Owning your own home

At 10am my agent calls the last agent who confirms the top of the chain is ready, there was a small issue with a septic tank how've they've agreed a 10k retention and everyone is happy.

Between 10am and about 3 the last solicitor doesn't answer her phone and won't release the contract for exchange. At 4pm they eventually say that no they won't be exchanging today as they want specialist reports on the septic tank and they might need to renegotiate the retention

Not trying to make excuses, but the 'small issue' may have always been a much larger issue than you've been led to believe. The agents all through the process will have been tasked with keeping their buyers/sellers moving along, and in my limited experience solicitors are not much help either.

For all you know there's a bloke on a bike forum ranting "for fuck's sake, I made perfectly clear this tank shit needed sorting before we exchanged, and now some twat further down the chain is threatening to pull the plug on the whole thing. Christ, I wish everyone would just communicate better"

Essentially, the phrase 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity' springs to mind.

If you would prefer to be in the house you're looking at buying then suck it up and buy the place, because you're never going to see anyone in the chain again and you've no idea if it's the buyers, the agents or the solicitors that've fucked up, so the 5k compensation you want may seem entirely unreasonable to the people that would have to stump up