This is a shambles - first home purchase

I remember your previous thread, I was in an identical boat (FTB, vacant chain free flat) at the time. I’m completing on Friday, but it has been incredibly painful. Friday is the last day before my mortgage offer expires, so the whole process has taken exactly 6 months from the time my mortgage was approved.

My vendor’s solicitors have reliably been fucking useless and the managing agents for the block my flat is in have dragged their feet at every possible turn, but my solicitor and the estate agent have both been very helpful. It is incredibly weird that the agent is pushing back in terms of not wanting to chase the vendor’s solicitors - not sure what’s going on there, but it is very much their job to liaise and chase things. If nothing else, they naturally have a vested interest in the transaction going through. However, from your transcript above, it sounds like your solicitor should be in dialogue with the vendor’s solicitors about the errors - there isn’t much input that the estate agent can have there unless the vendor’s solicitors are ignoring your solicitor (which happened to me a number of times). Don’t worry about your solicitor being blocked by the estate agent, it’s odd that they spoke at all and there really isn’t any need for them to interact.

Honestly, all you can do is keep calling people. I got the partners of the vendor’s solicitors’ firm involved, I called the vendor’s solicitors myself (frowned upon but got results), I got my solicitor to pick up the phone and speak to the vendor’s solicitors directly in order to resolve certain things (much better than emails), I got the estate agent worried that I would pull out, which got him to make calls to the vendor and her solicitors getting them to expedite things… you get the idea. Your phone and your persistence are the only weapons you have here. Good luck.

/r/HousingUK Thread