The nervous wait to exchange....

Associate
Joined
28 Mar 2006
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1,202
Location
South Glos
Was supposed to have the valuation surveys done on both the flat we're selling and the house we're buying done on Thursday. Had a call from the EA 1st thing on Thursday saying the surveyor for our flat was literally in the office about to pick up the keys when he had a call and was told to stand down as the survey had been cancelled!
Seems that the buyers mortgage lender has spotted something they're not happy with in their application and as it stands their broker is now appealing, whatever it was. :(
Annoyingly it was too late by then to cancel our survey and have potentially just lost £250 as we wanted a home-buyer survey, which presumably was carried out at the same time as it was all done through Nationwide.

At least I managed to get hold of the solicitor and got them to put the case on hold for now so no losses there!

Will hopefully find out next week if its down the swanny or if they buyers have managed to sort their mortgage.
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Sep 2005
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6,493
Location
Grundisburgh
@Fluke? , nasty feeling. We had someone at the start of our chain when we sold our last house lie on their mortgage application, it was spotted 2 weeks before exchange! EA managed to find a replacement buyer but cost us 2 months or so. Hence the thread title I guess!
Andi.
 
Soldato
Joined
29 Apr 2007
Posts
4,843
Location
London
Get a 2nd opinion. 1900 houses can be quite damp.

Mine did - 1960s council house. It recommended a specialist damp report which I had done with Peter Cox. This was after I'd done some research and found out about all the potential for fraudulent damp reports and recommendations for expensive unnecessary remedial works.

The damp survey came back to say that on the ground floor, about 50% of the external walls and one of the internal walls were suffering from rising damp, and recommending a new DPC being injected (by them), and all the internal walls having the plaster stepped and re-done using their specialist damp proof render. The upstairs was also reported to suffer badly from condensation, which I'd already seen when I viewed as one of the rooms was being used to dry clothes with the window obviously never being opened :eek:

So I moved in and I thought I'd get the place stripped, ventilated and heated for a while before considering whether it needed anything doing. In the lounge/diner the carpet was damp in a number of places and there was thick vinyl wallpaper on the walls. Stripped it all and on the blocked up chimney the plaster was soaking wet :eek: The air vent was completely blocked and the wallpaper was waterproof so the wall obviously couldn't breathe at all. Within a week it was dry and there's no evidence of moisture coming from anywhere else. All signs point to it coming in from the chimney and tracking along the carpet. I'll get a better chimney cap fitted just to be on the safe side but the vent is working fine for now. Upstairs is also completely dry.

Tl;dr survey said rising damp, I ventilated and heated and now it's fine.

Had an independent surveyor look at it, turned out to be a leaking gutter. The wall is soaked through though, he says it will take a year to dry out! I'm sure if I got one of these free survey companies they would be recommending all sorts of expensive fixes. Hopefully can exchange next week fingers crossed.
 
Associate
Joined
27 May 2007
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1,041
Location
Leeds!
This is always the worst as you just want it locked in. I am sure it will go through though and all will be well with the world again.

Certainly!

Its just that frustration that its sat with solicitors who you know are doing stuff behind the scenes but unable to really influence it!
 
Associate
Joined
29 Jan 2012
Posts
679
Location
Andover
I have finally had an update on my purchase, we are close to exchange, and all searches, surveys and queries are complete, the solicitor has sent conformation to the mortgage company I am using Forces HTB for my deposit and is waiting for conformation their still happy to proceed, providing we get that we can request funds to complete a week on Friday. Even though they know I'm using HTB and for how much, part of me is terrified that they could still change their mind, the balances of my credit cards has gone up slightly since I initially applied due to an unforeseen car repair bill.
I just hope they hurry up with their response so we can complete, it is true what they say "buying a house is stressful"
 
Associate
Joined
28 Mar 2006
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1,202
Location
South Glos
Fingers crossed i5aces!

After our valuation cancellation last week I've had a snippet of info and it seems the problem is something to do with our buyers income, so whether they filled in the incorrect amount or whatever, god knows. Should have an answer by Wednesday hopefully.

In more annoying news, the solicitors wanted 3 years worth of ground rent invoices. Emailed Simarc (freeholder) last week asking for this info and the thieving profiteering scumbags want nearly £300 to provide me with a sodding single page pdf with 6 payments. I can understand an admin fee or something but this is redunkulous. Oh, I could pay 100 quid more for an expedited response!!!

Frustrated that I've not kept all of the emails etc over the years tbh but this really does take the urine imo.
 
