Selling to Dublin City Council delays

_amc27

I accepted an offer from Dublin City Council for my apartment back in mid September. My solicitor sent off the contracts to be returned within 2 weeks with a proposed closing date of mid November.

Here we are almost 4 months after going sale agreed and my solicitor still has not received these contracts back from the DCC. She keeps hitting a brick wall on their end and my estate agent has had no better luck getting an adequate response from the council.

It would be fair to say that I am beyond annoyed with this process and for more than the obvious reasons. The council doesn't provide the customary deposit as in regular property purchases. I am not a property investor and after relocating about 2 years ago (to rent elsewhere) I had to rent out the apartment. My tenants left when I put the property on the market so I have been paying the mortgage and my own rent for the best part of 6 months now and has caused me undue financial burden. I'm left with no confidence that the 'sale agreed' is going to be honored any time soon.

Every day I pick up a newspaper and see an article about homelessness and lack of council housing. My apartment has been vacant in Dublin for months and months now and the council clearly couldn't care less.

Has anybody else sold their property to DCC? What has been your experience? Is this the norm when dealing with DCC? I had other offers at the time that were marginally below the sale agreed price and I'm left infuriated that I got into business with the council at all. Any and all advice welcome.

4ensic15

Write and tell the agent to either get a signed contract back from DCC within 7 days or put the property back on the market. Look at what DCC did in Dartmouth Square.

Get a break from your mortgage payments. I did it when I was selling my house

dudara

You haven't exchanged / signed contracts yet, so you are not bound to the sale. You can pull out and put the apartment back on the open market if you want.

CLIO5555

Hi I know this thread is old buthow did you go with Council in the end?

Royoftherovers1999

Hi there,

I work as a Property Manager in medium sized agency. We have quite a few landlords who are "selling" to the council. One has been agreed since last March and we only got queries back last week(the list is very long and over the top).

The council are taking too long to move/close on properties, don't believe what you hear from politicians. The only upside is the rent is paid while they take over a year to do anything. But if your property is vacant and you have a mortgage to pay put it back on the market asap. You will be waiting well over 12 months for a sale to close, that's if it even does!

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121797523#Comment_121797523

I closed in about 4 months

SharkMX

The house we are buying was sold to the council for almost a year. We were viewing other properties with that EA. He called us (and others) and said that the owner was sick of waiting for the council and were we interested. We got to bidding and got accepted very fast.

Now expecting to close in the next few weeks.

Royoftherovers1999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121801778#Comment_121801778

How long ago was this?

You were very lucky

ted1

We closed around October