Just thought I would post an update about where we are currently....
After a week of money juggling, begging, racking our brains, and being generally very stressed, yesterday we had some really good news in that it was agreed we would at least exchange contracts, with a view to delaying completion. At least that way we would know both our sale and our purchase were safe, and the peace of mind in that would be priceless.
It was too good to be true though. Today, we were in a position to exchange on both, but the seller of the house we were buying couldn't be contacted to confirm. We were led to believe that he had no issue with the delay in completion, so it just an agonising wait for the call to say exchange had gone through.
But at about 4pm, the call came to say he was not happy to delay completion, and would not authorise exchange. Apparently, he has financial commitments - which of course I can understand - and he says he has no option but to complete on Wednesday. The problem is, we can't without selling our house, and even a bridging loan, if it were possible, wouldn't give us funds by Wednesday.
The long and short of it is that he will think about agreeing if we 'pay' him for his inconvenience and the money he says it will cost him in extra costs if he has to wait. DH has said no, simply because we don't have the spare cash to do that. The seller has had it explained that his alternative is to re-market his house, and even if he had an offer straight away, there would be no way a transaction could be complete within the 2 - 3 weeks we are asking for....
He is going to consider his position over the weekend, so we will see - but in the meantime, the agonising wait continues....I would love to believe he will see sense, but sometimes people just don't, and I'm really worried he will just tell us to stuff it.
And I can't even have a big glass of wine to ease my stress levels! I am on the verge of calling the whole thing off, and just waiting a few months until I can face the whole house buying nightmare again, but we will see what happens.