Yesterday i was in Leeds because i had to sign all my house documents, pay my deposit and solicitor fees ready to complete this Friday (before the end of the month, thus not putting ourselves in the position whereby the vendor starts asking for extra costs).

In order to do this i left work (in Kent) on Tuesday evening, got home, packed my bags and then drove up to Leeds that night. Unfortunately, i had to stay late at work helping someone with there laptop so i wasn't able to get on the motorway until 9pm. I got to Leeds at 3am on Wednesday morning.
After meeting with my solicitor during the day and signing my documents, i drove back from Leeds and got back at half past midnight. Despite this, i was in work on time today.

My point in explaining this is to illustrate how i have been going out of my way to get everything done for the end of this month, so that the vendor could not threaten us with extra incurred costs.

However, despite all my and my solicitors efforts, it would appear that today the vendor has opposed the rights that have been stipulated on the TP1 form.
This form has already been approved by her solicitors.
The rights in question are those pertaining to the land she is retaining. The form has been drafted to allow the land to remain unfettered apart from allowing us rights to access her land in the case of any services needing repair (water / elec / gas). However, the vendor has said that none of our utilities run through her land and thus, no such land rights need to exist.

Obviously this is a big deal. If we do have electricity cables or water pipes running through her land, then with the changes in the TP1 form she is proposing, we will not be able to acess them in the event of maintenance. I need to obtain cabling and digging records to ascertain where exactly these cables and pipes are. I would have thought that as the vendor is certain that we will not need to access her land for these purposes then she would have evidenxce to prove it. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case.

So, i have had to ask my solicitor to request that she grant us extra time to go and make these enquiries ourselves. Without hard proof that we will not require access, there is no way that we can proceed.

I can't believe that after all the fuss she has made about completing before the end of the month, that she is now delaying things on the eve of completion. If she is so certain that she knows where the pipes are, then why can't she agree to the TP1 form as it currently stands, knowing that we will never need to access her land anyway?

I have decided the woman is mad.

The latest...

Since agreeing to proceed with the sale with the land behind the property being unfettered, the TP1 is being drafted in accordance with what we have agreed. This hasn't been a smooth process because the vendor's solicitor didn't tell my solicitor the her plans for the land at the beginning. Instead, they were uncommunicative almost to the point of being obstructive and my solicitor has had to try and draft this form in the dark. He has done it on a trial and error basis, submitting the form and waiting for it to be returned to ammend it. As a result, its' drafting has taken longer than he had expected. If the vendor's solicitors had given my solicitors a copy of the TP1 form that they had drafted for the retained land, we would have been so much more informed as to what rights to place on the TP1 form for our land.
Because of all of this, there has been another delay.

As a result the vendor has said that if the sale doesn't go through before the end of April, she will be looking to me to reimburse her for next months mortgage repayment and also the increase in her soilicitors fees.

As you can imagine, after everything, i would rather pull out of the sale than give her more money.

Fortunately, my solicitor has called me to say that he has completed the TP1 form and that is has been approved by the vendor's solicitors, so all that needs to happen now is for me to sign and exchange and for them to 'draw down' my mortgage loan from my lender ready for completion.

Deal Breaker part 2..

My solicitor just rang and said that the vendor will in no way agree to a covenant. The wants to keep the land unfettered. She intends to use the land as garden and 'for her own aesthetic', but she will not put any restrictions of height or purpose onto the land.
She claims that we have 'known this all along', (but of course we haven't as we were told in the beginning that the vendor wanted to build an artist studio on it!).

I have to ring my sister to hear her thoughts and also speak with the estate agents as my initial thoughts are that after all the concessions we have made to make this sale go through, (agreeing to absorb the extra costs for repair work that the survey threw up, etc) that should any other problems arise, that it would be the vendor's turn to move. She has been rude and threatening throughout and now it looks as if the tables are about to turn.

The situation is difficult as i do understand her point of view. If i had just bought a piece of land, i wouldn't want someone else dictating what i can and can not do with it. However, in order to sell the house i do think that she needs to be a little more understanding of her buyer.

As a result i decided to contact the Estate Agents and see whether they would have more joy speaking with the vendor than us. I wrote them a long letter explaining the situation and begging them for their help. They in turn tried speaking with the vendor about a covenant but she was immovable.

So, I contacted the planning office to see whether any plans had already been submitted for the land. None had. I also spoke with them about what plans had been passed and were likely to be passed in that area. I learned that on the street, not a single property had been granted planning permission for a two story building to be built on the land at the back and that it was highly unlikely that one ever would. The worst case scenario, they believed would be a single story unit for office use.

After much discussion, my sister and I decided to continue with the sale, despite everything. Having seen the property (our solicitor had not), at first glance we hadn't expected the extra land at the back to be ours anyway (as it looks like it is separate from the property). With this in mind, and also after seeking advice from The Land Registry, we figured that the risk wasn't as large as our soliciotor had originally made out.

Deal breaker?

It is a rocky road we have been walking and just before the sun is about to break over the hills, we come to our last hurdle. They say it is always darkest before dawn and this is no exception.

All my searches have now come back on the property at Wesley Road, everything is in place and ready to complete other than the drafting of the TP1 form that states the land rights of our property and the back ot the garden that the vendor is retaining.

