The nervous wait to exchange....

[Tunney]

Yeah, exchanging is a total nightmare. The house-buying process goes from being something that you control (looking around houses, making your house sellable) to something in the hands of estate agents and solicitors.

We sold two flats and bought a house last year. Three estate agents + four sets of solicitors wasn't fun - especially as one of our buyers was living in China and the other was living in Singapore.

Comedy moment: mortgage provider turning down our application because we didn't declare one of our credit cards. We became worried that a fraudster had taken out a credit card in our names. Turns out that the current balance that we'd declared for one of our cards was different from the (completely out-of-date) figure that was showing on their system.

 

[mingeroonie]

Just had our forms from the owners of our new house back (the ones that say whats included etc). I think they found a two year old to fill em out, cant read a thing
Back they go...little things like this that delays everything

 

[House]

I finally exchanged last Friday after a 5 month long string of errors from my "legal experts" with a string of errors so long its unbelievable:
-Prices wrong on contracts (both sale and purchase)
-Mixing up which property was leasehold and which freehold
-Spelling my name wrong on legal documents (Poul is apparently a typo not quite sure how they were typing)
-Forgetting one of the titles on the property I was selling
-Surveying the wrong F'ing house and trying to get me to pay for it to be redone on the right one.

When I went to snag the property today with the builder I realised the survey didn't even notice that they had cut my garden in half, fortunately the builder is going to fix that as its the fence in the wrong place.

When I told the idiots they were incompetent and unprofessional they hung up on me on the phone.

Fortunately for me I've kept a very good file of all the mess and its going in the post to the Legal Ombudsman the day after I complete. After putting me through the ringer for 5 months i'm going to get some payback and for the cost of some stamps and a bit of my time you never know I may get some money back.

 

[randal]

Still haven't exchanged, getting old now.

 

[rossk26]

Early days for me, offer got accepted on Monday.

This is my first house purchase, so fingers crossed everything goes smoothly (I doubt it). I'll update on here as I go along.

 

[noj]

good luck to you guys just starting out on the process, fingers crossed it goes, relatively, painless for you.

Don't underestimate just how terrible some EA's can be once they've got that offer in they switch off from you pretty quick. They'll be off chasing the next house to market and you need to keep on at them to work on your behalf as well.

 

[randal]

Estate agents haven't been the problem for us, mostly other people's solicitors.

Oh I tell a lie, our vendor's agent has been irritating. Given them a month in which we can move, and they still can't arrange a freaking completion date with the vendor. They seem incapable of asking him what day works best.

 

[Siliconslave]

Our buyers just been round with a roofer after the survey and doesn't want any money off Although i guess he may be worried about us gazombing him (or what ever its called).

Pushing for an end of month completion but its looking like the first day he can do is the 7th so going to have to be that.

Had a vivid dream last night that he'd pushed it back again and I just got really annoyed and told them to pull the sale and put it back on the market, work up really hacked off this morning! grrr

 

[Mark M]

Why are some solicitors utterly useless? Ive had to deal with the same solicitors twice now for my last 2 house purchases and they are utterly useless! They dont get back to my solicitor or if they do its wrong and they havent bothered even asking the vendor a number of queries we had raised! The vendor actually thought it was my solicitor that was holiday things up so she got a piece of my mind last week! Today, my solicitor has received responses to the queries and apparently half of them dont even relate to the raised queries!!!!!!!!!!

I cant believe how slow they are when they dont get paid until completion!!!!!!

 

[PAz]

Finally exchanged on our purchase yesterday. Both solicitors have been very good, the biggest slow down was our vendor himself. He would get a list of items that he needed to supply and only supply 1-2 at a time. Then he would moan that things were taking so long...strange guy.

Completion for both our sale and purchase has sync'd up to Friday July 11th which is nice too (we were willing to complete on the sale before the purchase).

 

[PapaLazaru]

our comedy moments....

the sellers are taking everything out the house they can, I think we're being left light bulbs but not really sure!

When we bought our house last year the vendor took everything that was not screwed down or they could not work out how to remove. Mantlepiece went with all the light bulbs, curtain rails, everything they could.

They would have taken the shed if they could have and it looks like they may have tried.

