The nervous wait to exchange....

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Solicitor's doing my head in. Getting chased from the developer vendors because we still haven't exchanged and my solicitors seem useless at responding to them. Chased last week and they were waiting on outstanding enquiries with the vendor solicitors which they had "just received and reviewing". Chased up again Monday midday, didn't hear anything until half five last night (!!) That says they're still outstanding answers to their original enquiries. Surely that's mutually exclusive with their previous correspondence? :confused:

I'm sure it'll all work out in the end; knew everything was going far too smoothly up to this point :rolleyes:
 
bJN said:
Solicitor's doing my head in. Getting chased from the developer vendors because we still haven't exchanged and my solicitors seem useless at responding to them. Chased last week and they were waiting on outstanding enquiries with the vendor solicitors which they had "just received and reviewing". Chased up again Monday midday, didn't hear anything until half five last night (!!) That says they're still outstanding answers to their original enquiries. Surely that's mutually exclusive with their previous correspondence? :confused:

I'm sure it'll all work out in the end; knew everything was going far too smoothly up to this point :rolleyes:
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That's quite common and is possible that they've received answers but they don't answer the actual questions. For example - Q) Has the property had any new windows in the last 10 years and can you provide FENSA certifications? A) Yes - new windows 3 years ago and previous owner fitted some before that.

The A) doesn't give enough detail and they've not included the certificates - so your solicitor has to go back and ask the same question again. Above is just an example - it's very common though. Often the EA dealing with with transactions will assign someone to push things along and they can be quite good at barking at the right people to get sensible answers (ours was at least).
 
PermaChanged said:
We've just gone to sealed bids on our "forever" home, we're really hoping to get it - the Mrs will be heartbroken if we don't that's for sure, but our bank balance will thank us :cry:
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We won!!! Now we're actually in the "nervous wait to exchange" - however, I highly doubt we'll be as nervous as we were when in the bidding war which ended in sealed bids - what a relief!
 
Our date has been pushed to the 11th June provisionally from the 1st. Hoping that goes ahead!

thankfully work are fine with me adjusting my annual leave, still can’t get a firm answer from our buyers solicitor about what is happening with our buyer. This whole process is so amateur. Wish you could just communicate directly!
 
I'm buying my first house, never done anything like it so it's all new to me.

So far I have had an offer accepted, spoke with a mortgage broker who has found a deal for me, spoke to a solicitor and completed a load of paperwork and sent them some money.

I have no idea what happens next. I don't have a property to sell, the seller is currently viewing houses.
 
PermaChanged said:
We won!!! Now we're actually in the "nervous wait to exchange" - however, I highly doubt we'll be as nervous as we were when in the bidding war which ended in sealed bids - what a relief!
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Congratulations :)

Nick1881 said:
the seller is currently viewing houses.
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So, you'll probably wait a very long time until they find something, have their offer accepted and can proceed to purchase :p Unless they can be persuaded to move into rented. Congratulations though. I'd just start working with your solicitor, they're supposed to be there for you (by law) and guide you through the process. They will be absolutely mental at the moment what with everyone trying to complete before end of June, so unfortunately you'll probably be at the back of the queue.
 
Ahleckz said:
Our date has been pushed to the 11th June provisionally from the 1st. Hoping that goes ahead!

thankfully work are fine with me adjusting my annual leave, still can’t get a firm answer from our buyers solicitor about what is happening with our buyer. This whole process is so amateur. Wish you could just communicate directly!
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I think that helped a lot for us, our sellers used an online agent called "Settled" and other than putting people together, everything else was generally done through us. Was very odd negotiating directly with the seller on the price!

Made certain other things easier though.
 
Scam said:
Congratulations :)

So, you'll probably wait a very long time until they find something, have their offer accepted and can proceed to purchase :p Unless they can be persuaded to move into rented. Congratulations though. I'd just start working with your solicitor, they're supposed to be there for you (by law) and guide you through the process. They will be absolutely mental at the moment what with everyone trying to complete before end of June, so unfortunately you'll probably be at the back of the queue.
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Yea, I'm expecting it to take a while, luckily as a first time buyer and under £250k I won't have to pay stamp duty so I'm in no rush. Still excited though so I'm hoping the seller finds something fairly quickly.
 
Bidding wars are a nasty thing for people with limited finances that are looking to find something based on exactly what they can afford.

I saw a bunch of house buyer videos on YouTube recently, and some new build developer's actually refuse such bids to sell to first time buyers at the listed prices.