Apparently, the current vendor has said to my solicitor that she wants to use the retained land as garden however, she wants to retain the right to do what she will with the land in the future and she wants the TP1 form to state this.

My solicitor has said that he would not advise me buying the house under these circumstances and he is trying to get her to agree to putting a covenant in place. This would mean that any future changes to the land would have to be agreed by both parties (her and us). It would outline restrictions on the height of any proposed building and also purpose, thus avoiding the potential scenario of her building something that would negatively affect the value of our property. It would also mean that in the event of her deciding to sell the land on that any future owner would have to discuss plans with us too.

On one level, it feels 'a bit rum' to have to do this as the property is hers and on one level she should be able to do what she likes with it. However, she has proved herself to be far from trustworthy, what with her constant threats to 'pull out' of the sale, so i do not trust her at all. Of course, normally when you buy a house, the boundaries were set at the time of the house build so none of this kind of thing usually matters, however it is very different when land has been newly divided and when drafting a TP1 form.

So, this is it.
If she won't agree to a covenant, then we will have to pull out. I would rather lose £1,000-2,000 now than get a mortgage for over 100,000 on a property that could be worth half that at some point in the future. As far as i can see, no solicitor would advise their client to buy a house under these circumstances, so the vendor is going to have to decide if she really wants to sell the house or not.

We shall find out this week.

My other half and I

..went to Devon last weekend. Yay!
We only went for one night but it was a great break and true chill out.
Our reason for going was to to buy a Landrover from Hartland near Biddeford. What a lovely part of the country that is.
The Landy is a lightweight ex MOD 1976 seriesIII model with a canvas top. It even has the army pick axe and shovel on the back. I have been getting flashbacks of my brothers action man dolls and vehicles of the same era. It should prove very valuable with all of the garden rubbish we need to move and the other house stuff we need to do prior to the sale. Getting a new bathroom for one.
We stayed the evening in Croyde in a beautiful thatched cottage B & B then set off early the next morning to brave the drive home. We needen't have been concerned as the Landy (now known as 'The Beast') coped marvellously well, even if Martin did get vibration sickness by the time we hit Swindon. Here's a picture of her;



Bed and Breakfast: http://www.homehousehotel.com/

Me and my man

Have been doing some gardening.
Part of the relocating plan means that he will be selling the house he jointly owns with a friend. As they have only been in the property just a couple of years, there is still alot of work that needs doing around the place. As a result, we have been doing some form of DIY every weekend since before Christmas, in an effort to get things completed before it is the time to sell.
With the weather being as booty as it is currently, we elected to do some gardening. I say gardening, that implies pulling out a few weeds and planting some shrubs. What i meant to say is landscaping. We have dug out the middle section by hand, got rid of the weeds and old patchy turf, levelled the area and raked out the stones, then turfed it and added a few flower beds.
We did this over the bank holiday weekend so had a good four days to do it with, and we had anough time at the end of the weekend for a glass of wine at sundown and a seat in the sun.
We didn't do it alone. Martin's housemates helped also.
Here are some before and after pics:

Crap

Is it all about to go Pete Tong?
Maybe.
Yesterday i spoke to my solicitor to discover that despite my searches coming back on the property and a 'TP1' form starting to be drafted, (this form is required as the land at the back of the property has been split by current vendor who is retaining part of the land and land rights need to be formalised), the vendor is still threatening to pull out if everything is not completed by this Friday (8th).

Cripes, half the reason for the delay is the drafting of this blooming TP1 form. Her solicitors have been shy in coming forward with the information neccessary so my solicitors are taking longer than usual to draft it. They also wouldn't let my solicitor have a copy of the TP1 form that hey drafted themselves which shows the extent of the land she is retaining. If they had seen this, it would be very clear to draft a TP1 form for the remaining land. At least this is my understanding of the matter, having spoken with my solicitor.

In an effort to speed things along when faced with solicitor's conundrums, i decided to ring the Land Registry. I figured, if i new how TP1 forms worked, then i would be better informed to instruct my solicitor. As a result, i spent two hours on the phone with them today. Boy am i glad i did.

I have discovered, after chatting with a very verbose but helpful lady that, the old lady that sold the house to the current vendor last September would have drafted a TR1 form to transfer the whole property to the current vendor. After that the current vendor, having elected to split the land off the back, would be required to draft a TP1 form for the land she was retaining and the land that she is transferring. After looking at the forms in place, there is evidence of a TP1 form showing the extent of the back of the garden that is split off but the title deed states that it is 'X Wesley Road' and not 'The land adjoining X Wesley Road'. According to The Land Registry, this is an error and needs to be sorted out. However, this is an error of the vendors yet she is threatening to pulling out!

I also discovered that her solicitor's insistence on my solicitors, to draft the TP1 form required to transfer the land and property over to us, doesn't usually lie in the buyers hands. It seems logical that a transfer of part of the land would be drawn up by the vendors solicitor rather than the buyers. Afterall, the vendor would be the one setting out rights and ensuring that everything is in place for a sale. The Land Registry admitted that there is no law about who draws up a TP1 form, but they did say if pushed they would expect a vendor's solicitor to draw it up. So their insistence on us drafting it, when we are under pressue regarding time, seems ludicrous if everyone truly wants the sale to go through. One can only hope that they don't have hidden motives.

I don't think that her solicitors will hear about all this until Monday, i just hope she sees the situation for what it is and becomes more flexible.