Mortgage Conditions causing delay in exchanging of contract

[wagw81]

I am currently in the process of buying and selling, the transaction is into 12 weeks now, and for the past 3 weeks our buyers solicitor has indicated that he is dealing with our buyers mortgage conditions and therefore unable to set an exchange date at the moment. As they obtained a mortgage in July, I can't understand what or why this would take so long to complete. Does anyone know or have been in this situation where a mortgage application can take this long or where a lender sets down additional conditions which would prolong an exchange of contracts ? I feel 12 weeks is more than long enough to complete a conveyance. Any info gratefully received.

[flyciderman]

Why not ask your buyer to let you know if the loan was conditional and also what the conditions were/

If the loan was conditional ask them why were you not told 12 weeks ago?

If they will not tell you smell a rat and put you house back on the market.

[parkesquay]

Far too many people tell sellers that everything is in place regarding their finances and mostly it is not so.
I agree with 'wag' that this does not sound good.
That said, 12 weeks is probably an average time for things to get close to an exchange date. An obvious question; can we assume that the buyers mortgaging company have sent their surveyors to your property?

[wagw81]

Thanks for responses, I took the advice of flyciderman and it seems to have created a ripple down the chain. Apparently our buyers are using a non-stream lender 'beacon home loans' and our solicitors have confirmed this firm are longwinded in their process and use their own solicitors to verify paperwork etc, and this can create additional extra enquiries into the process. So tonight our buyers sols have confirmed they are now awaiting a confirmation certificate on available funding. So hopefully pending this we can exchange within days. At last the agent and sols have given the same version of events today, and that's all we asked for in the first place ! - Being left in the dark with no explanation just causes extra stress we can all do without. Interestingly our buyers had 2 surveys done, a valuation in June and a full one in July. Both were squeaky clean, so no room for any further reduction on price.

[parkesquay]

I am glad that things seem to be on the 'up'. Of course when I put 'wag'in my answer I should have said flyciderman.
The only reason I mentioned the surveys was that mortgage companies get them out of the way first, usually.
Many people use on-line solicitors and they begat more solicitors in the chain and it certainly stretches out the process.