Yes! They said they would remove it once the legals are taken care of
The nervous wait to exchange....
- Thread starter noj
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For what it's worth i'm in the same situation. I've just started in a new place 3 weeks ago and had a mortgage appointment (with Halifax) I haven't had an offer yet as my new employer needs to fill in an employer reference form but she has assured us that starting a new job is not a problem.
Soldato
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How can you be a day from exchanging and not know what the completion date is going to be
How can you be a day from exchanging and not know what the completion date is going to be
Baffles me also, we are apparently going to discuss a completion date tomorrow. I really dislike how these solicitors have been operating, waiting until the last possible minute to ask me for documents, no clarity on where we've been up to at any point in the process, lack of communication in general.
Certainly won't be using them again, and wouldn't be recommending them.
Soldato
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Odd. Even if the completion date wasn't complete agreed you'd expect to have a rough idea of a couple of possible dates.
They probably are.
You can do them all yourself if you want. I'm pretty sure solicitors just have an automated process where they enter the property details and press a button and get a search pack back. All our searches have the same branded cover page and the same date on them.
There is a reason why the cost of searches done through a solicitor is the same as if you did them all yourself. They aren't charging you for any time because it doesn't take any.
Soldato
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Searches are only part of the process but yes, they are one that is automated and yes, 9/10 times they come back with no issues and therefore only very minimal time is expended.
However, when the searches do come back with onerous results that is when the time consuming checks commence that cannot be done online. This is where the days/weeks and in some cases months of back and forth between 2 sets of solicitors, 2 clients, management companies, councils etc etc begins... For instance, how does your solicitor check whether a sewer running through the back garden of a property is built over or not? Certainly not online! (ok sure, I could use Google maps but that isn't gonna fly with our indemnity insurers should the information be incorrect is it?
) Or how do they check that a seller got consent from their landlord to rip out all of the electrics and half the internal walls when the lease specifically prohibits it? Again, not online!There are so many things that we check that there is no other way to find out other than asking other people. These are the type of queries that are somewhat "individual" to the certain property (although obviously they crop up fairly often when you deal with hundreds of different properties) that buyers should know, not necessarily things that are deal breaking/essential for lenders etc.. They are also the type of thing that these national e-conveyancing places don't ask which is why people thing they are getting a quicker/cheaper service from them. They do the searches, check the title and bung it through. Most people who chose them over us because of initial price come back when they realise their mistake
The "automated" ones are third party companies that do cost more to use. I do all mine, takes 10 minutes but saves clients a few quid.
Soldato
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It can be, but I'm sitting here trying to decipher a stack of title deeds dating back to 1850 which falls into nightmare category
Soldato
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I just got the survey back from the place I'm buying, issues with damp which may mean I need to negotiate on the purchase price 
If it had all been fine then I'd have actioned the searches carried out by the solicitor but this has put somewhat of a spanner in the works!
If it had all been fine then I'd have actioned the searches carried out by the solicitor but this has put somewhat of a spanner in the works!
Soldato
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It's moving in day for us, was up till midnight packing boxes, then up at 6am to start again.
Removals are here now, it's nice to have someone else do all the heavy lifting for a change
Removals are here now, it's nice to have someone else do all the heavy lifting for a change
Our Son had his offer accepted on a three bedroom end terraced property and all seemed well.
However what was not recognised by him, nor the surveyor, was that on the adjacent spare land butting up to the side of the property is a humongous growth of Japanese knotweed, one or two small plants actually in his garden.
But what did show up on the surveyors report had greater cause for concern....
The roof is sagging and needs lots of repair.
They part removed a chimney stack internal and not supported it correctly / at all.
The loft conversion does not seem compliant with building regs and could have caused the roof problem.
The gable end is moving.
Damp in most of the rooms and no DPC.
Internal ceiling issues.
Missing lintels
Electrics iffy.
Lots of other smaller jobs, but still important ones.
As the surveyor raised questions over the third bedroom and its compliance with building regs our Son showed the Vendor the surveyors report.
She, the vendor, took the property off the market for one week and relisted it at the same price but now as a two bedroom property with a loft space.
