Are we screwed?
We put an offer on a new flat and accepted an offer on ours at the beginning of December. New flat is brand-new build and our buyer is an investor so should have been quick. End of February, after radio silence from buyers solicitor, our seller threatened to pull out. Our estate agent informs everyone that the buyer is getting an Islamic mortgage so it takes time.
After answering a bunch of questions for the buyer and our estate agent telling us weekly since the beginning of March that we'll be ready to exchange 'by the end of the week,' we're still waiting. We were told 2 weeks ago the buyer is going to drop off his deposit to his solicitor. Last week we're told the buyer got scammed out of the deposit so he's being more cautious with this new one (red flags all around that story). 2 days ago our seller tells us that we have until the 15th to exchange. Our estate agent has been ignoring our emails and messages since.
This is our dream flat and if we lose it we're taking our flat off the market as we're completely done with our estate agent. He pushed for this buyer and we only found out afterwards that he's friends with the estate agency's owner. At this point, even the thought of leaving our flat to this incredibly sketchy buyer has us feeling sick. He asked us at the beginning of the process to use the pictures of our flat so he can let it out and he's pushed to have potential tenants look at our flat. We would love to tell them both to go fuck themselves but then we would lose our new flat.
Is there any way that we're not out our new flat as well as thousands of ££s in solicitors fees?