The nervous wait to exchange....

[#Chri5#]

It seems there is light in our tunnel!

Our house went on Rightmove 11th June, sold 15th October and had a our offer accepted 4th November. Had to wait while all the solicitors hibernate for two weeks over Christmas and NY.

Hopefully the end of this month!

I posted the above 13 January. What's changed since then? Nada, nothing, sweet **.

Our solicitor is still waiting for the seller's solicitor to answer about 20-odd questions they asked early December. No idea what they've been doing since returning to work, let alone before Christmas

Had been talk of moving end of this month but looks like we'll be into February now.

 

[Captain]

Checked my credit score with Experian again this morning, 743 which is 'Average', it seems a credit check which was done a few months ago on a finance offer has knocked over 100 points off..

 

[Shoza]

Checked my credit score with Experian again this morning, 743 which is 'Average', it seems a credit check which was done a few months ago on a finance offer has knocked over 100 points off..

Does it actually work like that?

I have an excellent credit score and have had loads of credit checks for various things which hasn't affected it.

 

[Spook187]

Checked my credit score with Experian again this morning, 743 which is 'Average', it seems a credit check which was done a few months ago on a finance offer has knocked over 100 points off..

When i moved house in 2014 i switched banks, but left and old ISA with barclays and when i changed the address on that they did a credit check and left a footprint knocking off a star from my file

 

[robj20]

Well our house sale is fully complete got the land registry stuff through the post yesterday and all the old documents relating to the house.
Now to apply for the ground rent charge to be paid.

Is it normal to get all the previous owners documents we have a marriage certificate, death certificate of his wife and a letter from the high court awarding his daughter ownership of the house.

 

[Skillmister]

Well our house sale is fully complete got the land registry stuff through the post yesterday and all the old documents relating to the house.
Now to apply for the ground rent charge to be paid.

Is it normal to get all the previous owners documents we have a marriage certificate, death certificate of his wife and a letter from the high court awarding his daughter ownership of the house.

It would have been needed to register your purchase so all usually just gets thrown in with the deeds

 

[robj20]

It would have been needed to register your purchase so all usually just gets thrown in with the deeds

Where is a good place to keep it, safe in the house, parents house. I always thought the solicitor kept it all.

 

[blairw]

A week on Friday for us... it really seems to be dragging on now!
Luckily we have done the following

Ordered new Bed
Ordered new Sofa / Chair
Ordered living room furniture

The rest can wait until we are in!

Got my dad's mate who is a sparky coming round to add additional power sockets, run some cabling (HDMI via Ethernet I think) and add some wall mounted bedside lights we picked up

 

[Freefaller]

We've had a bit of an adventure with our purchase. We really want to complete before the new stamp duty laws come into effect as it will affect us and it adds a fair amount to the bill.

We found out after haggling down the asking price nicely, that the house is on a repossession order! However, if we show progress with the sale they are happy to extend the order or not put it into affect to allow us to complete. The house is ideal for us and bang on our budget - so we're pushing things along, but getting all the ducks lined up is hard work, our solicitor has sent me no less than 17 documents to review! At least she's thorough I guess.

I'm hoping next week to help get us very close to actually getting things more secure.

The house needs a bit of freshening up, but other than stuff we want to do, there's nothing urgent that needs doing - that said I want to take the opportunity to run extra sockets before we give it a lick of paint and a clean. However, getting ahead of ourselves - just need all the pieces to fall into place.

Fingers crossed.

 

[manic_man]

We started looking for a new house 12 months ago. We accepted an offer on our house (by a neighbour we know well luckily) 7 months ago. We started the process of buying a house 6 months ago, only to put a halt to it 2 months later because it turned out it was built on a huge landfill site and there was recent history of very bad subsidence. We then started again with our second choice immediately and have just exchanged contracts with a completion date of the 29th, it will be just under 4 months since having our offer accepted.

I can honestly say the last 12 months have aged me, badly. I have no idea why our solicitor sat on the search result for the first house for nearly 3 weeks (letting us pay for a full survey in the meantime, which returned no history of problems with subsidence). I also have no idea why it has then taken a further 4 months to complete the sale of our house and the purchase of our new house given our buyer is not moving from somewhere and our seller is going into rented.

What I do know is that my experience of conveyancing solicitors, at least in three firms, has been utterly abysmal. I have found them rude, arrogant, full of themselves (even though they are frankly doing a job so simple most of the time a monkey could do it) and entirely unhelpful at every turn. I have also found them all to be work shy, I realise that I am one file of hundreds they have open, but I have received absolutely no voluntary updates or help without first having to send multiple emails, leave multiple voice mails and eventually get lucky enough that they pick up their phone. They all seem to work no later than 16:30 every day and they all seem to start at 10am, with many working 3 days a week.