Associate
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27 May 2007
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1,041
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Leeds!
It cost me nearly the same for my ground rent stuff from the freeholder, what annoyed me more was they said it was be between 5 and 7 working days to provide and 15mins later it was in my email inbox...
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Jun 2011
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3,870
Location
Northampton
Well were 3 weeks in after going under offer and have hopefully just found a house, offer today.

It was sold before but the buyer fell through so back on the market, it seems a interested party from before has made a offer too but may not be as strong as us in position.

previously sold for 490k, now up at 500k, tempted to offer 490k

Fingers crossed, we are going from a 3 story 3/4 bed ex council house with 1200 sq ft to a 4 bed detached with double garage and a unreal kitchen diner with 2000 ish sq ft +garage

Heres hoping
 

SMN

SMN

Soldato
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2 Nov 2008
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The ether
Got a weird one at the moment, and I want to check with people to see if they've had this before also?

We found a house we liked in early Jan (i.e. 2nd Jan), made an offer and had it accepted instantly. We then marketed our property and had 15 viewings in 6 days, 5 offers including 3 over - one significantly over (almost 7%), which we subsequently accepted. The buyer hadnt sold or marketed their property, but we didnt see that as an issue as the person we were buying from hadnt bought a property either.

Fast forward a month; the house we were buying has now fallen through therefore we went out to view another house, liked it and put an offer in. We received an answer that 'the number is acceptable, but they want the chain to close within the next 4 weeks else they'll look to put the property back on the market'? Obviously our buyer is doing all they can to sell, and has already dropped their house price by £50K to get it moving, so what else can we do? Has anyone been in this scenario before? The house we are buying is over £500K therefore they'll always have a chain (unless theres a very flush FTB!), so i'm thinking this is just them trying to create artificial pressure to hurry people along?
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Feb 2004
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21,201
Location
Hondon de las Nieves, Spain
I think 4 weeks seems fair to me. Whilst chains are inevitable, 4 weeks is long enough generally to get a house sold provided it's priced right. Particularly as generally people like to only sell to people who've had an offer accepted so they know there's a good chance things will proceed.

Our buyers house sale fell through and after 2 weeks we started to have discussions about how long we should wait to re-list.
 

Jez

Jez

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,073
Got a weird one at the moment, and I want to check with people to see if they've had this before also?

We found a house we liked in early Jan (i.e. 2nd Jan), made an offer and had it accepted instantly. We then marketed our property and had 15 viewings in 6 days, 5 offers including 3 over - one significantly over (almost 7%), which we subsequently accepted. The buyer hadnt sold or marketed their property, but we didnt see that as an issue as the person we were buying from hadnt bought a property either.

Fast forward a month; the house we were buying has now fallen through therefore we went out to view another house, liked it and put an offer in. We received an answer that 'the number is acceptable, but they want the chain to close within the next 4 weeks else they'll look to put the property back on the market'? Obviously our buyer is doing all they can to sell, and has already dropped their house price by £50K to get it moving, so what else can we do? Has anyone been in this scenario before? The house we are buying is over £500K therefore they'll always have a chain (unless theres a very flush FTB!), so i'm thinking this is just them trying to create artificial pressure to hurry people along?
Just string it along, they wont pull out and remarket if you are 4 weeks in and only 4 weeks away for example, and they are into a legal bill too at that point. They'd serve to do nothing but delay things to de-rail the deal at that point.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
9 Jan 2010
Posts
13,721
I think 4 weeks seems fair to me. Whilst chains are inevitable, 4 weeks is long enough generally to get a house sold provided it's priced right. .

when you say sold, do you mean having the keys? that seems pretty quick, i was a cash buyer on an empty property with no chain and that took 2 months from offer being accepted to having the keys in my hand
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Jun 2011
Posts
3,870
Location
Northampton
Well were 3 weeks in after going under offer and have hopefully just found a house, offer today.

It was sold before but the buyer fell through so back on the market, it seems a interested party from before has made a offer too but may not be as strong as us in position.

previously sold for 490k, now up at 500k, tempted to offer 490k

Fingers crossed, we are going from a 3 story 3/4 bed ex council house with 1200 sq ft to a 4 bed detached with double garage and a unreal kitchen diner with 2000 ish sq ft +garage

Heres hoping


Well this ended well. Not

Made my offers at 10 am

at 10.30 my selling estate agent called, weird i thought, I was in there two days ago as i was passing just making sure all good. My Buyers buyer who was the bottom of the chain (rented) has pulled the plug after 4 weeks.

Awkward confo with the estate agent we are trying to buy with that i had offered with a hour before.

Looks like we will lose the house we want and took us 3 / 4 weeks to find

Yay
 
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