To the surprise of almost no one who has ever dealt with a property transaction in the UK, we're only marginally closer to moving into the house we've still only allegedly purchased. It has come to the point where everyone is almost ready to exchange contracts. Once that has happened, it is all legally binding and (for the most part) there are usually no hiccups thereafter.
We had some survey work done on the house which discovered a few little but somewhat costly problems with the house. One was a leak in the roof. The other a problem with how the water tanks had been installed. The surveyor was keen to point out that these sort of issues were to be expected in a house of its age (approximately 120 years old). My dad read a copy of the report. He seemed pleased that the house was not about to imminently collapse in on itself and declared the structure fit to buy. Ange and I suggested we share the cost of the repairs with the seller.
Only, suggesting something to the seller isn't an entirely straight-forward procedure. We could go through the Estate Agent. However, as we're not paying them in this transaction and I have every reason to believe they're acting in their interest (i.e. commission) before anything else, we can't go through them. Good old Tim at Bridges is very quick to accuse us of holding up the process. I am entirely at a loss how we might hurry the process since absolutely nothing is relying on us individually. Our lawyer is often AWOL and our mortgage company just moved head offices, leaving thousands of people (including us) in a money lending limbo. Nevertheless, our accents combined with our unwillingness to rush ahead without paperwork in hand have Tim phoning me nearly daily to berate me. Even when I point out that we had all of our paperwork and things together in mid-May and it has since been with our hired help, my foreign-ness is still our undoing. It is the finest example of 1999 British customer service I have come across since we came back.
So, while we're to blame (and I can only imagine the conversations with other people in the chain), our lawyer has all but disappeared. The law firm we've retained is probably the least professional organisation I've ever come across. You can phone, but it is usually engaged (busy). If you do get through, you almost certainly go through to the answerphone. The answerphone message is the standard machine message (you can hear the crackling of the tape as you record), with no reference to the company or phone number... so, as you leave a message about private legal matters, you do so not entirely sure you're not telling some little old lady in Essex. Rather than return calls, they write us letters to ask us questions. The other day, they wrote us a letter. They misspelled 'Dudek' (yep, 5 letters inexplicably became 6) and made a couple of other errors. While they never caught the name misspelled, they did catch the other typos. Yet, rather than reprint the letter, the crossed it out with a ballpoint pen and corrected it above. Yes, we're being charged £50 for stationary and postage.
Meanwhile, our mortgage lending company seems to have checked out for a few weeks to move its head office. Our mortgage broker is perplexed and effusively apologetic. Nevertheless, we're a caught in position with thousands of other of having to wait over 6 weeks for a process that normally takes a few days. Despite having our mortgage broker explain this to Tim, Tim can't help but bring it up daily with the underlying implication being we're somehow in a credit crisis and he ought to kick us out for being too poor.
I think the underlying frustration on all parts is that, apart from this blog and occasionally asking Tim if it would be too much trouble to be polite, we're not biting. After all, "When in Rome." Today, Ange confidently explained to Tim that we were okay with it taking a little longer. We'd waited 4 months, an extra couple of days wasn't going to bother us. Tim's commission is on his mind. He wasn't convinced.
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