The industry needs a shake up, they mostly work on fixed fee basis these days and I can tell you, knowing the general costs of fixed fee work (my wife is an insurance fraud solicitor who also mostly does fixed fee work for large clients) there is absolutely no way these firms have made any money whatsoever on our purchase or sale as it has taken them so long to do it. From speaking to others my experience seems usual, so I can only assume they are all making next to nothing due to these incompetent and lazy solicitors. I really hope the industry starts to go down the pan and the bad firms fall by the way side as I will be very nervous picking my next firm for whatever it is I need them for...

Saying all that.. getting the keys on the 29th, yay!!

 

[Ace Modder]

We've had a bit of an adventure with our purchase. We really want to complete before the new stamp duty laws come into effect as it will affect us and it adds a fair amount to the bill.

We found out after haggling down the asking price nicely, that the house is on a repossession order! However, if we show progress with the sale they are happy to extend the order or not put it into affect to allow us to complete. The house is ideal for us and bang on our budget - so we're pushing things along, but getting all the ducks lined up is hard work, our solicitor has sent me no less than 17 documents to review! At least she's thorough I guess.

I'm hoping next week to help get us very close to actually getting things more secure.

The house needs a bit of freshening up, but other than stuff we want to do, there's nothing urgent that needs doing - that said I want to take the opportunity to run extra sockets before we give it a lick of paint and a clean. However, getting ahead of ourselves - just need all the pieces to fall into place.

Fingers crossed.

Interestingly I have this socket in my conservatory with no power going into it. The thing is, the plug going into it leads outside and feeds into the garage which also has a seperate power feed for all the sockets in my garage (6 in total), but this cable is feeding into a light on the outside of the garage, but not power is coming from the socket in the picture.

I have no idea how to enable the power to this socket, behind the wall of this socket is the kitchen which has no power switch/source can I can find to supply this socket.

Note this scoket is on a wall which was once external, but our conservatory was built using the external walls (which I really like tbh) But I want the power to this socket enabling for sure.

 

[Freefaller]

How random!

 

[Skillmister]

We've had a bit of an adventure with our purchase. We really want to complete before the new stamp duty laws come into effect as it will affect us and it adds a fair amount to the bill.

We found out after haggling down the asking price nicely, that the house is on a repossession order! However, if we show progress with the sale they are happy to extend the order or not put it into affect to allow us to complete. The house is ideal for us and bang on our budget - so we're pushing things along, but getting all the ducks lined up is hard work, our solicitor has sent me no less than 17 documents to review! At least she's thorough I guess.

New stamp duty laws won't affect you if you're selling as well surely? Unless you already have 2 homes?

All the best with the purchase though, pm me if you want a 2nd opinion on anything! Although your solicitor seems plenty competent so far.

The industry needs a shake up, they mostly work on fixed fee basis these days and I can tell you, knowing the general costs of fixed fee work (my wife is an insurance fraud solicitor who also mostly does fixed fee work for large clients) there is absolutely no way these firms have made any money whatsoever on our purchase or sale as it has taken them so long to do it. From speaking to others my experience seems usual, so I can only assume they are all making next to nothing due to these incompetent and lazy solicitors. I really hope the industry starts to go down the pan and the bad firms fall by the way side as I will be very nervous picking my next firm for whatever it is I need them for...

Tempted to write a very long reply but i've set out my views enough already in this thread to know it won't be given a 2nd thought.

One thing I will point out is that yes, conveyancing isn't exactly a money maker compared to other areas. But tell me this, would you instruct a high street firm who gave you a (realistic) quote of £2,000+ for legal fees? No chance. Because it's either we make a "loss" in terms of work carried out vs fixed fee or we lose the business to on-line conveyancing factories who I can assure you would make you write a far worse rant than the above.

 

[Skillmister]

Where is a good place to keep it, safe in the house, parents house. I always thought the solicitor kept it all.

Stuff like the marriage cert, death cert etc would almost certainly not be needed any more. Frankly, property will be registered so you are unlikely to need any deeds and only things like planning permission/building regs etc stuff will be needed when you sell. Ask your solicitor to store it all, they should do.

 

[manic_man]

Tempted to write a very long reply but i've set out my views enough already in this thread to know it won't be given a 2nd thought.

