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

My solicitor put in the request for drawdown last Friday with BOI, forwarded the last of the documentation to them on Monday just gone, and my mortgage advisor at BOI phoned me today to say that the funds had been transferred and would be with my solicitor tomorrow.

Huge Congrats to you and your fiancé ! That is an achievement. We are quite similar - 3 times different closing date in the last 2 weeks. Hopefully the keys are soon to come - this week or next.

When we got our mortgage approval my wife was still on probation. They gave us AIP but there was a clause that we couldn't draw down until the probation was over.

That was with KBC

Banks will progress your Mortgage Approval even if you are in probation. You are not however allowed to drawdown before probation period is over, which should be okay since your sale will definitely not close during your probation period as you would still be within your rental notice. Your Landlord can’t close the sale if the property is not vacant. Good luck!

How long would people expect a purchase to take from sale agreed to receiving the keys in the case of a FTB (with mortgage) buying an unoccupied property?

That's pretty lengthy, was hoping for 6-8 also. Anything in particular hold it up?

We were told as somebody mentioned above 6 - 8 weeks, but here comes the but......

15 June sale agreed - then solicitors went on vacation - one week ours - one week vendors.

Signed contracts 12 August - and we are few days of collecting keys now. Also bank is having a backlogs on drawdown - so better mentally prepare for 12 weeks ( anything shorter will be a bonus).

Insurance company came back pretty late in the day asking for some tests to be done due to family history but it would have taken about 10 weeks minimum regardless, August was prime annual leave season so solicitors/brokers on both sides were periodically on leave.

That reminds me of how my friend bought his house about 20 years ago.

One of his in-laws worked in an estate agent. Saw a house coming up down the the road from their house. Told my friend that to bid and they would keep other bids away from the vendor. My friend bought the house very cheaply. A few years later the other sister bought a house on the same road.

I wonder did they do the same for the other sister that time.

Jesus! That's terrible, the poor vendor.

When I was selling my old house 6 years ago (3 bed semi D in a nice part of Bray) I got the impression the EA wanted a quick sale on it or was up to something like this.

Had one viewing, a buyer in offering 10k under asking straight away and the EA on to me saying to take it and there was nothing left to get out of it.

I wanted to tease it out a little bit longer and literally had her shouting down the phone at me saying I'm being stupid and was going to lose the sale.

Held on a week and got another 10k out if the buyer.

The house sold again the following year for 70k more. :mad:

We put so much trust in estate agents to handle some of the biggest sums of money we will be working with in our lives, it's absolutely infuriating to hear about them doing things like this. In retrospect I should have cut my losses and went with another EA.

I believe thats the way its mostly done now. So it would be much harder to pull that stroke.

But when I was buyiong not too long ago i did find that some EAs were just blanking me. I would say, i will give you a call next week when i decide how much im going to bid and they would say "well to be fair, its probably not worth you making a bid as you havent all your ducks in a row yet" or "really, they are already taking to their preferred bidder so i wouldnt bother."

Are the vendors awaiting Probate to be granted? This can slow the whole thing down significantly. If you don't know the answer to this already, then ask now. We bought a house last year that took ~5 months to close because of the probate issue. My own Granny died a year before this and her estate was granted probate at the same time, so there can be huge discrepancies in the time it takes, depending on any queries lodged.

When we went SA on the house we were told that probate had been issued but later told that wasn't the case, so I would definitely check it out.

Yeah that's what i thought

We were in the same boat last year- FTB, nobody in the house. Sale agreed on 17th July, keys on September 18th with KBC. They'd given us AIP with most of the underwriting done so that part didn't take as long as it could have, even though it seemed to drag on like an ice age at the time :)

In fairness it involved being on the phone and coordinating stuff everyday but it was definitely worth it. And our solicitor was brilliant- he was all over it all the time.