We've been trying to buy a new house for nearly a year. It's taken so long because there were a series of delays. First we tried to buy it while we rent our flat out - but the mortgage valuations came back seriously low (on the new house) so we couldn't get finance necessary to buy it. So we needed to sell ours and that's been a problem- we were already on the market for ages without an offer, then the first buyer pulled out after a couple of months and the second one has taken ages to get in gear, but it finally looks like we will be ready to exchange by the end of this week.
Throughout all of this the seller has held the house for us, including turning down another increased offer from local people (we are moving out from London). And we encouraged them twice to go after another buyer when it looked like we couldn't follow through. But in June once the legal work was underway the report on title finally came through and it appears we'd been misled about the possibility of getting planning for an extension. I called the council who confirmed that planning consent wasn't likely to be granted, and we'd pinned our dreams on this. It was a large part of why we wanted the property. Part of the reason the surveys (we had four!) on the house came back low (all of them!) was that a lot of expensive work needed to be done on the roof, and if extending we wouldn't need to carry out this repair work as the renovations would cover it. And last week the sellers came back saying they wanted tens of thousands more as compensation for the delays. It has put me off a lot, if I'm honest. We said no and we haven't heard back since - we expect (expected?) them to pull out but we just haven't heard.
So to cover ourselves we went to look at a rental this weekend. Same road, closer to schools, closer to station and already extended so we wouldn't need to. It's perfect for us. And the kitchen, omg, it's stunning. I desperately want to live in it. A mortgage would be much cheaper than renting for a year but with stamp duty so high (south east house prices, arrrgh) I don't want to make a nearly £40k mistake on somewhere that's not perfect. Especially if we head into recession post-Brexit and can't sell it easily if we hate it/lose jobs. But I feel like I've basically wasted a year of our seller's time, and very guilty. We've all put so much time and money in to this. WWYD?
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AIBU?
To pull out of our house purchase last minute - WWYD?
70 replies
TheVeryHungryDieter · 25/07/2016 07:41
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