The nervous wait to exchange....

  • Thread starter Thread starter noj
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Anything is possible with probate sales! Especially if it's one where someone has withdrawn before and they have the paperwork ready you could be ready to exchange by the time searches are returned.

Good luck either way though with a successful purchase this time :)
 
Skillmister said:
Anything is possible with probate sales! Especially if it's one where someone has withdrawn before and they have the paperwork ready you could be ready to exchange by the time searches are returned.

Good luck either way though with a successful purchase this time :)
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Yes all the paperwork is done, and we've got copies from the previous purchase saving a lot of time. The mortgage valuation is just being processed, waiting for the offer from them. Fingers crossed!
 
Plumber, electrician, sky install, bt install all booked now.

Broadband is being a pain. We've got a code from BT that means we should be able to get broadband activated at the same time as the phone line.. but no-one accepts it. Great.... Luckily still have 2 phones on the old Three One contract, so lots of tethering will be done for the first couple of weeks. :D

Looking at Nest/Hive so we can recover a chunk of wall for a bookcase.

Hopefully we'll get the keys early on Monday so we can rip up the carpets, repair the one floor that's a bit dodgy and then clean the place. That's the idea anyway.
 
Solicitors instructed (£££), survey booked (£££), mortgage applied for (£££ soon).

Were going to have to just "move in" and then see about doing anything after. We will have spent all our money and more on simply buying the place.

Fingers, toes, legs, arms and eyes crossed!
 
Skeeter said:
Solicitors instructed (£££), survey booked (£££), mortgage applied for (£££ soon).

Were going to have to just "move in" and then see about doing anything after. We will have spent all our money and more on simply buying the place.

Fingers, toes, legs, arms and eyes crossed!
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All the best mate.

We are pretty much going to do the same. Certainly if we get stung for the new stamp duty laws we'll just have to make do as is.
 
Wondering if anyone can offer any advice on the following whilst we wait for the solicitors to get back to us.

My mum is currently in the process of selling my Nans house (my Nan was moved into a nursing home 8 months ago). She has full power of attorney and the sale was proceeding nicely (should have completed by end of March), however sadly my Nan passed yesterday and so now we have to enter probate.

We understand probate should be simple as the value is below the tax threshold at about £400,000 (including the house). This is using the £650,000 threshold based on my nan having been married to my granddad who passed 7 years ago.

My mum is the sole beneficiary and also the executor of the will which should also help.

I am just wondering what is likely to happen to the sale now.
 
We went to have a look at some more Taylor Wimpey & Barratts houses/developments yesterday. We didn't bother with Persimmon in the end as they've not started building here yet and the other sites aren't in ideal locations.

Again, very pleased with the TW houses and we think we know which one we'd go for now. They didn't have any show homes near by for the one we like, but luckily there was one on site which was almost completed (it was already sold, just having carpets/furniture installed) so she managed to sneak us inside to have a look.

We popped over to Barratts and the lady was nice enough but we had to drive over to another of their developments as they hadn't even begun building yet. It went downhill from there:
  • Both sale reps were preoccupied but didn't acknowledge us. We waited around for 10 minutes then just headed straight to the show homes. Even if the TW reps were busy, they'd acknowledge us and asked us to bare with them a second. This is really minor in the grand scheme of things and I didn't even notice it - but my girlfriend did!
  • Massive quality difference compared to the TW homes we have seen so far - but we weren't sure if we just hadn't noticed similar things in the TW homes (though some would be impossible to miss!):
    • Some internal doors weren't correctly aligned - I had to use quite a bit of strength to open/close a couple of them.
    • Paint on the walls, around door frames and on the stair banisters was very messy in places.
    • The stair banister was wobbly to the touch and the 'decorations' on top of the poles came off with ease.
    • Carpets weren't laid correctly in a few rooms.
    • Light switches were almost all the wrong way around (i.e. 'off' was the usual 'on' position, vice versa).
    • We found a few notes / lists of things hidden in drawers / cupboards of things which needed fixing in these show homes (I assume written by the sales reps or quality control staff - they were written on 'official' Barratts paper). Not a pleasant read!
    • List could go on.

