The nervous wait to exchange....

xb8browney · 5 May 2020 at 13:28

Property sale due to complete 12th June! Final stretch now (10 months)

Deleted member 77746 · 5 May 2020 at 13:29

xb8browney said:
Property sale due to complete 12th June! Final stretch now (10 months)

10 months? that's disgusting what where they doing 1 document every 6 weeks?

Daaaavvveee · 5 May 2020 at 13:31

ChrisD. said:
Thanks to those who have posted about Linden homes in here. I'm in a 5 year old TW house I've had since new and I've had very few problems with them or the house; they even paid for my shower to be repaired outside of the two year warranty period! There's a new Linden Homes development nearby and one of the houses for sale ticks all the right boxes for me (general size upgrade, double garage, south facing garden, ability to get FTTP etc) but after reading about them on Trust Pilot I was a bit unsure. There's also some poor stories about them on there! Think I will go back to the original plan of not buying another new build.

fastwunz said:
I bought a linden home - it was an old Victorian hospital redeveloped into flats with houses too. I was VERY impressed with Linden. Friendly, helpful, accurate with timings, a good range of options, good design and actually pretty good build quality. The fittings were smart and they didn’t hesitate to help or fix issues when they arose.

The landscaping and design of the development was also very good.

I guess it’s pot luck - some sites will be shoddy and some others not. My experience was nothing but positive and I would certainly consider another

Just remember Linden have now joined/been bought by Bovis....Who are quite frankly....Terrible!
I think their new name is Vistry.

fastwunz · 5 May 2020 at 13:55

Daaaavvveee said:
Just remember Linden have now joined/been bought by Bovis....Who are quite frankly....Terrible!
I think their new name is Vistry.

oh blimey I didn’t know that...... Bovis are almost as **** poor as persimmon aren’t they?

Junglist · 5 May 2020 at 14:18

Yeah they are now called Vistry.

We're FTB with Linden and our friends on the estate have had nothing but positive things to say about them

ChrisD. · 5 May 2020 at 14:27

Thanks for the input. It's a shame as the plot is in a great location, hardly overlooked and the back of it borders church land so there's no way anything else can be built there. It's also got a double garage with lighting and power plus FTTP (which I think most new builds have now?). They'll also help selling my current house and pay the estate agent fees.

Daaaavvveee · 5 May 2020 at 15:12

fastwunz said:
oh blimey I didn’t know that...... Bovis are almost as **** poor as persimmon aren’t they?

We had over 2 years of pain with them, from missing toilets when moving in to the kitchen extractor venting into the cavity (They only pushed the pipe through the first course), loose windows in the landing and when we moved in the house was muddy and just generally not clean and there was still loads more wrong(Over 100 "snags" some major). The sales people as expected were brilliant, but once they had the money didn't care.

Mark1989 · 5 May 2020 at 15:52

So when do we think the house market will open again e.g. view, put offers in etc?

Me and my wife will have our deposit together next month so would like to start looking.

We would be FTB, rent atm so we won't be stuck in any form of chain at least

xb8browney · 5 May 2020 at 16:12

mrbell1984 said:
10 months? that's disgusting what where they doing 1 document every 6 weeks?

Incompetent solicitors

Issues getting the deeds from the bank

Issues with land registry

We're good to go as of tomorrow but the buyer has asked for the 12th of June because they are in rented property.

The property I'm selling is empty.

Deleted member 77746 · 5 May 2020 at 16:39

xb8browney said:
Issues getting the deeds from the bank

ah that would explain it, must have been an old house/mortgage for the bank to still have them.

bayo000 · 5 May 2020 at 18:38

Our buyer pulled out today as his job is no longer secure

Already had couple of viewing requests for tomorrow but delayed them for a bit until I have a chance to speak to EA and my solicitors properly.

fastwunz · 6 May 2020 at 07:58

bayo000 said:
Our buyer pulled out today as his job is no longer secure Already had couple of viewing requests for tomorrow but delayed them for a bit until I have a chance to speak to EA and my solicitors properly.

sorry to hear that. It’s happening to so many people at the moment. Friend of mine is a film editor on a rolling contract basis - has been for years and it’s been good to him however, now that all film making has stopped, his contract isnt getting renewed. His sale also just fell through. Not great

MrKnifey · 6 May 2020 at 08:05

Im stuck at the moment, buyers cant get the mortgage valuers into my house to go any further, but everything going through with our purchase.. im basically going to be in a position where I dont have the money to pay for the new house soon

mid_gen · 10 May 2020 at 19:18

So, 'actively encouraged' to go back to work if you can't work from home...does this mean estate agents are going to get moving again? Not very clear really.

