The nervous wait to exchange....

[noj]

Got a good offer on our house, buyers in a good position and offered above asking price.

Had an offer accepted on a house, below asking price

Paperwork on the go, now got that nervous wait until exchange of contracts. Want to get excited by the prospect but worried it'll all fall through The new house is twice the size of our current house and I'll be able to have a proper man cave whilst the Mrs has a room and we still have a guest room.

Roll on exchange so I can get properly excited by it all

 

[noj]

congratulations, stay positive!

the worst bit is you gut the flurry of activity about offers etc...then it goes quiet....then another flurry of activity from the Conveyancer then it goes quiet....then a flurry on the mortgage and then it goes quiet.......

The next milestone is getting the formal mortgage approval - got the agreement in principle piece without issue. Should get that through this week and then its surveys and exchange

I'll post up a picture of how it currently looks...the four poster "princess" bed replete with pink covering and bunting on the wall gives just the right design impression I'm planning

 

[noj]

so a slight problem but hopefully nothing major. My wife works at my parents business, its a small set up of 6 people. We sent off pay slips and bank statements and because her pay slip was handwritten they now want to go and do a load more checks before giving the formal offer.

The paperwork they were supposed to send out on Monday they forgot to do and so we've lost a week while they faff around.

Meanwhile our buyers are progressing and have booked the survey and our seller estate agent are asking why our survey hasn't been booked yet.

Unnecessary stress

 

[noj]

Yes I should relax more about it I know. I know the mortgage will be fine - one of the advantages of being in credit management - its just the faff of it and the paranoia of loosing the house we want.

still...the paperwork arrived today and we've turned it back round to them so should be good to go soon.

 

[noj]

Horrible time, I'm sat waiting for a valuation survey and home buyers report to be done, Halifax are taking longer to arrange than i would like, so we've got no date or anything.

I spoke to our buyers estate agent as they were booking the survey, they said the problem now is a lot of companies made surveyors redundant when the market dived and now don't have the staff to cope with demand so its taking a while to get through them.

try occupying yourself with something more positive - get the floorplans and start measuring up for new furniture, shopping for paint etc, or new saving goals while you're waiting.

Have cleaned out the loft and got 1 shed left to sort this weekend. That's been quite a cathartic experience. So much stuff has gone to charity shops and the skip!

The Mrs has been getting a load of removal firms round to quote - quite a difference in price! £2200 for the most expensive and £800 for the least. She's now looking for reviews of the firms to make sure the cheap ones aren't cowboy firms.

 

[noj]

small update today...

got confirmation that all the paperwork has finally made its way back to the underwriters for the mortgage. As we've lost a week they've gone ahead and booked the survey on the house we're buying.

Surprisingly its being done next Thursday - I was expecting it to be longer given that the survey on our current house isn't happening until 1st May as that was the first available date.

Hopefully the last hurdles.

 

[noj]

Had the confirmation back that they're now ok with the wife's payslip and employer reference so now just need the mortgage valuation before giving the official offer out.

That's booked for tomorrow so with a bit of luck we should get the nod next week.

 

[noj]

ah cool, nice one - I've helped to hijack your thread but have not forgotten to keep an eye out for your progress.

what's next then, after the valuation and offer letter? legal stuff?

Not been hijacked its kinda nice to know other people have the same worries.

Hopefully survey today lets us get the official mortgage acceptance through. We then need to wait on the buyers of our current house to have their survey done (booked for next week) then final bit of enquiries before we talk about exchange.

Bit of luck the plan is to be in around 3rd week May.

 

[noj]

Well the survey really isn't anywhere near to exchange or completion. You still need to have your searches done (takes around 10 days - but if they recommend other searches you need then you need to wait longer) and you still have a mountain of paperwork to read, sign and return.



M.

Searches are already done (apparently the whole chain has completed searches as well) we've had our additional ones back and draft contract paperwork is with solicitors for us and the people we're buying from.

I agree that there will still be a load of papers to sign but hopefully not a big delay on it.

 

[noj]

Still can't believe, in this day and age, we have to mess around with physical copies of documents, ID, etc.

M.