Perhaps we're being overcritical but we only have the show homes to go on for what we might be expecting. It could just be that they're using bad developers for that one particular site but it doesn't leave me with much confidence if they can't even get two show homes looking at their best.

One huge benefit of the day was that we were able to see what a bare TW home looks like with no furniture and very few options - especially as it's the design we really like. The site we're looking at only has one more of these being released this year with a couple of others already pledging their interest. The rep said that if we're able to sort out our side of things soon-ish, she may be able to get the build released early which would allow us to get our reservation in if the others aren't able to. We both really like the location of this site so we're a bit keen to get things moving now.

I'm booked in on Tuesday to speak to a mortgage broker so we can at least get some formal numbers down on paper in case we've jumped way ahead of ourselves in our affordability - but having a look across all the major banks tonight, I think we should be ok. Annoyingly, we weren't looking to buy for another couple of months, but the houses we've looked at push us above the Help to Buy ISA limit so it's pointless waiting around waiting for those to get higher at this point.
 
pepp77 said:
Wondering if anyone can offer any advice on the following whilst we wait for the solicitors to get back to us.

My mum is currently in the process of selling my Nans house (my Nan was moved into a nursing home 8 months ago). She has full power of attorney and the sale was proceeding nicely (should have completed by end of March), however sadly my Nan passed yesterday and so now we have to enter probate.

We understand probate should be simple as the value is below the tax threshold at about £400,000 (including the house). This is using the £650,000 threshold based on my nan having been married to my granddad who passed 7 years ago.

My mum is the sole beneficiary and also the executor of the will which should also help.

I am just wondering what is likely to happen to the sale now.
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It can proceed as normal but the buyers will require sight of the Grant of Probate before they will exchange so may hold it up a bit but nothing major if it's a relatively simple estate.
 
We got the keys mid afternoon. Hooray!

Kitchen scrubbed, carpets removed, wood floor bought, microwave bought, washing machine and dishwasher ordered.

Today, starting to empty the flat... oh crap.
 
Dynix said:
We went to have a look at some more Taylor Wimpey & Barratts houses/developments yesterday. We didn't bother with Persimmon in the end as they've not started building here yet and the other sites aren't in ideal locations.

Again, very pleased with the TW houses and we think we know which one we'd go for now. They didn't have any show homes near by for the one we like, but luckily there was one on site which was almost completed (it was already sold, just having carpets/furniture installed) so she managed to sneak us inside to have a look.

We popped over to Barratts and the lady was nice enough but we had to drive over to another of their developments as they hadn't even begun building yet. It went downhill from there:
  • Both sale reps were preoccupied but didn't acknowledge us. We waited around for 10 minutes then just headed straight to the show homes. Even if the TW reps were busy, they'd acknowledge us and asked us to bare with them a second. This is really minor in the grand scheme of things and I didn't even notice it - but my girlfriend did!
  • Massive quality difference compared to the TW homes we have seen so far - but we weren't sure if we just hadn't noticed similar things in the TW homes (though some would be impossible to miss!):
    • Some internal doors weren't correctly aligned - I had to use quite a bit of strength to open/close a couple of them.
    • Paint on the walls, around door frames and on the stair banisters was very messy in places.
    • The stair banister was wobbly to the touch and the 'decorations' on top of the poles came off with ease.
    • Carpets weren't laid correctly in a few rooms.
    • Light switches were almost all the wrong way around (i.e. 'off' was the usual 'on' position, vice versa).
    • We found a few notes / lists of things hidden in drawers / cupboards of things which needed fixing in these show homes (I assume written by the sales reps or quality control staff - they were written on 'official' Barratts paper). Not a pleasant read!
    • List could go on.

Perhaps we're being overcritical but we only have the show homes to go on for what we might be expecting. It could just be that they're using bad developers for that one particular site but it doesn't leave me with much confidence if they can't even get two show homes looking at their best.

