we are still waiting almost 5 weeks from accepting the offer on our house for the buyers to get the valuation done.
we had ours done on the place we are hoping to buy last wednesday & today received the mortgage offer. the whole thing from getting the agreement in principle to getting the offer took 11 days for us. i realise that our lender is particularly speedy but how long is the maximum it would generally take for a valuation to be organised?
weve been chasing it up ever since our chain was complete (just over 2 weeks ago) & we waited to have our own survey done until we knew the chain was complete so possibly these people did the same thing?
ive heard all sorts of reasons as to why its not been done yet. "the brokers been on holiday for a week" "you will definitely get a date in the next day or two" & finally today "its been done hasnt it? ill chase it up"
to be honest im now very worried weve spent money & have two people in the chain above us who are depending on things going through. the people at the top of the chain are buying a newbuild & are supposed to have a 28 day exchange clause in their contract, that must be at least 2 weeks in now & were still at the same stage as we were at 5 weeks ago.
what makes me the most angry though is that i expressly told the agents i wanted to continue marketing the property until they had had the survey done, & they completely ignored me
how much longer should i give these people before i put the house back on the market?

Get it back on the market tell the agents you want it remarketing and ask them to let his solicitors know asap. Tell your solicitor the situation and if they have sent a contract get it recalled if not ask them to drop his solicitors a fax telling them you are putting it back on the market.

It sounds to me the buyers do not have their funds ready and are trying to keep hold of your home whilst they raise the funds.
A valuation does not take so long to arrange,I would advise you to place the property back on the market promptly.

Firestorm, I am Soooooo sorry to hear of your problems - had wondered how things were going for you. As you know (I think) I'm not that far away from your neck of the woods and for sure here there are a lot of deals going t**ts up at the last moment. Hate to have to say it but think you should get back on the market a.s.a.p. Good Luck!

quote:

johnsmith
Posted 27-09-05 20:19
It sounds to me the buyers do not have their funds ready and are trying to keep hold of your home whilst they raise the funds.
A valuation does not take so long to arrange,I would advise you to place the property back on the market promptly.

A year ago when the same happened to me I would have agreed completely. However, there is a certain degree of 'grey' here. I eventually sold my house this August and my buyer was keen as mustard to complete (there was a pregnancy involved). When no survey happened in (I think) 4 weeks I thought, lordy here we go, no funds. The ea (different to the one who 'handled' the first offer) was on the case and spoke directly to the bank. It was the C&G and they confirmed that they did indeed have a back log. the surveyer showed up with 2 hours or so notice about 5 weeks after the offer was made. However, we had had communication from the buyers solicitor and trusted the ea that they were following this up rather than (as the previous ea had done) leaving the problem to sort itself out.

I feel for you, I really do, as in effect you are left to make the call on when the deal has died a death and there will always be a bit of you that wants to believe that it will all work out. All I can say is look for some other signs apart from just the survey - have the solicitors been in correspondance? Has the ea been in regular communication with the buyer? Neither of these factors provide a definitive answer but it may give you a better feel for if this deal is a go-er or not.

I'm really sorry to hear you're having these problems firestorm, I was wondering how it was going for you.

I know some lenders have backlogs so it is difficult to know what is going on. But we just went from MIP to firm offer in 24 hours (subject to our paperwork confirming salary of course), and the valuer is going in next week (allegedly ). I know our lender is particularly speedy - that is why we chose them - but five weeks would definitely worry me.

I am not sure if you have spoken to your buyers direct, or to the EA. If possible I would speak to the buyers themselves, that way you will get a feel for whether they are messing you about. I would also put a rocket under the EA and insist they keep marketing the property.

Best of luck.

Hi firestorm

What happened with us was the person at the beginning of the chain took a couple of weeks to get the valuation booked which was fine, however we all waited about four weeks for him to get his actual offer. Our lender was very quick but apparently some are notoriously slow.

thanks everyone still no news today unfortunately im actually waiting for a call back from our sales progressor at the moment so i can get some answers myself. dh has been dealing with the estate agents etc for the last few weeks because i am away from the house between 745 & 415 every day & cannot get a signal on my mobile where i am. im actually driving the children to school in the area we plan on moving to (19 miles away) & i have a job there during the day. by the time i get back home im too tired to do anything if this goes wrong i just dont know how ill manage with doing viewings again & keeping the house straight. its a complete nightmare & im so tired all the time
ive got dh to phone the ea every day for the last week now to chase things up. hes been told that there has been correspondence from their solicitor (our solicitor told him that) & that their survey & searches were already paid for, im not sure who is supposed to of said that, but i need proof that a surveys been paid for & they are committed to the purchase. as far as i can see everyone else is committed to moving on & they are just string us along.
one thing dh said was that maybe they have just signed a new tenancy agreement & they want to drag things out until it runs out, possible i suppose.
ill let you know if i get any news.

