the estate agent.
 
Associate
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9 Jul 2010
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568
Out of curiosity what took so long?

To be honest it should have been a straight forward no chain purchase. Things of note:

  1. Seller failed see all communications from her solicitor (She was 60+ and wasn't very internet savy. Her solicitor used an online portal where the communication went into spam etc). The solicitor failed to follow up in a timely manner if they haven't had a response.
  2. Her solicitor was furloughed in March and didn't return till June due to "COVID". I use inverted commas as businesses have used this opportunity to effectively hibernate their business even though there is clearly work to be done to save some money, so three months of no correspondence. I even tried to contact them myself, but as you expect they wouldn't talk to me, as I wasn't their client, and they were dealing with cases in priority order (whoever threaten to pull out the sale / purchase, cases where mortgages were expiring). I completed 1 day before my mortgage expired so that tells you everything about the priority.....
  3. Estate agent returned and they didn't even have a direct dial to their own solicitors the seller was using. They were asking their clients to try and contact them directly. It got to the point where my solicitor was telling the estate agent what their client needed to do / provide (needed original documentation of death certificates I believe)
All in all, I think a little bit of COVID, a little bit of incompetence caused the delays. We probably would have exchanged and completed by the end of March if COVID hadn't hit (still longer than the 10 weeks the solicitor mooted at the start but hey ho!)
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
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15,763
I'm going through an excruciating process with my solicitors that is absolutely doing my head in, I've made a complaint that was given lip-service but clearly the awful creature handling my file is mates with the partners because they haven't so much as given me an apology. If we weren't basically finished with the process I'd have told them to stick it and go somewhere else, but as it is I'm just going to have to bite my tongue and get it over with, and save the complaints for every public review site I can find once it's done.
 
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