Diny
20th June 2005, 05:29 AM
Where to start? What follows will be the ramblings of a crazy woman, pushed to the brink of sanity by stuffed up property market rules and a dishonest 'buyer' out to please herself.
That's the first vent over and done with.
Just to brin you all up to date with our nightmare. You may be aware that we accepted an offer on this property yonks ago. Not sure of the exact date but I think it was around end of Feb/March time. The 'buyer' had first been to see the house at the end of November and instantly fell in love with the place. I distinctly remember asking her what her position was regarding her property. She informed us that she had sold and was now needing to find a place to live pretty pronto.
Bonus !!! (we thought) .... somebody who's fell for the house and is in a position of buy now. There followed a abit of back and forth banter regarding stupid offers and subsequent refusals, in the end, we dropped the price by 20k (albeit overpriced by a big chunk in the first place so the reduction wasn't as painful as it sounds). However, the price drop was on the proviso of a quick sale. Both parties happy ..... let the games commence.
Jeeze ........... how wrong were we??????
A very very long story which I'm not going to bore you all with. But - it turns out that our buyer had actually NOT sold her property. She had somebody who had expressed an interest in it but that was it. Then ..... several weeks down the line (with the agreed exchange date of 13th May getting closer) - she tells me that her husand (they've split up) will be buying her out of the house. Alarm bells start to ring ...... surely this would mean that his legal work would have to start from scratch. Our solicitor said that it would be tight but we'd make it if all parties pulled their fingers out.
2 weeks before we were due to exchange we hear that he has only just contacted his solicitor to start the proceedings. :wah :wah
So ... that's when we had to change our flight dates. our May 21st departure was changed to July 16 (we have the added complication of having to fit in with hubby working away for a month at a time with an oil company in Egypt.)
Naturally the May 13th came and went. No worries, we were told that all was on track, we would exchange on May 17th instead. Abit of a bummer 'cos we could have still made the 21st flights but realised that the extra weeks we'd been handed were actually a blessing in disguise.
May 17th .... no exchange. Last minute hitches by all accounts. We were told that it would now be 27th May.
Yep - you guessed it .... 27th came and went ..... no exchange. By this time I've had to cancel the shipping company twice.
Hubby came home on leave .... threw his teddy out of the pram ... closely followed by my teddy. He'd been away for over a month and by the time he returned there had been no progress on the sale. We phoned the buyer and told her that if she didn't hurry up and sort herself out by 10th June we would be reconsidering whether to sell her the house or not. Abit of a risk but we reckoned that: A. We needed to know one way or another .... is she buying it or isn't she, and B. If it made her jack it all in and withdraw her offer then it's a fair bet she wasn't going to buy it in the first place.
The threat did the trick, the following Monday morning there was a flurry of activity and her and her ex-hubby started the ball rolling with all thier legal separation stuff.
Exchange was/is being held up due to the fact that he is buying her out of the marital home. Until the title deeds are transferred between the 2 of them, her funds for buying this house won't be in place, therefore she can't sign because (on paper) she doesn't have the money.
Not only are they dealing with the purchase of this place, they had a business which they ran together which is being closed down, they have 2 small kids, they have cars, lorries and all kinds of stuff that needs to be legally sorted out.
Last week they all sat around a table and thrashed it all out. They reached an agreement and everybody was happy. This now meant that her funds are in place, she can exchange contracts with us .... the wheels can be set in motion and ....... with just 4 weeks to go until we leave ..... we have the green light.
But no .... that's too simple. At the last minute, his solicitor has decided that she's not happy with just a verbal figure regarding the value of her pension, she wants a full breakdown of it's value. So ...... just as pens were quavering over the dotted line, yet another hurdle was put up to delay the proceedings.
Our buyer - who is a real pair of wet knickers and has absolutely NO concept of what we're doing, has tral - la - la'd her way along and just about managed to pull her finger out and request a copy of this damn pension statement.
I spoke to her on Friday and told her that because she seems to be making no effort at all to hurry up we can only presume that she is not serious about buying the house. She broke down and cried that she WAS serious, she is desparate to move in and that she is doing her best to chase the elusive piece of paper which will act as the last piece in this god forsaken jigsaw.
It remains to be seen how long it will take for this final hurdle to be cleared.
