Still waiting

It's rather embarrassing having to tell the people you hope to buy from that the survey still hasn't been done on your home. That your buyers have entrusted their mortgage to an amateur who doesn't even have the courtesy to return the estate agent's daily phone calls. That - for all you know - they won't even be offered a mortgage when the lender finally gets round to it.

We still hope to exchange a week tomorrow, but it is increasingly feeling like hope than expectation. Clearly human nature is such that the house buying process no longer works - there is grief and stress at every turn, when in most cases this shouldn't be the case. What does annoy me is that the Halifax made a big thing about vetting prospective buyers to make sure they could afford the property. As it stands, around six weeks after accepting their offer, we have no idea whether or not our buyers will be given a mortgage (and therefore capable of affording the property), never mind whether the survey will cause any problems or not.

Labour promised a lot of things when they came to power. Looks like the process of buying and selling houses is just one more example of Blair's failure to keep a promise. Pathetic.