Part 2: Confessions of a House Move - The Inside Story
February 12, 2010
After an anxious few days of waiting, our second offer has finally been accepted. The vendors initially rejected it, obviously hoping we would just keep on increasing our offer. We decided to leave it a few days and see what happened. Actually, we were so concerned that another potential buyer would view the house we had fallen in love with and offer more than us that we decided we would increase our offer to the full asking price. However, the waiting paid off and just before I called the agent to increase our offer, she rang me and asked in a worried tone if we were still interested. I read the signals and said that we were still interested but were not willing to increase our offer. Half an hour later she called back to say that the vendors would accept.
It's obviously a great moment when your offer is accepted, but it's best not to start celebrating until you put the key in the door as so much can go wrong. The first thing you have to do is chose a solicitor. In our case the estate agent recommended one that they use regularly. You could easily assume that this is because they get a cut of the fee which may be the case, but it is more than likely that they like to recommend one that they know from experience will do a good job. After all, they want the sale to complete smoothly as well.
It is worth negotiating on the solicitor's fee as in a tough market they will want your business. We told them we had received a much lower quote elsewhere (we hadn't) and they matched it immediately. Next begins the long process of waiting for all the searches to be done and signing documents. The other advantage we are finding of using a local solicitor is that you can easily drop off all the important documents by hand without having to rely on the postal service. The sale is unable to proceed any further until the solicitors have had some documents back so you don't want to be delayed by a postal strike. Our vendors have specified an exchange of contracts within 28 days of contracts going out which I am told is fairly standard. We will obviously be doing everything we can to ensure we meet this deadline.
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