Stress :-(

What a horrible couple of days I’ve had. The stress is so bad that my tummy has been really upset.

It started yesterday morning with my conveyancing solicitor calling to chase the Fire Risk Assessment document for the communal areas of my block of flats. Without it my buyer’s mortgage lender will not release her funds and so we cannot exchange contracts. This is the final document (of many) required to achieve the sale. The company secretary for our residents’ company has gone on a long holiday and has left this issue outstanding without my knowledge that it was required. After a lot of worry and phone calls on my part, it transpires that the Risk Assessment hasn’t been reviewed since 2000 (they should be looked at annually and updated if necessary) and it is no longer suitable. This morning my estate agent called to find out what on earth is going on, as my buyer is getting really concerned that nothing has been done about it for over two weeks. I’m terrified that she’ll pull out before contracts are exchanged. The agent says she’s going to have to “manage the buyer’s expectations”, which isn’t a good situation. The upshot is that I’ve now got to drop everything I was planning to get done this weekend and hotfoot it to Chesham tomorrow morning in order to do a Risk Assessment inspection myself with one of the committee members (I trained on 10-week day-release when I was at the BBC as a Health & Safety union rep, so I know how to do it). This will have a knock-on effect on clearing and preparing the bungalow for decorating and carpeting/flooring, and now I’m not going to be ready in time for the week when that was supposed to be happening. I’m truly sick of other people’s incompetence and utter lack of concern.

I’m really struggling to manage all of this on my own. I’ve now had 18 months of back-to-back probate and property marketing/conveyancing, with the endless enquiries, forms and documents entailed, and I’ve just about had enough. I hate the legal system with a passion. It’s like Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Dickens’ novel ‘Bleak House’, only worse. Grrrrrr!!!