Our Son, as he is married with children, would not have even bothered with the house as a two bedroom property and yet his solicitor told him today that he has no grounds for any misrepresentation claim to try and get back his costs so far as he had no binding agreement with the vendor.
To say that they are most upset, and out of pocket by quite a lot of money, is an understatement but it seems incredulous that someone can advertise a property as a three bedroom house and then change it to a two bedroom listing without consequences for those who have spent money in the process of trying to by what was advertised.
However what was not recognised by him, nor the surveyor, was that on the adjacent spare land butting up to the side of the property is a humongous growth of Japanese knotweed, one or two small plants actually in his garden.
But what did show up on the surveyors report had greater cause for concern....
The roof is sagging and needs lots of repair.
They part removed a chimney stack internal and not supported it correctly / at all.
The loft conversion does not seem compliant with building regs and could have caused the roof problem.
The gable end is moving.
Damp in most of the rooms and no DPC.
Internal ceiling issues.
Missing lintels
Electrics iffy.
Lots of other smaller jobs, but still important ones.
As the surveyor raised questions over the third bedroom and its compliance with building regs our Son showed the Vendor the surveyors report.
She, the vendor, took the property off the market for one week and relisted it at the same price but now as a two bedroom property with a loft space.
Our Son, as he is married with children, would not have even bothered with the house as a two bedroom property and yet his solicitor told him today that he has no grounds for any misrepresentation claim to try and get back his costs so far as he had no binding agreement with the vendor.
To say that they are most upset, and out of pocket by quite a lot of money, is an understatement but it seems incredulous that someone can advertise a property as a three bedroom house and then change it to a two bedroom listing without consequences for those who have spent money in the process of trying to by what was advertised.
I simply cannot understand why the housing market works the way it does.....
Seller should have to get *all* searches, structural surveys, condition reports and valuations done by independent companies whose reports have to be accepted legally by mortgage companies.
Buyer can then get a pre-approved mortgage of £x on a house worth more than £y with a maximum loan to value ratio before they even start looking.
Buyer sees a house they like and can request the pre-prepared info pack.
If buyer makes an accepted offer both parties put down a 1% deposit in escrow. Either party pulls out they forfeit the deposit (bear in mind each party has all the info they need before offers are made).
Exchange should be possible within days of an offer.
Seller should have to get *all* searches, structural surveys, condition reports and valuations done by independent companies whose reports have to be accepted legally by mortgage companies.
Buyer can then get a pre-approved mortgage of £x on a house worth more than £y with a maximum loan to value ratio before they even start looking.
Buyer sees a house they like and can request the pre-prepared info pack.
If buyer makes an accepted offer both parties put down a 1% deposit in escrow. Either party pulls out they forfeit the deposit (bear in mind each party has all the info they need before offers are made).
Exchange should be possible within days of an offer.
Soldato
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It does boggle my mind that it doesn't work like this. The 3 usual searches and a home buyers report should cost less than £500. Maybe if high street estate agents didn't shaft sellers so much some of the commission money could be used to fund this instead.
Before now I'd had to do the same searches on the same property 3 times in less than 6 weeks because of people withdrawing. Makes no sense that a seller gets away from this scot-free
Not quite, but you could easily cut it down to a matter of a couple of weeks
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Soldato
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What your describing is pretty much what was going to happen with the hom******s pack, so seller would have been tasked with preparing a whole pack before they marketed the building.
The difficulty comes when all the interested parties have their own processes, wants etc PLus not every house is the same and how do you cater for this.
The house I bought was less than 10 years old, covered by warranty.
When I was looking I briefly looked at a very old house that had "non std construction", turned out it would have been practically impossible to get a mortgage. Where do you draw the rules up to cater for both those properties. Just take surveying for example, if I had of gone for the old house I would have spent a significant sum on some very good surveys and hence I would have wanted to pick myself who did them, would I have trusted a survey report given to me by the vendor, no way.
What could maybe speed up the process is that maybe a central database could be maintained of all surveys with a small fee payable to access them.
So where you get a house that repeatedly fails to sell from an issue you would have known about this from the previous survey done. Vendors would need a way to show corrective had been done.
However I feel that vendors who have a big issue often don't want to fix it and are happy to go through the hoops on multiple attempts to sell as the potential gain from "getting away with" a big issue is so high.