Yeah that is madness....luckily I work for a law firm so I got a stack of all our documents legally certified and just fire them off whenever asked for. I also shove them in the DX mail to make sure it gets to the conveyance firm next day without nonsense

 

[noj]

To OP, congrats on selling for above asking price. May I ask why they did that? Did they just offer above asking or did you pursuade them? Neither wrong but interesting to hear. I think the market is getting a bit daft again. I asked about a property recently and was told that someone placed an offer and before it was rejected they raised their own offer which seems a bit daft when there were no other offers, and the property had been on the market for 6+ months

we did the open house malarky. So on the day we had 23 couples view the house (we went out) we then got 3 asking price offers on the Monday and we went to full and final offers.

all 3 offers increased above asking price ranging from 7.5k above to 12.5k above. Hell I like our house but its madness in my opinion. The couple that offered most said they really really liked it and were not going to loose it.....

The market in our are has gone crazy and I'll be honest enough to say that its one of the reasons we chose to move now. We can make extra money on our house and by moving 20mins south cash in on it.

 

[noj]

another update today...

Survey back - all fine and no issues.
Mortgage approved - papers due out this week
Draft contract pack out to us today - the fixtures and fittings piece and answers to queries

Survey on our current house happening on Thursday which is the next milestone. Expecting a couple of issues to come up as they did when we bought the house. Nothing significant since we've done a load of work since we moved in.

Expecting them to bring up some cracks in the plasterwork and ceiling finishes, all the ceilings are lathe and plaster so getting old now (house is near enough 100 years old now), and flaking to the pebbledash. We shall see.

 

[noj]

Almost there noj!

Hopefully so!

Got more papers over the weekend including the draft purchase contract and land reg form to sign. Also received the fixtures and fittings list to see what is being left (not a lot)

That lets us tell our buyers what we're leaving and what's available if they want to buy it (Wall mounted tv £100, range cooker £300 sound reasonable?) we'd have liked to have just left them but we now need to buy more bits so getting some cash out of stuff will be very useful.

The survey got done on our house on Thursday and nothing really came up (we asked the surveyor nicely before he left) a bit of damp round the front door was the mastic has come away, a bit of damp on the chimney stack in the loft but apart from that nothing too bad...hopefully.

 

[noj]

Still waiting on our buyers to book their survey. Apparently their mortgage is going well and they've had their fees taken so it's just a case of "when".

some of the delay is probably caused by a lack of surveyors. The guy who came round to do the one on our current house was saying how a load of surveyors got laid off when the market slumped and now they have too much work on.

I asked how many he had to do a day and he said they have to do at least 9 points worth...a valuation is 3 and a hom******s is 6.

 

[noj]

woah! things just moved quite quickly in the last few days. Our mortgage was agreed pending valuation a few days ago (6th) and the banks valuation survey was instructed, send back and approved with a formal offer being sent out to us today! after the length of time it's taken for them to do most things I wasn't expecting so much to be turned around in 3 days.

good to hear

hopefully your on the home straight (sorry for the bad pun!)

we've had the mortgage offer received by our conveyancer and they're just sorting out a couple of questions we asked. Not heard from the people buying from us yet about the bits we're hoping to sell them, trying not to be greedy with money but we could really do with selling them the range cooker so we can buy a fridge

We've asked to go back for a look round the one we're buying before exchange just to check a couple of bits and to measure up for appliances in the kitchen.

As to packing...get to it already

At least start going through stuff and getting rid of the bits you don't want to take with you.

We're paying for people to do a compete pack and removal. Its going to cost us £200 more but well worth it

 

[noj]

thanks
Who did you ask to see the house again to measure up? I need to do this too but not sure if I need to ask AE or solicitor.

Just asked the AE. It was good to go round again, took the measurements we wanted and had a chance to think about where we want bits to go.

It also gave us the chance to check on a couple of bits that we were told were being fixed (and haven't yet)

 

[noj]

All the best Bud! It's a very nervous wait indeed!!!

However as snips put it! please Pictures of the MAN CAVE!!!!

It's funny how every guy who buys a house wants one!!

Part of the reason to visit again this weekend with to measure up for where my desk will go and see what networking there was if any (there isn't).

At the moment the room the Wife is letting me have has a Fairy Princess four poster in it...as soon as we get to exchange I'll post some pictures of the place.

 

[noj]

It feels like we're almost there...I just cant get any commitment from the solicitors. We've now received the final paper for the purchase but haven't had them on the sale of our current place yet. Its all gone a little quiet from the people buying our place which is a bit concerning.

