Seller is saying there is a delay in booking a surveyor

[wanttosell]

Hi all,

Need some advise from those who have recently sold or and in the middle of selling.

Back ground: We have accepted an offer for our property and we have exchanced solitor details. This all happen last month.

EA assured me that the buyers mortgage was agreed in principle, and that they would be getting a surveyor booked for the vaulation. That was in early July.

We are now nearly at the end of Aug and no surveyors have been booked to view the property. Every week from the initial offer coming in writting I have been asking the EA as to when the surveyors is coming and he said "... there is a big back log for surveyors as there is not many of them around due to the ression ... many have left the industry ... but we should hear something end of this week or early next week"

Every week its the same response, next week we should be there but still no surveyor.

Last week I asked my solictors to ask the buyers solictors if the surveyors have been book, they was told its being book.

Is this correct what the EA is telling me that there is a big delay with booking surveyors?

Have others found the same thing? Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Kaz]

IMO nearly 2 months delay is totally unacceptable. I find it very hard to believe that, in the current property market, the mortgage lender has such a huge back-log. It could be that you're just being fobbed off.

If you took your house off the market when you accepted the offer, if I was you, I'd put it back on until the mortgage valuation has been done.

If your buyer genuinely wants to buy your house, that should motivate them to make more of a fuss with the lender. If they don't, you can stop wasting your time and money and hopefully find another buyer.

In my experience (I buy and sell houses for a living), the mortgage valuation is usually done within a week of booking it.

[New Homes Expert]

Esate Agent is probably lying! I know this is rare but...............!

[ComareTheMortgageMarket]

It may be a lie although sometimes mortgages do take a little longer to process for reasons beyond the brokers control. Ive had cases that have been delayed by a month or 2 just because we were waiting on the latest years accounts to be completed. Some lenders also offer free valuations so they will require ALL the supporting documentation to be verified prior to instruction of a valuation. I would insist the estate agent tell you what the exact reason for the delay is. It has nothing to do with the lack of surveyors and if one has been booked you should be looking at a maximum turnaround time of a week.

[wanttosell]

Thanks all for the comments. And the conclusion was it was lies being cooked up the estate agent as it turns out the buyer was having issues getting a mortgage...

However I have been informed that survery has been this week and then paper work from the mortgage provider (upon confirmed vaulation) will be processed with then next 10 days.

Lets see what other tricks they come up with between not and exchange...

[mj31]

Sorry to hear about your frustration. I sympathise as I know what it is like to have been deceived as well, but we were deceived by the actual buyer (just last week!). My advice is to trust your instincts - if you smell a rat, you are usually right. I just wish we had trusted ours...

We had our house up for sale in May and after a lot of interest, we accepted an offer after just 3 weeks. The buyer seemed genuine and was in a position that we felt would produce a speedy sale. In the meantime, we found the perfect house, paid for surveys, searches, etc and everything went through the solictors without a hitch.

However, our buyer was stalling all the time and didnt seem in a rush to exchange, despite having 2 independant valuations to confirm the value of our property (both came back fine). We kept asking them for weeks to exchange and each time they kept saying they were waiting for their official mortgage offer.

Then last week, they called and said they were pulling out as they "believed" our house was worth £13k less than what they were paying (both valuations they had confirmed their original offer was spot on and no problems had been reported - even the survyors that came round told me it was a great property!).

The buyer then said they had been looking at other houses over the last few weeks (when they were telling me they were waiting for mortgage offer) and have decided to go for another house which is a bit cheaper (although they agree its inferior to our property).

As you can imagine - we werent impressed as we had been decieved (a few weeks ago, we had another buyer on stand-by, but not anymore) and we now have fees for valuation/searches to pay for. The buyer seemed to be fairly wealthy, so their financial loss was pocket money.

We appreciate that nothing is official until contracts are exchanged, but something needs to be put into place to protect people going this far and then backing out (applies to sellers as well) for no good reason (and being deceiving!).

Good luck with your sale, I hope it all goes through ok. But trust your instincts and 9 times out of 10, you will be right!

[mj31]

Forgot to say, as I know people will be wondering why there were 2 valuations - the buyer orginally had a valuation, but they didnt get the mortgage in the end as there was questions about the buyer's proof of income. So, as they desperatley (or so it seemed) wanted the house, their parents went for a buy-to-let mortgage to buy the place and then rent the place back to them (I assume they would really be paying off the mortgage but via their parents). Hence the 2nd valuation via a different lender.