Hi, I’m just wondering if anyone could offer some advice please or has been in a similar situation?
We are first time buyers and bought a property back on 18/02/2026 for 170,000. We instructed solicitor and applied and had mortgage accepted and everything set up to go ahead with the sale. 9 weeks down the line my solicitor still hadn’t received the title from the sellers solicitor, when this was questioned with the sellers solicitor he stated that the house was bought from the council through the right to buy scheme so they were waiting for the council to get back to them to say whether or not they wanted to purchase the house as right of first refusal. We had an email 2 days ago from my solicitor saying that “We have not yet submitted a contract pack to you as our client is waiting to hear whether or not the local authority wishes to exercise their rights of pre-emption. Apparently, the council are going to inspect the property in the next few weeks so we will be then in a position to provide contract.”
I’m just wondering if anyone has been in this situation and the council has said no they didn’t want to buy it. I have read that they sometimes just send a straight refusal however, I’m concerned that they are actually going to the property to inspect. This to me looks like they are interested if they’re going to the effort to inspect the property.
I am so gutted as we have been so excited throughout the process so far and now we feel like they’re going to buy it and it will fall through.
Thank you in advance for any advice!! X