One thing I will point out is that yes, conveyancing isn't exactly a money maker compared to other areas. But tell me this, would you instruct a high street firm who gave you a (realistic) quote of £2,000+ for legal fees? No chance. Because it's either we make a "loss" in terms of work carried out vs fixed fee or we lose the business to on-line conveyancing factories who I can assure you would make you write a far worse rant than the above.

I will just qualify my rant slightly to say that not only has a simple house purchase/sale taken the best part of 4 months, only 1 document received from my solicitor "qualified with 30 years experience" has arrived without a mistake on it that we have corrected on her behalf. The other two solicitors involved have made similar mistakes on both sides.

Exchange was only half completed on Friday because two of the three firms involved "went home at 16:30 because it was Friday and they were finished before all three had a chance to confirm" and the process was picked up again on Monday morning. As a client I had to chase a senior partner out of hours on Friday night to ask what was going on as we were sat at home not knowing whether we had exchanged or not and we were getting emails from our buyer and seller asking the same. Funnily it was sorted by 09:05 on Monday morning... I wonder if there was an email from said senior partner in my solicitors inbox...

This is not just a time thing, these people have been abysmal and slow. And this from a firm that claims to be one of the biggest in my area with the other two firms having offices all over the North West and London. I'm not alone, not one of my colleagues who have moved house in the past 5 years has a good thing to say. The industry needs to realise people are more informed, better educated and generally less "scared" of legal processes than they once were. Solicitors are not "big all knowing" over seers of our little lives any more, they are simply providing a relatively expensive service and as such need to treat clients with respect and offer basics like progress reports and responding to phone calls and emails promptly.

I am absolutely sure there are some conveyancing solicitors out there who love their job and appreciate their clients and do their very best and wouldn't go home mid exchange on a Friday because it was 1 minute past 4 and there was another 10 minutes worth of waiting to be done. But I'm afraid I haven't met them and once everything is complete will make sure to expose my experience of my firm publicly.

 

[Freefaller]

New stamp duty laws won't affect you if you're selling as well surely? Unless you already have 2 homes?

All the best with the purchase though, pm me if you want a 2nd opinion on anything! Although your solicitor seems plenty competent so far.

.

Cheers dude. We've used her before, she's thorough and great.

I thought the stamp duty will affect us as it will be a second home? We'll be renting our London flat.

 

[Ace Modder]

I am absolutely sure there are some conveyancing solicitors out there who love their job and appreciate their clients and do their very best and wouldn't go home mid exchange on a Friday because it was 1 minute past 4 and there was another 10 minutes worth of waiting to be done. But I'm afraid I haven't met them and once everything is complete will make sure to expose my experience of my firm publicly.

I had the same issues, which I mentioned on here in my previous posts.
However it was my solictor being really slow on sorting completion on the Friday before Xmas, and the sellers solictor closed at 4:30, they finally pulled their finger out after I complained and my mortgage advisor complained, it was all sorted at 4:20pm, 10mins spare. At least the agents holding the keys for release were informed at 4:25 and they were open till 6pm for me to collect the keys.

My solictor didn't put the request in for the funds from my mortgage provider for two days and they lied saying they had.

 

[Skillmister]

I am absolutely sure there are some conveyancing solicitors out there who love their job and appreciate their clients and do their very best and wouldn't go home mid exchange on a Friday because it was 1 minute past 4 and there was another 10 minutes worth of waiting to be done. But I'm afraid I haven't met them and once everything is complete will make sure to expose my experience of my firm publicly.

I do get it, there are some horrors out there and when I see certain firms acting on the other side of my matters I'm quick to inform clients not to expect a 6 week completion. If you ever decide to go through the process again feel free to pm me and maybe try change the perception

Cheers dude. We've used her before, she's thorough and great.

I thought the stamp duty will affect us as it will be a second home? We'll be renting our London flat.

Your post mentioned sale but I assume that just meant from the seller's perspective it is a 'sale' then? Almost certainly will affect you then unless by some miracle the consultation comes out saying if it's your new primary residence you're buying then it won't apply.. Unlikely though! You should be done by then though

 

[Freefaller]

Yes we are buying Hence why I hope we can get it sorted before then! However, owing to the repo order we kinda have to be ready by then anyway! It will be our new primary residence, the flat will just be rented. Can't get away from it - it's fair, it is just a lot of money we'd like to avoid if possible. So hopefully all will go through okay.

Survey next week, and more paperwork - yay!

 

[Ace Modder]

be careful with your flat you plan to rent, isn't there changes coming with rental properties which are mortgaged, which mean you may need to pay some tax on the income?

Don't know the finer details, but rumour has it, it may ruins the buy to let market