Closing purchase late - pushy vendor - pls help

gabria

I am a first time buyer in the middle of closing a deal to purchase new house off-plan. This house had its first snag at the start of this month,the second one is not scheduled until this week.

The vendor solicitor last week sent me and my solicitor a completion notice. The works on the house have been certified as completed,and I now have 14 days to pay the balance of the Contract Price.

At this point in time, the reality is that I am running out of days. I have been advised by solicitor , insurance broker and senior relatives that I only start applying for the mortgage funds as soon as I am satisfied that the second snag verifies that all but the minor issues have been resolved.

However this second snag is taking an age to arrange. I have been unfortunate that the surveyor has had family bereavement and being well respected in his company,his boss & colleagues were almost completely out of office last week.They are going to have a lot of catch up from next Monday, and I don’t feel optimistic that we will have second snag any earlier than Wednesday.

I had an unpleasant call with the project manager of the vendor shortly after reading the noice. I was apologetic about the delays,and frank that it would be not possible to close the sale within 14 days.He believes that this is an undue holding up of the sale closure.He referred to a conversation he had with me a day after the first snag,where I was admittedly feeling very satisfied and positive that we could close the sale soon.I am not sure if this prompted him to tell the certifiers to issue the completion certificate – that was issued the very next day.

He has now advised me to notify them as soon as possible if I am unable to complete the sale within the 14 days and they will only take under consideration any genuine causes of delay. The main cause of delay is as above and just not preventable but he won’t accept it.Worryingly I also have another issue with the arrangement of my mortgage protection policy.I had used an insurance broker who was advising me that he would only put through the application as soon as the snagging was complete (I think this was only to avoid me having to pay an essentially unnecessary first premium payment in the month of June).However upon receipt of the letter I had to insist that we would have to send the application through ASAP.I am now anxiously waiting for policy details to be available to immediately forward to my mortgage manager & solicitor so not to hold up the funds application any further.This policy arrangement is the only area I think where I may have slipped up myself and I think I can forget about that as another genuine cause of delay that they would accept. I am at a loss to think of anything else.

To put the frights on me, Mr. Project Manager has mentioned the consequences of the buyer being liable to pay interest when the sale is closed with undue delay (not specified what amount after which time).Rather than frightened,I just feel really annoyed.I paid his company 30K of my hard-earned money last autumn and waited patiently for months for the first snag to be completed (it was mostly their fault the first one was delayed).I appreciated he was busy & under pressure from many clients over this time and handled my own communications with him mostly patiently and informally.Not once did his team or the solicitors ever send a reminder earlier this year that the buyers signed building agreement with quoted 14 day period between completion and closing date,and would be expected to adhere to this except without robust reasons not to. This could have been sent in a group email/letter to me and the other buyers in the current building phase.With more notice,I would have not been rushing around at the last minute to get all my agents to do things for me with very little possibility now that closing date will be made.I also don’t agree with the certification of closure – I thought that the property’s side-gate would be an essential part of the works to be completed,and this is currently not in place at all (I have reminded them to install it at least for the second snag).

My casual conscience tells me things like: “just tell him to eff off.14 days blah-blah,no one holds them to that.Don’t worry hey, be grand” etc.However,I need him and his team to be present and available for co-operation on necessary works to be completed after sale closure (the garden is a notable example of a significant exclusion from the “works” set down in the building agreement and funnily enough a lot of my new neighbours have given up on his team completing their gardens within a reasonable time after sale closure,outsourcing the job to private contractors instead). This team have promised to be on hand to offer handy free repair services as well. I can’t piss him off too much as he will almost always be the first point of contact over the expected approximate 1-2 years that the contractor will remain on the site to complete every sale and construction.

Just looking for opinions / thoughts / suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

lalababa

Yes , this is typical behavior in Ireland esp. in a rising market. Developer wants the cash now and f##k you! Wouldn't take anything manager says to heart, he's just putting the ****s up everybody to get as much money in asap. Put skids under your surveyor or get somebody else to do it within date. Don't worry about the gate or garden or small things 'coz the developer certainly won't. This is Ireland, and the boom is back baby!

gabria

Typical behaviour yes but this shouldn't be tolerated. I'll just about get the snag done this week, its just the funds transfer that will probably be too late, any amount of unknowns can go wrong with that