Shared ownership is another way to go, but generally that's for minimum wage or disability benefits people. The upper income limits of shared ownership are also quite stupid, you are still eligible up to a total household income of £60k, like as if £60k a year can't get you a decent house with a full mortgage.
 
After the last 8 years of living in rented accommodation, we've just had an offer accepted on what should hopefully be our place until I retire.

Really nice place, needs a bit of TLC but we've seen nothing close to this size at our price point in the area. Homeowners health is failing and needs to move into a bungalow and went with our lower offer due the lack of chain on our part.

I've done all the DD I can think of to do before we progress to engaging a solicitor / broker
* Been to the house / surrounding area repeatedly at various times of day
* Check on reported crimes in the surrounding area
* Checked HMO registry for any nearby (none!)
* Viewed outstanding planning permissions, nothing major

Anything I'm missing?

Money is going to be tight, repayments are comfortably affordable but upfront could be tricky if it completes too soon. We have enough to cover deposit/fees but ideally need 6 months to scrape together enough to cover stamp, if it completes sooner my mum will gift me whatever I'm short but want to avoid that if possible. Assuming a moderate chain that doesn't collapse, we're probably looking at 6 months, right?
 
1 week after we completed the apartment is now back on the market for rent. it is listed for 25% more than we were told it would rent for, top end (and the comparable on the market), so I hope the new owners have some scope to move and not lose money...
 
Think I last posted in early April as I wanted to pay another 4k into my lifetime ISA so we get another 1k bonus before we exchange contracts. The bonus should be paid anytime up to 3rd June but I'm getting twitchy, I'm happy to go without the bonus if need be but the extra 1k I wouldn't have to pay would help us once we've moved.

We're in good contact with the vendor we're buying off, usually exchange a text or two every so often just to keep ourselves in the loop, he's not mentioned a date for exchange yet so I'm using he's happy just waiting at this moment in time. I contacted my solicitor on Monday for an update regarding an enquiry they sent to their solicitors and another this morning as they still haven't bothered to contact me (yet).

I understand it's now just a waiting game but like I said, I'm getting twitchy about it all, I'm sure the vendor will text me once they want to get things moving along but I just hope they can hold out another couple of weeks until this bonus is paid. It could drop in at anytime now but sods law it'll be as late as possible..

I don't like the waiting game.
 
Well we spoke to our solicitor this morning and now that we have batted away a couple of outstanding issues from the sellers (*boiler/heating certificate and info on the rear access alleyway - it's a terraced street with a locked alleyway behind it*) she is proposing an exchange date of next friday and completion date of 21st June! Woop woop!

The late completion date worries me but exchanging sooner locks them in (there is no chain here) and she's said literally all they could do is back out entirely in which case we wouldn't care about the stamp duty timing :p Thoughts on that? Safe enough? Makes it better for us with our rental contract and not having too much overlap and paying twice..

*PS: How useless are hobbyist landlords that can't provide a gas safety check and boiler certificate from 1yr ago. And don't know how to access the secure rear alleyway behind their house? :confused: :mad:
 
All action stations, although I/my solicitor seemingly don't have a clue!

Supposed to be exchanging contracts this Monday and completing on the Friday. But he only mentioned to close my HTB ISA yesterday and is now saying there might not be enough time to get the closing statement from the bank to apply for the bonus in time, so might all get delayed. I'm paying through the nose for this service, kinda think he might have mentioned this sooner!! It also took him until just last week to ask my parents to sort a whole load of paperwork out to proove where their gifted deposit came from (depite only being about 7% of the total deposit). Massive panic their end as they're 400 miles away, can't exactly 'pop in' to show proof of ID etc...

However if the letter arrives Mon/Tues or Weds, then should all be good for completion on Friday, 1 week today! Will have 6 weeks crossover of rented place and new house, so plenty of time to get the bathroom ripped out and re-done, decorated hopefully throughout etc. Fingers crossed Natwest pull through and send me my letter by Wednesday!
 
