selling a house - is this the norm?

I'm at the end of my tether as I'm in the process of selling my house but it is taking so long for the sale to go through. Sale is through an auctioneer and this is what has happened so far:

Sale agreed and booking deposit paid by purchaser to auctioneer end of April.

Auctioneer sent a letter to our solicitor to notify him of the sale and to request contracts be sent out to purchaser's solicitor.

I rang the solicitor 4 weeks later to ask why we hadn't heard from him. He had no idea the sale was going through as the auctioneer put the wrong name down on the letter. I rectified the mistake and asked him to send out contracts. I asked solicitor how long it should take for contracts to go out, get signed, and return for us to sign. 2 weeks I was told.

Received an irate call from auctioneer 3 weeks later. He had received an angry call from the buyer's wondering where the bloody contracts were? I said I'd ring my solicitor. Rang him and was told his wife had just had a baby and things were hectic. Told me he send contracts out the week before.

Received a call 2 weeks later from auctioneer saying the buyers were changing solicitor. Could we resend contracts to new solicitor. Instructed solicitor to do the same, which he did 2 weeks ago.

Rang the auctioneers office last Thursday to be told contracts were signed that day (Thursday last week), and should be with our solicitor early this week.

Rang our solicitor Monday and today, still has not received contracts. He is contacting their solicitor again to see when they were sent out.

Meanwhile we have taken a 6 month lease on rented accommodation (under the advice of both solicitor and auctioneer way back when sale was agreed - they gave us an estimate move out date of end of June). We had booked removals as the closure date on the contracts was in 3 days.

My questions are:

Is this the norm? The solicitor and auctioneers incompetence is breath taking imo. I have to pay them approx E2000 for their work. If I showed this incompetence at work I'd be fired.

When, in reality should we expect the sale to close and money released?

The solicitor mentioned the delay in receiving the contracts this time could be because the (buyers) solicitor could be waiting for the deposit cheque to clear. Does this sound right?

Hi dave

Sorry to hear about all this hassle. There are 5 parties involved, you, the purchaser, the auctioneer and two solicitors. 6 parties if you include the new solicitors. These things happen and you will have to sit on everyone to make sure it goes through. Do you know who the purchaser is? I would contact them and work with them to get the deal pushed through. It might suit them to delay it or they might be just as annoyed at you.

I have to say though, that I find the following strange:

I rang the solicitor 4 weeks later to ask why we hadn't heard from him. He had no idea the sale was going through as the auctioneer put the wrong name down on the letter.

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I think that you must take some of the blame for this. You should have been on to your solicitor immediately you agreed the sale to tell him to expect to hear from the auctioneer. But it sounds like a poor solicitor who gets a sale agreement and doesn't ring the auctioneer to find out what it's about.

Brendan

Brendan said:

I think that you must take some of the blame for this. You should have been on to your solicitor immediately you agreed the sale to tell him to expect to hear from the auctioneer. But it sounds like a poor solicitor who gets a sale agreement and doesn't ring the auctioneer to find out what it's about.

Brendan

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Point taken and agreed.

Brendan said:

It might suit them to delay it or they might be just as annoyed at you.

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They are in just as much of a rush for it to go through from what I understand.

daveg said:

The solicitor mentioned the delay in receiving the contracts this time could be because the (buyers) solicitor could be waiting for the deposit cheque to clear. Does this sound right?

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Does this sound correct?

When we were buying our (new build) apartment, we got a phone call from the estate agent ,around two weeks after we had signed the contracts, wondering where our contracts were.

It turned out that after we had signed them that our solicitor had put them back on our file and failed to send them to the builder's solicitor.

Nothing takes my breath away anymore!

I think what pisses me off the most is that when I rang the estate agent yesterday asking him why the buyers hadn't returned contracts yet he told me to tell my solicitor to get onto their solicitor as it was not his responsibility (or words to that effect). However he had no problem ringing me for the buyers when they had not recieved contracts at the start. I mean who does the estate agent work for? Me or the buyers?

Your estate agent works for you to sell the house and gets you the best price possible for the property. Once the sale is agreed, all legal details i.e contracts etc. are dealt with by the 2 solicitors involved.

If you have any questions regarding legal details, your solicitor is the one to question.

So strange as it sounds "it has nothing to do with me " is correct......

I went through a similar experience recently and the process dragged on for months with very little info coming back to me
In the UK typically people show their own homes and maintain contact with the other parties in the chain. In Ireland you rarely meet the people you are dealing with. The estate agent is another route to these people

I was in a chain and found out at 5.30 the day before I was due to move that the closing date had been pushed out again (three times)by the sellers of the house I was moving to. This meant that four parties in a chain were being messed around with about 12 hours notice.

I got onto sellers estate agent and gave them a lashing. 10 mins later the est agent rang back and stated that sellers were annoyed at me for pushing the dates out.

Turns out there had been a communication error between 2 sets of solicitors, they got onto theirs, I got into mine at about 5.55 and the move went ahead for everybody the following morning
Point is, maybe your purchasers are not ready to move and they are delaying, or they are as desperate to move, you should keep trying the estate agent route, and do not be afraid to be a pest. Ring up 2-3 times a day solicitor and estate agent and look out for number 1.

I have dealt with 4 solicitors over the last 10 years. Three of them were utterly useless, one of them I had to report to the Law society and my bank had to threaten to do the same. Not only did his incompetence delay matters by nearly two months he also kept 20 thousand pounds of mine in his client account for 7 months despite written instructions to clear a bridging loan. He then refused to pay the interest that had accrued on the loan. I only found out about it when I rang the bank to get the balance on a car loan. He also used the excuse that his wife had had a baby for his incompetence. I pointed out to his secretary that he must have known that his wife was pregnant and it was reasonable to expect that he would have known that the arrival of a baby was the end result of said pregnancy. Given this and that he had 6-9 months notice he should have arranged for one of his partners to cover for him while he was out.
I toyed with the idea of sending him a big red nose and a green curly wig so that prospective clients would know his true calling.

For the record my current solicitor is superb, couldn’t recommend him enough.

wobbie said:

So strange as it sounds "it has nothing to do with me " is correct......

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You missed my point. I agree with what your saying but my point was the estate agent was more than happy to call me for the buyers to ask where the contracts were. However he was not willing to do this for me, yet at the end of the day I'm the one paying him.

Purple said:

I pointed out to his secretary that he must have known that his wife was pregnant and it was reasonable to expect that he would have known that the arrival of a baby was the end result of said pregnancy. Given this and that he had 6-9 months notice he should have arranged for one of his partners to cover for him while he was out.
I toyed with the idea of sending him a big red nose and a green curly wig so that prospective clients would know his true calling.

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It's just a pity you couldn't have given this explanation to him directly.!!

Hi Stobear,
He called me the same day, his secretary had related the conversation to him and he wasn't a happy bunny. I then asked him how much of a discount he was giving me, as he was unavailable to carry out the task that I was paying him for and his absence was entirely foreseeable. I asked him why he hasn't done the paperwork before his wife was due to have the baby since the purchase should have been closed before he did a bunk.
I didn't shout or raise my voice but he started shouting and hung up the phone. I think that the fact that I was 23 at the time and he was 40 odd and was questioning the way he did business may have contributed to his ire.