Suppose it is my fault for knocking another grand off just before we exchanged.

 

[the_r_sole]

have just bought a place, both myself and the seller wanted a move in date as soon as possible - my solicitor said the minimum time to complete would be 8 weeks because the mortgage can take that long to sort out... I pushed him a bit to try and bring it forward but they wouldn't.
Went to see my mortgage advisor yesterday to go through the paperwork - got the mortgage approved in the afternoon!! so now got a 7 week wait for no bloody reason.
Fingers crossed we can convince the guy to extract his digit and get us in the house asap!

 

[Ryan-3]

Suppose it is my fault for knocking another grand off just before we exchanged.

That grand will go towards nicer - and newer - lights, curtain poles and mantelpiece though!

A few years till I have this stuff to worry about. Freedom and.. not freedom from the bills.

 

[Firestar_3x]

have just bought a place, both myself and the seller wanted a move in date as soon as possible - my solicitor said the minimum time to complete would be 8 weeks because the mortgage can take that long to sort out... I pushed him a bit to try and bring it forward but they wouldn't.
Went to see my mortgage advisor yesterday to go through the paperwork - got the mortgage approved in the afternoon!! so now got a 7 week wait for no bloody reason.
Fingers crossed we can convince the guy to extract his digit and get us in the house asap!

My searches and mining + flood reports took a few weeks to come back, not to mention the house survey report, which took a week to get back to us.

What exactly do you mean by Mortgage Approval? Because you go through several levels of vetting by the mortgage company, finishing off with the actual mortgage offer, you don't know for sure they will lend to you until you get the written mortage offer in the post, which typically takes 3 - 4 weeks.

 

[the_r_sole]

sorry, yeah, we have the mortgage offer - apparently the broker we went through is part of some scheme to fast-track (mortgage was with the halifax) plus we both have existing mortgages with them already
In Scotland so we have the home report survey in place - we're not getting a full survey carried out.
When I sold a place in february the mining and flood reports were maybe 1-2 weeks to get back - but still nothing took 8 weeks!

 

[fastwunz]

good luck to you guys just starting out on the process, fingers crossed it goes, relatively, painless for you.

Don't underestimate just how terrible some EA's can be once they've got that offer in they switch off from you pretty quick. They'll be off chasing the next house to market and you need to keep on at them to work on your behalf as well.

EA doesn't get paid unless it goes through so this is a daft statement. However some are awful for very different reasons I agree. You, the buyer are paying the solicitor not the agent so perhaps you should hound them instead.

 

[Bobmunkhouse]

When we bought our house last year the vendor took everything that was not screwed down or they could not work out how to remove. Mantlepiece went with all the light bulbs, curtain rails, everything they could.

They would have taken the shed if they could have and it looks like they may have tried.

Suppose it is my fault for knocking another grand off just before we exchanged.

That sounds like a bit of a low blow by you.....can't blame them for being annoyed......can't see how a grsnd is worth risk of it falling apart if the other side does not take the hit....

 

[gettothechopper]

should exchange tomorrow morning (eeek cross fingers)

put offer in on the house in feb

good job my time is worthless

 

[PapaLazaru]

That sounds like a bit of a low blow by you.....can't blame them for being annoyed......can't see how a grsnd is worth risk of it falling apart if the other side does not take the hit....

There were a few issues which I discovered which they had hidden and I got a quote for £800.00 to repair, so I don't think it was unjust.

I also knew that they had lowered their offer to their vendor a few days earlier, which had been accepted, so they did not really loose anything. The EA (who stupidly told me) sold the three in the chain from ours to their vendors, so they were very willing to make it a positive outcome as the EA made about £7.5k on the deals.

 

[Bobmunkhouse]

There were a few issues which I discovered which they had hidden and I got a quote for £800.00 to repair, so I don't think it was unjust.

I also knew that they had lowered their offer to their vendor a few days earlier, which had been accepted, so they did not really loose anything. The EA (who stupidly told me) sold the three in the chain from ours to their vendors, so they were very willing to make it a positive outcome as the EA made about £7.5k on the deals.

That's cool mate....I think I was in a bad mood yesterday as I'm also doing the house buying thing and its been tricky....