Arsonist said:
However if the letter arrives Mon/Tues or Weds, then should all be good for completion on Friday, 1 week today! Will have 6 weeks crossover of rented place and new house, so plenty of time to get the bathroom ripped out and re-done, decorated hopefully throughout etc. Fingers crossed Natwest pull through and send me my letter by Wednesday!
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Best of luck. When we were looking for solicitors my Dad said he's never had a good experience with any of them. And put it quite bluntly that conveyancers working in small practices are 99% people who failed to make it as lawyers for a big firm :o Super-harsh, but helped with my expectations. There's a long story above about how our recommended solicitors actually ditched us because they sent our paperwork to the wrong email address (hello GDPR), but fingers crossed so far our others have been excellent. (So I sound a bit mean posting what my Dad told me :p). Best of luck anyway. PS: Wish we could afford 6 weeks crossover with our rental flat! That's a lot of paying twice!

Anyone have any thoughts on below? :)
Scam said:
The late completion date worries me but exchanging sooner locks them in (there is no chain here) and she's said literally all they could do is back out entirely in which case we wouldn't care about the stamp duty timing :p Thoughts on that? Safe enough? Makes it better for us with our rental contract and not having too much overlap and paying twice..
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Scam said:
Best of luck. When we were looking for solicitors my Dad said he's never had a good experience with any of them. And put it quite bluntly that conveyancers working in small practices are 99% people who failed to make it as lawyers for a big firm :o Super-harsh, but helped with my expectations. There's a long story above about how our recommended solicitors actually ditched us because they sent our paperwork to the wrong email address (hello GDPR), but fingers crossed so far our others have been excellent. (So I sound a bit mean posting what my Dad told me :p). Best of luck anyway. PS: Wish we could afford 6 weeks crossover with our rental flat! That's a lot of paying twice!

Anyone have any thoughts on below? :)
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Cheers. The 6 weeks overlap isn't out of choice, just how it's all panned out.

Re. Your situation, would definitely help you with not overlapping on rent and mortgage etc. And like you've said, exchanging contracts does legally tie them in to the purchase. Probably worth just going for it!
 
Arsonist said:
Probably worth just going for it!
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Well you said it. Bizarrely our solicitor emailed us this morning saying "they could exchange today". Err :eek:

The girlfriend and I are practically back-to-back in meetings today (not now obviously :p) but we also needed to sign and witness the declaration of trust so we said "help, can we do it tomorrow please!". Very strange, can only guess she just wants it done. But we have to organise the deposit (to solicitor) as well and she hasn't given us that info yet so hey. Good news though. Let's get this **** done!

Oh and we received the boiler/heating guarantees, lol.
 
Arsonist said:
All action stations, although I/my solicitor seemingly don't have a clue!

Supposed to be exchanging contracts this Monday and completing on the Friday. But he only mentioned to close my HTB ISA yesterday and is now saying there might not be enough time to get the closing statement from the bank to apply for the bonus in time, so might all get delayed. I'm paying through the nose for this service, kinda think he might have mentioned this sooner!! It also took him until just last week to ask my parents to sort a whole load of paperwork out to proove where their gifted deposit came from (depite only being about 7% of the total deposit). Massive panic their end as they're 400 miles away, can't exactly 'pop in' to show proof of ID etc...

However if the letter arrives Mon/Tues or Weds, then should all be good for completion on Friday, 1 week today! Will have 6 weeks crossover of rented place and new house, so plenty of time to get the bathroom ripped out and re-done, decorated hopefully throughout etc. Fingers crossed Natwest pull through and send me my letter by Wednesday!
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Ahhh, the joys.

We got gifted £3500, pittance, almost didn't bother declaring it but as you say the amount of forms they had to fill in :p
 
Delvis said:
We got gifted £3500, pittance, almost didn't bother declaring it but as you say the amount of forms they had to fill in :p
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Did you declare it to the solicitor or the bank? Or both? It's weird, I was gifted some money but the mortgage stuff made it clear I only needed to declare if the 'gifter' (sure that's a word) had an interest in the property.

Also, @Arsonist your solicitor sounds crap! Ours was after evidence of savings from the get-go, it was like the second thing she asked for!

As I mentioned above, we're hopefully exchanging this week. Was due to be Friday but it seems like everyone just wants to get it done. Fine by us, would love to lock the sellers in but we won't complete until end June as we want to have less rental overlap. However the girlfriend was researching what can happen inbetween exchange and completion and it turns out as a buyer you are essentially responsible for the property once exchanged? :confused: It's more because you are now legally bound to buy the property. She mentioned some law changed in 2018 which means basically if the house burns down after exchange you still have to buy it. Whuuuh? :confused: Any ideas? Obviously we'll get building insurance but my girlfriend was laying awake last night with visions of the house burning down or being felled by a tree and us still having to buy the rubble :eek: :(
 
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