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.
