To not want to buy a house again

[LegoBitcho]

Because buying and selling is so stressful in England.

We are selling to FTB and no onward chain for us. Sounded so easy, we could complete end of June the EA said. We've not even got to exchange 😞

It has seriously put me off buying anywhere again, I feel as though I'm trapped here and renting would have meant freedom to go when we were ready.

I know long term buying means security in old age but I'm seriously deflated by this whole insane process.

Are you my buyer OP?

I have FTB , buyer and selling my mums house; she's in a nursing home.

It's dragging on and on....

I'm a FTB at the bottom of a chain of three houses. We had our offer accepted at the beginning of a March and a mortgage offer in place by the end of March.

I asked if we could look to exchange by the 8th June... nearly a month later and we've just been told our sellers have never had sight of something or other very important and legal...

Our mortgage offer is only good for another couple of weeks.

Another house on the same estate has just come on the market, nicer, bigger garden, 10k cheaper and NO CHAIN. If I have to go through the pain of doing another mortgage application I'm pulling out from the current purchase and going for the empty house.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

We put in an offer on a place when I was just coming to the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. Moved in the day before DD arrived. So bloody stressful. We used to sit shouting at the TV during Location, Location, Location when Phil or Kirsty would smugly voiceover ‘six weeks later Tristram and Penny got the keys to their lovely new home...’ By the end it felt personal. The system is a joke.

Also first time buyers, no chain as house owner had already moved somewhere else with his new wife. Vacant possession. The lot.

@devilinme no, l'm selling

Some of these stories are seriously making me think it could be worse, which I didn't think when I started the thread

That's 12 weeks wasted. Back on the market.

Sorry to hear that Gilead . It's the wasted time, 12 weeks and then nothing - it's crazy.

Did your buyers give a reason?

Nothing logical, issues with the survey were given initially but it turns out there aren’t really any. I refused to drop the price and told the agent to put it back on the market. Apparently this was a shock to the buyer although had made it clear that after initial negotiations I would at no point drop further. Grrr!

LadyFlumpalot
I would honestly look at the other house and if it's better, pull out and start again (regardless of mortgage offer, although you could give this as the reason - i.e. they knew the dates, they were too slow, it expired, their loss)

A colleague of mine accepted an offer in February. 4 months later (4months!!!!) she found somewhere she liked but couldn’t afford it. So she went back to the person buying hers and asked for more money!
She seems really surprised that the man didn’t even go away and discuss it with his family he just pulled out. I would have done exactly the same!

OP buying/selling is absolute hell, it's amazing the things that cause delays, and I've never even been a part of a chain. You say that you haven't even exchanged yet, but once that happens things should move incredibly fast. You'll get there, and it'll all be worth it.

My friend is a conveyancing solicitor for a very reputable law firm and is swamped at times with very high value property sales and purchases and the equally high value clients. She says the person who hassles her most basically gets her attention just to get them off her back.

It’s very shit and the whole system is crap but the feeling of owning your property is worth it in my opinion. I simply cannot understand people who move all the time for fun though!

We decided to put our house on the market in January in the hopes of getting in a new place by the time DS2 was born. He came along last week and we complete in 3 weeks (I hope!) after selling in 3 weeks. Really should have gone faster as our buyers are FTB and our seller was happy to vacate for us! After being bolshy at the start about how they could only commit to the offer if they could be in by June (like we had control over that) it is our buyers who’ve titted around and made everyone wait with endless queries and sending contractors round to quote for work they wanted doing and trying to negotiate money off for that and then adjusting their mortgage based on the reduction we grudgingly gave and now waiting for the paperwork on that. So I hope they’ve learned not to be arseholes.

She says the person who hassles her most basically gets her attention just to get them off her back.

This is true IME and it's so awful to feel that it's the only effective method of getting things done.

I remember bursting into tears on one call to our conveyancer and telling her that I knew I was being a pest, I knew she was screening my calls via her caller ID which meant that I was using different phones to get through to her, I knew she was busy and that I knew I wasn't her only client. However what she needed to understand was that this move was costing every penny of our life savings and after multiple false starts and wasted survey and legal fees, this was our last shot because we were running out of money. If it didn't work out then that was it, game over. That the reason I was calling and checking on everything was because I'd already identified several things that had been missed, forgotten, overlooked or not pursued until the point where I chased them - causing weeks of unnecessary delays.

It turned me into a person that I really didn't like, but when you are in the midst of it you feel like you have absolutely no choice but to do whatever the hell it takes to get the documents signed and exchange and completion to go through.

I've exchanged! Yassssssssss!