Owning your own home

Anybody else found themselves in this type of situation?

Yep. We didn't have to wait as long as @Señor_Bear though - we had an offer accepted 2nd December and our seller had applied for probate mid-November. They had probate granted at the end of January. So c. 10 weeks. Our solicitors didn't get the evidence of probate until March because the other side's solicitors were shit, but ultimately we were lucky - the delays at the Probate Registry mean that you'd be hard pushed to beat that at the moment.

The agent not telling you it's a probate place is a dick move, which is a bit worrying because the seller's agent is your best hope of getting it through before the new stamp duty deadline. Ours were up front about it when we viewed and told us they reckoned there was about eight weeks to go, so that was pretty much spot on, although it didn't allow for the seller's solicitors then being so shit and slow at passing the evidence of probate to ours.

What I would want if I was you is:

1. To know who is handling the probate - it won't be the conveyancer, it will be a probate solicitor, and they may not even be at the same firm.
   
2. An update on progress - where is the probate at? You can ask the agent to ask the probate solicitor for an update which they can forward to you. Critical question: Has the all the paperwork been sent to the Registry?
   
3. A sense of how efficient - or not - the other side's solicitors are. As we found out there's not much point getting Grant of Probate quickly if the the vendor's solicitors then sit on it for weeks.
   
4. As much info on the seller as possible - e..g we didn't know straight off the bat that the daughter handling the sale for the family was in Hong Kong, which was useful to know when it came to exchange because we had to make sure she FedEx'd paperwork across. Later we found out that her sister lives on the next road along, which was a bit WTF.
   
5. Where the death certificate is. Your solicitors need an original or certified copy to exchange. Our seller's solicitors, being useless, sent one of the two we needed to our solicitors by normal post. I'm not sure it ever actually arrived, but as soon as I found this out I ordered a copy direct from the Registry on next day delivery. Anyone can order anyone else's death certificate. This saved our whole transaction, because it meant we could keep to our buyer's deadline, so it would have been nice if our solicitors had suggested this, but they didn't :/
   
   

With nearly all of this, the agent is your friend. Even if they just fucked you over. Solicitors get paid anyway.

And the answer to this...

Do I let the proceedings continue to and then mention that I'll be renegotiating a new offer if delayed beyond the stamp holiday?

...if you want the house is yes. But you don't mention, you don't renegotiate. You tell the agent, in writing (email is fine), that you will be reducing your offer by £Xk (large enough sum of money to motivate) if you don't exchange by Y and complete by Z. As it's a probate sale, I would be tempted with the benefit of hindsight to go further than this and peg the reduction against meeting key milestones by set dates to keep the transaction viable.

So something like:

• Responses to initial enquiries by X
  
• Probate Granted, evidence of probate and death certificate supplied to your solicitors by Y
  
• Responses to all enquiries by Z
  
  

With Z being in good time to exchange when you want to exchange with a buffer for delays. YMMV because I don't know how far along the conveyancing process you are. Also if you don't fully understand the process (we didn't!) read up - we literally printed out the attached in the end and were ticking things off.