The Mock Turtle

I am so, so sorry Chicky and hope it will still go ahead at a later date. Your stress levels must be through the roof.

I cannot tell you how relieved and grateful I am that we're in our new house. If this had happened earlier we could have been stuck in unsuitable airbnbs. It just doesn't bear thinking about.

Thanks all.

There is a small chance that exchange may happen but I suspect not - the house two up the chain is a new build which isn't meant to be ready until August so our sellers aren't keen to exchange on their house unless their sellers exchange too, and they are the ones waiting on the new build. Given the current financial situation I would be worried about the builders going bust or it taking months longer so I wouldn't be exchanging under those circumstances. So we're in limbo - we'll suggest that we just hit pause and reconvene in a few months but with no certainty that it will ever happen.

Add that to Mr C's ex's 12 week isolation and I'm genuinely wondering how the hell I'm going to get through the next few months.

Chicky, my god. I have my fingers crossed for your purchase but it must feel like the final straw. That woman is a piece of fucking work.

Ugh Chucky, I’m so sorry. This is just an awfully uncertain time, I don’t blame you for not exchanging yet.

Our buyer hasn’t pulled out. So small win there. They have been on looking to send out the valuer. Apparently it’s a five minute job so I’ve said yes - provided they take precautions. The survey was done before all this kicked off at least.

We don’t know about the house we are buying yet. The banks are now working three days on three off so out final approval has been delayed a few days. Once we get that we can push the sellers.

My surveyor has just offered me £500 as a goodwill offer without accepting liability for the crack they missed. I paid £450 for the survey and £1,100 for the repairs. I said I'll think about it and send them another photo I took before the repair, plus the invoice detailing the work required to fix it.

Perhaps on top of a refund of the survey costs, but instead of?

The director of the company does not accept that his surveyor should have spotted this sunken roof and crack as a potential cause of damp. It was visible from street level without binoculars. Obviously he's covering his back from a legal perspective, but honestly.

I don't know how you could miss that! I would push back nine.

I did and basically it was take his offer or escalate it to RICS, so I've just taken it. I'm not sure I'd bother with a Homebuyers Survey again.

That’s terrible nine. Can you at least leave a poor review for them somewhere?

Here there is progress - the people at the top of the chain (who are buying the new build that isn’t ready until August) have started to cave and have suggested they could move into rented which would allow the rest of the chain to exchange and complete at the end of May. They want the rest of the chain to contribute to their rent and moving costs which is MASSIVELY cheeky but we’ve basically said we’re happy to share these costs with our sellers in order to get things moving again. Our buyers are still proceeding and would be ok to delay 6 weeks or so. I’m not getting excited again but at least there is progress of sorts!!

That sounds good Chicky. Nine - I'm not sure what type of survey our buyer had for Mr Speedy''s aunt's bungalow but he went into fine detail on things like the guttering, leaves and even sheds so sounds a bit rubbish.
I think Mr Speedy is now on my side with regards putting ours on the market and house-hunting after a week back at work in the hospital!

Slight update: bank have given us approval, and are sending out the letter to that effect. It may be delayed because of covid 19 staffing issues but it’s coming. We also had a message from our estate agent that our buyer is still pushing ahead, nothing major showed up in the survey and the current situation hasn’t changed her circumstances.

And our vendor still wants to proceed. So tentative fingers crossed....

Yay .

Fingers crossed starry - what sort of timescales are you looking at?

Top of the chain people have accepted the offer of £ to move into rental so at the moment we are back on. Hoping to exchange in the next 10 days or so (I am not banking on this at all).

Fingers crossed for you too!

My BIL’s chain all still want to move and he was hoping to exchange soon but because of coronavirus he’s been advised they’ll have to exchange and complete on the same day - she couldn’t add a clause saying if anyone needed to isolate they’d change the completion date. Argh! He’s putting everything he can into storage so he can hopefully do this but eeek.

What have your solicitors advised, Chicky?

We’re still hoping to exchange and complete separately. We’re only a 4 house chain with the bottom people in rental and the top people moving into rental and the top people want to exchange before signing up to a rental place. I have no idea how it works though, I read something from the law society that said solicitors weren’t writing coronavirus issues into contracts though.

Not that I wish to curse anyone's house move, but won't it all grind to a halt? How can anyone move house while observing 2m distance? I just don't understand what is going to happen to all this stuff (see also: a project I worked on for a loft conversion which doesn't have a roof on it right now).

I don’t know - if the removal companies have to shut down then clearly nobody is going anywhere.