Still no exchange

The solicitors spoke to each other this morning and the story seems to have reverted back to the buyers wanting to delay until the sale of their flat completes. My solicitor had been given a completion date of two weeks after exchange.

But still nothing has happenened, both my buyer and their solicitor are not answering or returning calls. I have a horrible feeling it is all going wrong and maybe they are going to pull out. I feel sick I have had a headache all day and I have not slept well for three nights.

But there is nothing I can do. I am ringing my solicitor and estate agent every two hours but its mainly to make me feel like there IS something I can do. But there isn't. I just have to wait for lots of people I can't contact to do something.

Exchanging contracts or swearwords?

OK, its been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

I came into work fully expecting that I would exchange contracts today.

At 11.00 I received a call from the estate agents to say there was a change and they had decided to tie in this purchase with the sale of another flat. Bearing in mind this had never been mentioned previously and I had chosen them because they were not in a chain, I was surprised to say the least. After swearing at the estate agent for about fifteen minutes and havigna bit of a cry in the toilets I carried on at work. I would like to say "I carried on bravely" but given the way my colleagues were avoiding me I suspect " carried on like a psycho on day release" would be closer to the truth.

At 15.00 I received another call from the estate agent. Apparently the buyers solictor has just request contract release from my solicitor. This apparently means we are going to exchange after all. Apparently we are still on for completion in a week.

Having spoken to my solicitor they have not heard a thing so still no closer, or maybe we are, or maybe we're not... Heaven only knows. I am a bit of a wreck and desperately in ned of a lie down in a dark room.

Information flooding in

OK so I am now getting daily calls from the estate agent. The buyers has returned her contract to her solicitor and has asked the solicitor a few questions and apparently been satisfied with the answers.

I am now waiting for her solicitor to receive the contract and communicate with my solicitor to arrange exchange and completion. I believe she will be paying her deposit by bankers draft. I have no idea really what this means and what other payment options there are.

Finally I am beginning to feel that maybe the sale will finally go through.

The process without my ranting

These are an outline of the standard stages when going through the house selling or buying process.

1. The buyer has a mortgage agreed
2. The buyer makes an offer on he house
3. The seller accepts the offer
4. The buyer contacts the mortgage company who then books in the survey
5. The survey is carried out and a report is produced. This is either sent directly to the mortgage company or to the buyer (depends on type of survey and mortgage)
6. The mortgage is finalised based on the outcome of the survey (conditions may be applied)
7. The buyers solicitor undertakes searches with the land registry and various other bodies
8. The sellers solicitors sends documentation to the buyers solicitor (deeds, leases, guarantees on any work carried out)
9. The buyers solicitor responds with any queries (and then the sellers solicitor responds until queries are dealt with)
10. If the buyers solicitor has any queries not fully answered they may report to the mortgage company to confirm that the mortgage company is happy to proceed on this basis.
11. Contract exchange and completion are scheduled in.
    
    

There is no fixed time between each stage. The survey will take up to a month depending on the workload of the surveyor. They should produce the survey within a week and mortgage companies should take around 2 weeks to receive and respond (but have been known to take three months).

Query communication may take around a week for each round of questions but this is dependant on how long it takes for the solicitor to receive, address and respond to queries. Some information may need to be sent to the seller to answer or collate paperwork (details such as the location of services in the house, for example, where the stopcock is or which companies are currently used for utilities). The number of queries will be unique to each sale and depends on the idiosyncrasies of the property and how it is approached by the solicitors involved.

9 and a half weeks

It does amuse me though that it has been nine and a half weeks since I accepted my offer. Same time, much less fun. Although not having seen the film I am not sure if I should assume its all fun.

9 weeks...

After being told by the estate agent that my buyer should have recieved and reviewed the contracts etc at the end of last week I am today informed that my buyer is reading through the information today! I am still not sure whether it is the estate agents just telling me anything to get rid of me or my buyer has a mystery life that stops her doing mundane things like sorting out the house she is buying.

Oh well. I am just going to have to spend another week hoping they do not come back with any more queries.

Contract sent out

My estate agent (who has become strangely proactive in the last two weeks) has just called to say that the buyers solicitor has sent out the contract and the responses to the queries to the buyer.

This is so that they can review the points and the contract (and hopefully sign it without any problem). The estate agent reckons I will get an exchange date next week. My solicitor was a bit more cautious but still thinks it shows signs of movement.

I am currently at eight weeks after I accepted the offer.

Queries returned

I returned the queries to my solicitor on Tues 2nd May. My buyer is now getting their searches and checking through our responses. I am really hopeful we will hear back from them this week.

I am trying not to call my solicitor every five minutes to see if they have heard back from them. The buyers solicitors will need to check through the responses and the searches, and report back to the buyer and then contact my solicitor. In my head this should take about five minutes but obviously they have to do everything in writing so it takes ages.