Solicitors, Sellers and Buyers

Let us begin in October 2019 with a moving of house.

It was all going splendidly, after a fashion, until the someone decided everyone else involved should be psychic and be able to act upon what she was thinking.

Let me make the selling/purchasing chain clear...

    there's our buyer
    there's us
    there's our seller and
    there's our seller's seller

Everything between us and our buyer was hunky dory. we were just waiting for our seller and her seller to reach an agreement, which to all intents and purposes, they had.
The problem lay in that their 'agreement' was verbal and neither had informed their respective solicitors.
As you may well know, if you are a UK resident, there is no moving forward until the solicitors of all parties involved are on the same page. Then, and only then, can an agreement be made on a moving/transfer of money date.

So there we all were ... waiting!

The we received a message from our seller demanding the moving date be something like the 4th of October (2019) and she acted like we already knew this. She, and this is where the psychic element comes in, had booked time off work so it HAD to happen then. We obviously informed our solicitors, who in turn tried to verify this with our sellers solicitor. They knew nothing about it and wouldn't proceed without confirmation from her AND her sellers solicitor. Of course verification couldn't be made as our sellers seller decided to go on holiday! The date was missed and our seller was extremely miffed!

And she said it was all our fault!

Eventually, after pressure from both our solicitor and hers, a date was set ... the 8th of November! So we booked a moving company (and a secure storage unit for all our possessions at out destination) and a hotel (supposedly only for week or two) and travelled north on the 7th of November. Everything had been agreed by all parties involved and we were finally going to our new home.

On the day, everything was ready for loading, bags were all packed and we were eager to be off. Eventually the truck with our belongings left and headed to the motorway. We then said our farewells family and neighbours before following.

As we crossed the Welsh border into England Julie's phone rang.
It was our seller who immediately began rant about how WE scuppered her plans to move when she wanted to and threatened to pull out of the deal because she had loads of other people who wanted her house. I won't go into detail but Julie, not one to be trifled with, gave her a tongue lashing and put her firmly in her place.

The rest of the journey was spent without a hitch and luckily we had little further interactions with our slightly strange seller.

On the 6th of December, 2019, after 3 weeks in a hotel, a week staying with friends and an awful lot of hard work - painting and decoration, new flooring and carpets and 11 new interior doors - we finally moved in to out new home, unpacking and began to make it ours.