Project New Home: Tentative Steps Forward

After a restless night of weighing up the pros and cons of continuing our investigations and negotiations with the villa, we decided to contact our solicitor with instructions to hold off on all inspections for the time being.

The completion date was still a huge factor to not continue with the negotiations. And our solicitor understood our predicament, and put on hold all inspections until further notice. He also said that as far as he was concerned, he had done as much as he can to get the vendors and their solicitor to change the settlement date, and that if we still wanted to push the issue, we should enlist the real estate agent to help us.

So we called the agent and asked him to have a word in the vendors' ears. Our agent was keenly aware that we were totally sold on the property, and was more than happy to help. Alas, he was not privied to a number of things - in fact, he didn't notice the specified settlement date until I pointed it out to him. We explained to him what we knew, and he promised to get back to us once he had spoken with the vendors.

A little while ago, the agent called back with the last piece to the puzzle.

Here's what we knew so far:

- The vendors had bought a property and the settlement date on that contract was December 1.
- The vendors wanted to have somewhere to live until their new property was settled, hence they instructed their solicitor to draft a contract for the sale of the villa we want to buy with a settlement date of December 1.
- The vendors were unwilling to budge from that date, but had mentioned that they would do everything they can to bring forward the settlement date.

Here's what the agent found out:

- The vendors had purchased a deceased estate which was waiting on probate being granted. Probate usually took around 6 weeks from lodgement to issue.
- The vendors' solicitor had kept the vendors informed of the progress of probate, and it was only a matter of days before probate was expected to be granted. The wait would be no more than a fortnight.

We told the agent that we would definitely seriously consider all the information now that we knew everything, and that if we were to go ahead with the purchase, the exchange of contracts would not take place until after all the inspections were completed. In which case, the earliest we could hope to exchange contracts would be mid next week. The agent agreed that we needed to have a complete set of reports, and told us that the vendors were expecting us to obtain various inspections prior to exchange.

The agent noted that if probate was granted in the next fortnight, there would be nothing stopping us or the vendors from pushing the settlement date forward to mid November - earlier if possible. The vendors were keen to get their money from the sale of the villa, which was a good sign.

Jonathan and I talked about this villa again, to see whether it was worthwhile continuing with negotiations. Since we still have to do the inspections, chances are it will be another week before we have the full picture and be ready to exchange. And if probate was due to be granted in a fortnight, well, we'd be a week closer to that milestone. We still really really really loved this place, so we agreed to give our solicitor the go ahead to continue with the inspections.

In the meantime, we continue to attend open house inspections on weekends, until such time as the exchange has taken place.

For now, please send all good vibes and think good thoughts for the Probate Office and the vendors, for the expedient processing of probate!