Currently buying/selling a house? How is it going? READ MOD NOTE POST #1

I remember this type of thing when I was buying in 2018. The mad increases from the previous year or so had slowed down but vendors had their expectations and wouldn't budge. I made an offer at asking on a couple of places and was the only bidder at the time, only for the agent to come back and say "actually the vendor wants 10k more now", essentially asking me to bid against myself!

My friend at the time really wanted a particular house and did up their bid as requested, so it can work in some cases if the vendors really stick to their guns.

Congratulations!! What a feeling that must be! Our solicitor is requisitioning funds today from the bank. Was there a big wait for draw down once funds were requested?

Yeah, it ended up being over 3 weeks before we received funds after the drawdown request was submitted. It normally takes 3-5 working days for the application to be reviewed, but that's 6-9 working days with AIB at the moment. The bank raised a query on the home insurance (even though they had the info they needed all along!) after 10 days, which knocked our application back into the queue and delayed it by another 10 days.

Update: So basically the vendors' solicitor has been dragging their feet and they haven't even signed their contracts yet. We signed ours 2 weeks ago. The vendors are hoping and expecting to be done and dusted by next Friday. Their new house is empty and they're screaming to get in.

Want to know who hadn't the foggiest about this and was storming ahead to close on Monday? Our solicitor. We literally know more about our case than our solicitor right now, and it's just thanks to the vendors being sound and us building a dialogue with them.

Are solicitors just allergic to talking to each other or something?

You could get your solicitor to issue a force to close notice. AFAIK that gives them 28 days to close. If they fail, they forego their deposit and the contract is void. That’s my best understanding but you’d want to check with your solicitor. I’d expect your solicitor to advise you to give them a little more time just to keep things smooth

Have no idea. Both we and our counterparts are going to keep the pressure on our respective solicitors to get things sorted. Just absolutely insane that that's how we found out, and that noone in our solicitors office seemed to think of checking the contracts were signed on both sides first.

Our solicitor is on part time at the moment and his partner who has been covering him on our case is on annual leave so it's like a skeleton staff in there which, frankly, for transactions like this just isn't good enough.

Another week rolls on :(

Left a message for my solicitor to call me back ASAP, the receptionist says he needs to speak to the vendors solicitors first. They finally realised that anyway. Obviously because the closing documents they were expecting didn't arrive this morning. 🙄

Gearing myself up to tear strips our of our solicitor once he does ring.

UPDATE: We got a one-liner email from our solicitor saying they haven't received closing documents from the V solicitors yet (no ****), and his secretary is chasing them for an update.

Same happened to us. Vendors were mad to sell, rushing us at every stage. We signed contracts, they wanted to set closing, we spoke to out solicitor and she said to go ahead. I didn’t realise that they hadn’t signed and organised to move out of our rental, LL found another tenant. Low and behold the estate agent mentions off hand that now the vendors had to decide whether to sign because there were issues with the house they were buying. I was driving during that call, I had to pull over.

Soon to be homeless we had to threaten to walk if they didn’t sign by a particular date.

Worst thing was I couldn’t complain because said Solicitor was my aunts sister-in-law. I wasn’t even getting money off!

We were FTBs, if we ever buy again at least we’ll have learned not to set a date to close until contracts are back and never to use family!

FTBs here too, honestly we just naively took for granted that our solicitors knew what they were doing, and assumed that they would have completed all the necessary checks, like contracts signed on both sides. I don't know if it were a case of things slipping through the cracks since our solicitor was on leave or what the story was, but in any case it's just ridiculous. Just off the phone from our solicitor's office for the 3rd time today chasing for an update/explanation, and still nothing. Absolutely fuming right now.

We have deliveries arranged, I gave my landlord notice (he is sound and won't leave me out on the street but the solicitors don't need to know that), and had annual leave arranged with work.

We and the vendors have agreed on Friday as our chosen closing day, and are going to keep in constant contact this week so we're each up to date on how the other side is doing, so there should hopefully be no chances of cold feet from them.

Just putting it out there...sale agreed since Nov 2020...fml! Slow doesn't come close, probate, land reg and compliance issues .. getting towards the end. Decent saving based on all similar properties in the area that have gone sale agreed in the last 24 months hence our patience. touch wood it actually eventually goes through

Well I pulled out of my sale today - was selling to investor dragging his heels - so just lost the plot -hopefully it’s a family this time . Fingers crossed .

Any luck yet

I don't know why you look at this at bidding against yourself. I would look at this as an effort to lock a house (good luck with it, assuming this is what you want!). Also, when things fail, its the EAs "sales" strategy I'd blame before blaming the seller.

Not at all, no expectations either way. If I felt the house was worth (to me) the asking I'd be happy to pay it. It's an offer, they're under no obligation to accept it, which they haven't.

And my house isn't for sale yet, but if we do put it up I'm unlikely to insist that the EA list it at a higher price. I'd be paying them for their expertise, would be silly to ignore it. Friend sold her house earlier this year and EA did the same, listed for less than they expected to get. I'm merely pointing out that this is something that EAs do deliberately.

Interestingly it's the same EA that valued mine and are selling the one we've an offer on, didn't use the under price tactic on the other house. Or maybe the vendor insisted it be listed at the price they want.

Possibly a stupid question, but when transferring the balance needed to pay for the purchase of a property can I walk into my bank and do a bank transfer? The maximum I can do per day online is €5,000 but the amount I'll need to transfer is higher than that. I'm presuming I can but I just want to make sure before I go in to do it.