A house purchasing question

Bailo · February 9, 2009

We're (theoretically) coming to the final stages of a house purchase, agreed a price back in November, had the valuation/survey done, got our mortgage offer through a couple of weeks ago. We were all ready to go see our solicitor last week to sign the contract and hand over the deposit, until we hear through the solicitors that the vendor is still looking for a property and hopes to offer on one that week.

Now, our rental contract is up at the end of this month, so we wanted to complete then - however, the vendor (who I've now spoken to personally) doesn't think she'll have completed by then (I agree). So we have managed to extend our rental until end of March and told the vendor this was the last possible extension we could get (landlord is advertising here now). I also informed her that end of March is the date of expiry on our mortgage offer, so we simply won't be able to buy her house if it gets delayed any more. Left it on Friday with her ringing me if her rejected offer on an empty property has been later accepted.

Had a voicemail today saying she still hadn't heard about her purchase and if her purchase went over into April she might be able to offer £200 for our rent - despite me telling her this wasn't possible and our mortgage expires before then. Rang her back and she's given me a load of guff about still waiting to hear on her purchase (I don't care whether she buys or not, just want her to sign and exchnage the damn contract) etc etc. Even coming up with "I'm sure you can extend your mortgage offer" - stupid to suggest anyway, but we can't, as the product doesn't exist anymore and I'm sure we'd lose it.

I emailed my solicitor this morning asking him to request a timetable from her for contract signing/exchange and within that, a completion of the end of March by the end of this week - hopefully in black and white she'll realise the problem, but she doesn't seem to be getting it verbally. Is there anything we can do other than just threaten that the deal is off? She seems quite confident we don't want to do that (we don't, already £700 committed to this) but is it worth making the threat? She isn't considering just getting the sale done and renting whilst looking, which in this market I thought would be the sensible thing.

Any thoughts? Sorry for the long post but kind of at our wit's end with this vendor.

Molby · February 9, 2009

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