DereksDontRun · 11 May 2020 at 12:55

bayo000 said:
Our buyer pulled out today as his job is no longer secure .

We're possibly the other side of the coin and don't really know what to do with our chain either - we don't want to be the awkward people and pull the plug, but we don't want to move until we feel we have job security (and who knows when that will be).

We got an offer on our house in 2 hrs of it listing (crazy) and that was mid Dec. There's been sooo little on the market that ticks our boxes and we were constantly being told "don't worry, stuff will appear in the new year" -> "don't worry, more will appear in Feb", etc... So, we relaxed criteria and eventually found somewhere we can see ourselves and chucked in a cheeky offer, which got accepted. Got the mortgage approved and paid for survey, then lockdown and me being put on furlough...

We're now left wondering what to do... If estate agents return and start pushing us, we can't do anything as we need the survey to be done (which has been put on hold with social distancing etc. and potentially at risk people living in the house, so no idea when that will be completed). I think our mortgage offer is only valid for 3 months, so that will expire mid June, and then a potential fun/games reapplying with reduced income due to furlough. Then the long-term issues of job security... The new mortgage is about 20% more, so not to dissimilar to what we're presently paying, but we certainly don't want to increase any outgoings until furlough has ended (and then I'd want to returned long enough to feel any concerns about potential redundancies and job security is gone). So, a piece of string answer to the estate agents regarding timescales...

All the time the housing prices are in doubt, so we're expecting someone in the chain to ask for money off their offer, which will no doubt cause their seller to similarly request a price-drop on their purchase, through the entire chain... We're half expecting it to all fall apart so we're not getting our hopes up - but also we're not necessarily wanting it to proceed for a couple months...

Nyvo · 11 May 2020 at 14:23

Junglist said:
Good luck! The HTB process is pretty painless for the most part (we had to send back our application once as we forgot to sign one of the pages) but it feels like it can take ages. Doesn't help they halved their numbers of staff working on applications before the current situation so it's probably even slower now.

The delay didn't bother us too much as we still got it all done and the house isn't even built but I can imagine being way more impatient if the house was already there waiting for us!

Thanks! Yeah, I can imagine it going pretty smoothly once the application is in, issue for me is that it isn't, still not in a position to be able to submit it and just seems to be taking forever - offer was submitted and accepted mid-February, just wish I could get into the house now.

Skillmister · 11 May 2020 at 20:35

mid_gen said:
So, 'actively encouraged' to go back to work if you can't work from home...does this mean estate agents are going to get moving again? Not very clear really.

Estate agents can work from home as many were earlier in the situation but the issue comes from viewings which as far as I'm aware still won't be possible following the latest announcements

mid_gen · 11 May 2020 at 22:31

Skillmister said:
Estate agents can work from home as many were earlier in the situation but the issue comes from viewings which as far as I'm aware still won't be possible following the latest announcements

Nothing specific though. I don't see why viewings can't happen with some sensible precautions. Face masks for buyers, seller's leave the property, agent uses gloves/sanitizer etc and is the only one touching anything (doors etc).

Have requested a viewing of a vacant property today....be interesting to see what happens with that.

bainbridge · 11 May 2020 at 22:36

Simultaneous exchange/completion agreed for this Friday, our solicitor has requested mortgage funds from the lender, offer was made just before lockdown so I hope they're still willing to give us a mortgage.

The seller is still waiting for a redemption statement so I hope this comes through in time.

HungryHippos · 11 May 2020 at 22:55

bainbridge said:
Simultaneous exchange/completion agreed for this Friday, our solicitor has requested mortgage funds from the lender, offer was made just before lockdown so I hope they're still willing to give us a mortgage.

The seller is still waiting for a redemption statement so I hope this comes through in time.

Unless your circumstances have changed I don't see why they would not.