One huge benefit of the day was that we were able to see what a bare TW home looks like with no furniture and very few options - especially as it's the design we really like. The site we're looking at only has one more of these being released this year with a couple of others already pledging their interest. The rep said that if we're able to sort out our side of things soon-ish, she may be able to get the build released early which would allow us to get our reservation in if the others aren't able to. We both really like the location of this site so we're a bit keen to get things moving now.

I'm booked in on Tuesday to speak to a mortgage broker so we can at least get some formal numbers down on paper in case we've jumped way ahead of ourselves in our affordability - but having a look across all the major banks tonight, I think we should be ok. Annoyingly, we weren't looking to buy for another couple of months, but the houses we've looked at push us above the Help to Buy ISA limit so it's pointless waiting around waiting for those to get higher at this point.
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We moved in to a TW house last December, so far we have been fairly happy with it, very little snagging required to be fair to them.

Prior to this house we had a Persimmon and the amount of snagging required was 10x the amount of the TW for much bigger things...for example they even managed to put a wrong boiler in for the system we had! Anyway that is in the past :)

I can echo your thoughts on the Barrats, there is a big site being build in a town nearby so we just went for a nosey around the showhomes as you do. I could not believe the fit and finish of the Barratts...especially in a showhome! It almost looks as if it was done by a complete novice by me!

Taylor Wimpey do get some bad press every now and then (as do most large house builders) however we have been very happy settling into our family house for the last 15 months or so :)
 
Malt_Vinegar said:
Haha, enjoy it.
I enjoyed going through all the crud and throwing so much away!
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Pfffff....

2 transit van loads today, maybe another 2 to go, plus the storage unit. *where I am going to be deep in the poop once the other half see's what's in it. 'Where did that arcade machine come from?' Errrr..... *

The problem has been that once some stuff is boxed up, there's nowhere to put the boxes, so can't box any more up until that has gone. Now the bedroom and lounge are pretty empty we can move a bit quicker. May need more boxes though. *sigh*

Going from a 2 bed flat to a 4 bed house. Should be big enough.
 
My fiancée and her mother looked at the Barratts show home on the same site as the TW one's we are looking at, and said exactly the same about the poorer quality and finish of the Barratt's show homes.
 
Mucky_Pup said:
My fiancée and her mother looked at the Barratts show home on the same site as the TW one's we are looking at, and said exactly the same about the poorer quality and finish of the Barratt's show homes.
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I would rather live in a dog kennel! lol
 
Had a good chat to the mortgage broker today and it seems we should be able to easily afford the mortgage we'd need and shouldn't be any complications with me being self employed as I had worried myself over - he said it should be a straight forward case for them. He's sent over a bunch of paperwork for us read and a list of stuff we need to send their way if we want to proceed with them - we can scan and email over everything except our passport which needs to be sent off, but we're going aboard on Friday so will wait until next week to sort that stuff out.

Next we need to get back onto Taylor Wimpey to ask them a couple of things and check out any other houses of similar size which will be soon released in case we miss out on the one we like as backups. Once that's done, we can really get the ball rolling.
 
Flibster said:
We got the keys mid afternoon. Hooray!

Kitchen scrubbed, carpets removed, wood floor bought, microwave bought, washing machine and dishwasher ordered.

Today, starting to empty the flat... oh crap.
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I want to go all in on ours when we get it, but we won't have any spare cash and will be in debt to the GFs parents so need to pay them back before spending anything.

The current plan is just paint the upstairs rooms/landing, but I'd want to do the gloss aswell, but that is much easier with no carpets to worry about, but then theres the potential of months on bare floor boards...

Hmm.
 
Skeeter said:
I want to go all in on ours when we get it, but we won't have any spare cash and will be in debt to the GFs parents so need to pay them back before spending anything.

The current plan is just paint the upstairs rooms/landing, but I'd want to do the gloss aswell, but that is much easier with no carpets to worry about, but then theres the potential of months on bare floor boards...

Hmm.
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Do they need glossing?
 
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