In the meantime, my nerves are shot. Mark has had to go back to work not knowing what the hell is happening. We have the shipping co booked for next Monday .... do I cancel them yet again (we have no confidence in sending the shipment off without exchange of contracts).
We sold the car yonks ago and have been borrowing a friends clapped out T-reg Daewoo since then, however they need it back so I'm due to be car-less (not an abundance of public transport where we live - one bus to town on a Wednesday morning).
So ..... we are due to arrive in Auckland 4 weeks today. As to whether we'll be on that flight remains to be seen.
Our route to PR was very simple. Due to having a Kiwi spouse and 2 'half breed' kids, PR was little more than signing a few dotted lines. It stands to reason that somewhere along the line we would come in for our fair share of hassle. Obviously the house sale is the provider of that hassle. At the end of the day, it's no big deal. NZ will still be there, we've waited 15 years to make this move, what's another small delay at this stage in the process. There's folks out there alot worse off than us. The other day I saw the dad of one of my best mates. He (unintentionally) made me feel quite bad about griping on about another possible delay. You see my life long friend (his daughter) died 6 years ago of breast cancer. He said that NZ was always on her list of places to visit and that she'd be cheering me on and wishing me well. He said 'go and do it girl .... for yourself, for your kids and for Alison'.
That kind of put it all in pospective in a way :oops:
We've now realised that no matter how we rant, rave, curse, worry, fret, complain and moan about the situation, there's absolutely naff all that we can do about it. We don't have another interested buyer on the sidelines ........if we had things would be very different !!!!!!
So now we wait. All I can say is that we will be there real soon. Hopefully we'll make those July 16th flights, if not we'll be just after that. The fact that the UK is presently melting in temps akin to a hot Spanish summer makes the whole process slightly more enjoyable.
Everything happens for a reason and it's not for us to try and change the direction of fate - no matter how much we want to.
To all of you already out there ......... hope to see you soon. To everybody still here and going through any kind of immigration/property selling s**t .......... you're not alone. I've kept it bottled up for too long and have recently been getting a few PMs from my forum mates wishing us well in our imminent departure ...... it's done good to publicly vent my spleen.
I only hope that I can soon pass on some good news ..... watch this space and thanks for reading.
Diny
That's the first vent over and done with.
Just to brin you all up to date with our nightmare. You may be aware that we accepted an offer on this property yonks ago. Not sure of the exact date but I think it was around end of Feb/March time. The 'buyer' had first been to see the house at the end of November and instantly fell in love with the place. I distinctly remember asking her what her position was regarding her property. She informed us that she had sold and was now needing to find a place to live pretty pronto.
Bonus !!! (we thought) .... somebody who's fell for the house and is in a position of buy now. There followed a abit of back and forth banter regarding stupid offers and subsequent refusals, in the end, we dropped the price by 20k (albeit overpriced by a big chunk in the first place so the reduction wasn't as painful as it sounds). However, the price drop was on the proviso of a quick sale. Both parties happy ..... let the games commence.
Jeeze ........... how wrong were we??????
A very very long story which I'm not going to bore you all with. But - it turns out that our buyer had actually NOT sold her property. She had somebody who had expressed an interest in it but that was it. Then ..... several weeks down the line (with the agreed exchange date of 13th May getting closer) - she tells me that her husand (they've split up) will be buying her out of the house. Alarm bells start to ring ...... surely this would mean that his legal work would have to start from scratch. Our solicitor said that it would be tight but we'd make it if all parties pulled their fingers out.
2 weeks before we were due to exchange we hear that he has only just contacted his solicitor to start the proceedings. :wah :wah
So ... that's when we had to change our flight dates. our May 21st departure was changed to July 16 (we have the added complication of having to fit in with hubby working away for a month at a time with an oil company in Egypt.)
Naturally the May 13th came and went. No worries, we were told that all was on track, we would exchange on May 17th instead. Abit of a bummer 'cos we could have still made the 21st flights but realised that the extra weeks we'd been handed were actually a blessing in disguise.
May 17th .... no exchange. Last minute hitches by all accounts. We were told that it would now be 27th May.
Yep - you guessed it .... 27th came and went ..... no exchange. By this time I've had to cancel the shipping company twice.