Hi

I am in the same position. Accepted an offer on the house over 4 weeks ago and I know that our buyer handed a cheque to the EA to pay for the survey the day after we accepted. We have had a survey completed on the property we are buying and the solicitors are now asking us for money for searches. We are still waiting for a date for the buyers survey on our house but we are told they are busy and not to worry. Hopefully this is the case because a lot of people seem to have sold properties over the last month. Fingers crossed. x

still no survey for us but i did receive a load of queries from the buyers solicitor yesterday so things are happening.
they seem to want to know everything even if we are within 200 metres of any microwave masts (thankfully not)
hope you get some news soon.

HI fIRESTORM

Don't know if you read my posts or not but it was just over 6 weeks before my buyer had the survey carried out on my house.

did they say why it took so long? is there a general backlog at the moment with some lenders?
glad yours is progressing for you now

Offer in Wednesday, accepted Saturday after discussions. Informed bank Saturday p.m. They ran survey co Monday and survey done Wednesday - with apology for delay! Who can say? We are in no rush so we weren't pushing for the survey to be done asap or anything. Must have just been lucky or got a cancellation.

We made our offer on Monday, and on Wednesday the lender called to arrange the survey - wanted to do it the next day!

I think some lenders are just much slower than others. We particularly asked for a lender who was quick and efficient, as we need a quick transaction.

the lender we used was really quick too. had the mortgage agreed in principle on the saturday afternoon & had the survey done on wednesday. i wish we had waited now until our buyers had had theirs done before spending any money

finally got a call today. our survey will be done next monday (6 weeks & 4 days since sale agreed )
i was very suprised to hear that the lender is a very well known building society beginning with an A. id of thought that they would be a bit quicker off the mark than that.

I'm glad things are moving for you at long last firestorm. You may find that your buyers asked the lender to hang fire on the valuation until all other enquiries were complete (income verification, existing lender or landlord's reference etc.) in order to save themselves the fee if something went awry. As the inspection has now been booked, however, it looks like all the other items are to hand so they shouldn't have to wait long for an offer. Cross fingers the valuer didn't get out of the wrong side of the bed on Monday morning!

thanks susiecam we are still wading through the buyers questions unfortunately im hoping it wont be too much longer once the valuations done before everythings sorted. i wont hold my breath though.
im not worried too much about the valuation, weve had a homebuyers report done on this house before & nothing came up. dh is going to be here & ive instructed him to chat the valuer up & let him/her know about all the work thats been done etc.
the problem with our place is that dh has virtually rebuilt it himself & so there are no guarentees for the work he has done, despite the fact that its probably a far superior standard to the vast majority of builders around here, & that tends to hold things up a bit.
fingers crossed for monday.

quote:

fingers crossed for monday.

Hello firestorm how did it go ?

thanks for asking mr angell i wasnt there unfortunately because i already have a job in the area we are moving to. dh saw the surveyor & didnt tell her anything about any of the work he`s done on the place but she shouldnt need telling really anyway if she knows her job.
she was here for about an hour, i think it was a homebuyers report, not the basic valuation, does that timing sound about right? its a very large 4 bed 3 bath house with a huge attic & cellar to look in as well as the main house.
fingers crossed the lender are a bit quicker getting their mortgage offers through than they are getting the valuations done. does anybody have any experience of this particular lender? (well known high street building society beginning with A)

Firestorm, if your buyers are relying on the building society that I think they are, then be prepared for surther delays. I have heard nothing good and lots of bad about that particular building society. They are almost famous for faffing around delaying things then withdrawibg the mortgage product that was first agreed... and expecting the purchaser to have to pay to change to a new product... thus arguments ensue and delays follow.

I am with a different mortgage company, and they took 4 weeks to get around to organising a surveyor to view the property I wanted to move in to. This despite constant reminders that time was of the essence, as I had an expiring rental Lease and a Landlady anxious to get me out of her property.

My chain free sale too 4 months, and even though I have moved now (at last!), there are still problems to be sorted out, with the inevitable legal costs for that, otherwise the mortgage company will call in the mortgage and I will have to sell up (oh dear god please not another move to endure!!! )

Ary.

not great news then at least i know that it probably is the lender & not the buyer playing about now i just hope its all sorted out before christmas.
thanks

just noticed ive got 4 stars now, wonder when that happened

heard on saturday that our buyers now have their mortgage offer from their lenders thats pretty quick going, the survey was only done on monday & it was our solicitor who wrote to let us know after hearing from their solicitor, so they must of got the offer within a couple of days of the survey.
i really thought that after waiting such a long time for the survey to be done that it would be another age before they got the offer
im amazed