Maybe they're just completely happy and working through but haven't heard a peep out of them since we sent back the fixtures and fittings list 2 weeks ago. The EA we used to sell now don't care as they've sold it as far as they're concerned so getting them to do anything is next to impossible.

Sure it will be ok, just be good to hear something.

 

[noj]

no updates since then?

a lot of fretting and chasing around but still not exchanged, I didn't want to spam a thread with nothing at all

We went through a point last week thinking it was all about to fall through as literally nothing from our buyers, we couldn't get hold of their solicitors, our EA was (and continues to be) crap as they've moved on to people earlier in the process.

Finally managed to get enough pressure on via the EA of the people we're buying from - what a absolute legend that EA is, so friendly helpful even though we're not his client.

So position as of this mornings update:

Our sale is ready to go, there are no outstanding queries or questions remaining. It turns out the pack we sent them had everything they needed they were just slow in getting a mortgage offer. As we'd had an extension, new roof, soffits, facias and windows all done we had all of the paperwork together.

Our purchase is almost ready to go, we got final answers in yesterday which our solicitor is reviewing "soon". We were waiting for a certificate and confirmation that a couple of issues had been fixed.

We should be in a position to exchange later this week or early next depending how fast out solicitor reviews the paperwork they got back.

We were hoping to move before my b'day in a couple of weeks but that wont happen as we're out of time for a June move (the Mrs cant get time off last 2 weeks of June) which we'd been warning everyone in the chain about. If we exchange this week/next we're pushing to complete week commencing 30th June.

Still no idea if our buyers want to buy the cooker, tv and cabinets we offered. Our EA is crap at getting back to us (or anyone else for that matter).

 

[noj]

how come you are still dealing with the EA? our's who we're buying through (FTB) doesn't really want anything to do with us anymore and just directs us to solicitors - are you still corresponding to the Vendor through the AE? If so - I might try and open up a discussion again through mine.

we're still trying to communicate via the EA but they're being crap at it. I'm not surprised to be honest. They're now off chasing the next sale for commission and not bothered by us. I'm tempted to instruct our solicitors not to pay them out of completion monies just to make them work for us again.

our buy is going very slowly at the moment; I sent off a big list of questions via my solicitor in response to their TA6 and TA10 forms - that was over a month ago and I literally have not heard anything from them. I've called my solicitor a few times and on the last occasion that he got back to me he said he didn't know what was happening as their solicitor has not been in contact with them - all questions remain un-answered.

This was the same problem we were facing, keep pestering and make a nuisance of yourself with the EA and Solicitor. It does take time for all the forms and questions to be turned around but keep pushing to remind everyone you're waiting as well.

I had a full survey done 2 weeks ago and got that report back last week; all seems mostly okay but there's a few scares in there (sort of) I may post my own thread about it for some opinions. Either way, I haven't been scared off buying the house, but at the same time I'm not considering revising my offer or anything.

Don't forget that surveyors have to point out everything for fear of repercussions. The house we are buying is only 10 years old but had "red flags" over electrics, it looked scary in the summary but then in the detail it basically said that the surveyor could not give an opinion as they are not qualified to do so on electrics (or something like that) so they flagged it as high priority issue for us to resolve...

I feel like there's a whole load of conversations that are just not happening though; not really sure who is meant to be doing what for me at the moment! the word 'exchange' has not even been mentioned but I have told them I wanted to complete on the 20th of June - no idea if that message has been put across though!

Talk to the solicitor, they're the one that should be doing stuff for you at the moment. Give them a call and express your concerns, they may not be able to give you much more than comfort that stuff is happening. 20th June isn't that far away, you'd probably need to be quite near the end of the process already for a completion to happen in 3 weeks. You might be but I know we wont be completing by then in our situation.

Where do I stand in terms of just knocking on the Vendor's door and talking to them; or putting a note through the door and asking for a call? Can I / should I do that? I have the feeling that what was a 'no chain sale' now has a chain - they were always meant to be moving into a caravan, and then looking for a new home to aid a speedy sale of theirs, however, I get the feeling that they have found a house with a chain and are now stalling to avoid a caravan session.

Nothing stopping you putting a polite note through explaining the issue with their EA and how you'd love to talk to someone about it all but can't get a response from their EA. Personally I'd try the solicitor route first and see if you can't get some answers that way.