Still No Closing Date on Contract

We put a deposit on a house end of MAY and were advised that
the vendors did not know when their new house would be ready
(new build) but we would get a date the end of July and it would
be latest mid october that the sale would close.

We are FTB and when first week of august came and we still had
no date we got onto our solicitor. We explained situation and
advised that he should put pressure on the vendors to agree a
date or we would look elsewhere for a house.

Three weeks later our solicitor has still not managed to get a
closing date from the vendors. Two weeks ago he got
the contracts with "date to be advised" and we told him we would
not sign a contract with no date.

It is almost THREE MONTHS now since we handed over our deposit and we are becoming extremely anxious. He advised last week that he got a letter from
the vendors solicitor stating it would be "approximately" 28th October!!

We advised our solicitor that an approximate date was no use to us as we were changing counties and childrens schools!!

He called this monday and advised that he spoke to their solicitor (finally) and she has no news but he hopes to have news and we can sign contracts by end of the week.

The way things have been going the end of the week will come and more than likely he will say he has no news.

Whats going on? Why is it taking so long (3 months since handing over deposit) and is our solicitor just bloody useless or do the vendors have something up their sleeve.

We told the solicitor we will sign anything at this stage rather than loose the house but he said not to worry!!!

I can't stand one more day of this slow, painful torture!!! Help!

Your vendors don't want to be tied into a closing date. If they want to sell their house, then that is one thing they have to agree.

Your choices are really:

1. Get them to fix a date to complete and sign contracts on that basis
2. Sign contracts but with no closing date - madness.
3. If they will not confirm a closing date, walk away.


It is not the solicitors. It is the vendors. Its very hard but yoru vendors want the best of both worlds i.e. signed contracts but no presssure to move and you just have to decide if you can live with it.

mf

Not meaning to add more worry to what is an already frustrating situation, but remember to bear in mind that until contracts are signed, the vendors are entitled to accept a higher offer at any time from other interested purchasers. Property prices tend to rise over the summer period, so the property may well be worth more now that it was in May, and your vendors are probably aware of this.

If you finally do get them to agree a closing date, often contracts will include a penalty clause whereby if the purchasers delay completion past the agreed date they pay a penalty (usually expressed as a percentage). I'm not sure whether this penalty works both ways, but maybe other posters can advise...

Thanks for that MF1.

I suppose our option at this time is to wait and see what the solicitor comes up with by Friday!

Asking price for houses in that area have gone up by 20 thousand (surprise, surprise) since we put our deposit down so we are worried that the vendors aren't too pushed if we buy their house or not as they can always get a new buyer who will go with their agenda and may even give them more money???

I'm hoping that as FTB's who have everything in place that this is not the case and they would rather go with us now at this stage than start looking for a new buyer in a similar position all over again (which might jeopordise their own purchase)!

Any thoughts or am I just driving myself crazy with "what if" 's???