Hubby came home on leave .... threw his teddy out of the pram ... closely followed by my teddy. He'd been away for over a month and by the time he returned there had been no progress on the sale. We phoned the buyer and told her that if she didn't hurry up and sort herself out by 10th June we would be reconsidering whether to sell her the house or not. Abit of a risk but we reckoned that: A. We needed to know one way or another .... is she buying it or isn't she, and B. If it made her jack it all in and withdraw her offer then it's a fair bet she wasn't going to buy it in the first place.
The threat did the trick, the following Monday morning there was a flurry of activity and her and her ex-hubby started the ball rolling with all thier legal separation stuff.
Exchange was/is being held up due to the fact that he is buying her out of the marital home. Until the title deeds are transferred between the 2 of them, her funds for buying this house won't be in place, therefore she can't sign because (on paper) she doesn't have the money.
Not only are they dealing with the purchase of this place, they had a business which they ran together which is being closed down, they have 2 small kids, they have cars, lorries and all kinds of stuff that needs to be legally sorted out.
Last week they all sat around a table and thrashed it all out. They reached an agreement and everybody was happy. This now meant that her funds are in place, she can exchange contracts with us .... the wheels can be set in motion and ....... with just 4 weeks to go until we leave ..... we have the green light.
But no .... that's too simple. At the last minute, his solicitor has decided that she's not happy with just a verbal figure regarding the value of her pension, she wants a full breakdown of it's value. So ...... just as pens were quavering over the dotted line, yet another hurdle was put up to delay the proceedings.
Our buyer - who is a real pair of wet knickers and has absolutely NO concept of what we're doing, has tral - la - la'd her way along and just about managed to pull her finger out and request a copy of this damn pension statement.
I spoke to her on Friday and told her that because she seems to be making no effort at all to hurry up we can only presume that she is not serious about buying the house. She broke down and cried that she WAS serious, she is desparate to move in and that she is doing her best to chase the elusive piece of paper which will act as the last piece in this god forsaken jigsaw.
It remains to be seen how long it will take for this final hurdle to be cleared.
In the meantime, my nerves are shot. Mark has had to go back to work not knowing what the hell is happening. We have the shipping co booked for next Monday .... do I cancel them yet again (we have no confidence in sending the shipment off without exchange of contracts).
We sold the car yonks ago and have been borrowing a friends clapped out T-reg Daewoo since then, however they need it back so I'm due to be car-less (not an abundance of public transport where we live - one bus to town on a Wednesday morning).
So ..... we are due to arrive in Auckland 4 weeks today. As to whether we'll be on that flight remains to be seen.
Our route to PR was very simple. Due to having a Kiwi spouse and 2 'half breed' kids, PR was little more than signing a few dotted lines. It stands to reason that somewhere along the line we would come in for our fair share of hassle. Obviously the house sale is the provider of that hassle. At the end of the day, it's no big deal. NZ will still be there, we've waited 15 years to make this move, what's another small delay at this stage in the process. There's folks out there alot worse off than us. The other day I saw the dad of one of my best mates. He (unintentionally) made me feel quite bad about griping on about another possible delay. You see my life long friend (his daughter) died 6 years ago of breast cancer. He said that NZ was always on her list of places to visit and that she'd be cheering me on and wishing me well. He said 'go and do it girl .... for yourself, for your kids and for Alison'.
That kind of put it all in pospective in a way :oops:
We've now realised that no matter how we rant, rave, curse, worry, fret, complain and moan about the situation, there's absolutely naff all that we can do about it. We don't have another interested buyer on the sidelines ........if we had things would be very different !!!!!!
So now we wait. All I can say is that we will be there real soon. Hopefully we'll make those July 16th flights, if not we'll be just after that. The fact that the UK is presently melting in temps akin to a hot Spanish summer makes the whole process slightly more enjoyable.
Everything happens for a reason and it's not for us to try and change the direction of fate - no matter how much we want to.
To all of you already out there ......... hope to see you soon. To everybody still here and going through any kind of immigration/property selling s**t .......... you're not alone. I've kept it bottled up for too long and have recently been getting a few PMs from my forum mates wishing us well in our imminent departure ...... it's done good to publicly vent my spleen.
I only hope that I can soon pass on some good news ..... watch this space and thanks for reading.
Diny