Tell me your stories about totally deluded house vendors

[Ludicrousoverpricing]

So, been looking at houses for maybe 6ish months now and I just cant get over how completely and utterly deluded some people are about what they think their houses are worth??

So share with me your stories about deluded house vendors or otherwise horror stories regarding moving house? Need something to entertain myself with during this lockdown...

My own experience recently

House 1: nice house and location but horrible on the inside. Needed completely gutting and renovating as hadn't had so much as a lick of paint in 20+ years. Vendor seemed to think that it only needed 'minor modernisation' eg re tiling a bathroom or changing kitchen cupboard doors was required and that said minor modernisation would mean the property would be worth several £10,000s more after the work was done. In reality even with a total new kitchen, bathrooms, flooring etc it wouldn't be worth anywhere near that. It probably would only JUST be worth their actual asking price AFTER it has had extensive work done on it.
You can buy a new build house of the same size in a similar area for the same price they are asking for their old dilapidated house. Why the hell would I pay the same for your house that needs extensive renovating when I can get the same house newly built without all the hassle of having to organise renovating it myself!

House 2: Same as house 1, nice area and house, very dated and old bathrooms/carpet etc. House next door sold recently, was a bigger house and impeccable throughout and they seem to believe their house is worth the same if not more... for a smaller house that needs at very minimum the bathrooms and flooring redoing!

House 3: Ditto of house 2 basically. Exact same situation. Believes their tired and in desperate need of some TLC house is worth the same as the bigger house that sold next door that was immaculate inside.

House 4: Just blatantly on the market for £70k more than the semi detached house is worth. Dont even know what the vendor is trying at because they will never get an offer close to what they're marketing it at. You can buy a nice 5 bedroom detached house or 4 bedroom newbuild for the price they are marketing theirs at.

Not sure if it's a coincidence or not that all these vendors are older individuals downsizing...

This house was absolutely stunning to be fair, but that was because the vendor has spent a stupid sum on renovations. Kitchen, window renovations, the garden, the property needs an expensive boiler conversion (circa 4k/5k) and her husband has made quite a mess with paint!

She had convinced her self that it was worth way over £300,000. We almost lost the purchase at one point because she demanded more money from me.. I stood my ground 🙂🙂 quite glad I did now, the first time buyers that had offered 20k more would have been stung!

My favourite house viewing story is when the house was on the market with an estate agent, we saw it advertised and went to view it. We fell in love with it, put in an asking price offer which was accepted. Sent over our mortgage paperwork which was all ok and then the solicitors started work. The vendor wasn’t actually the owner so couldn’t sell the house. So we couldn’t buy it.

Also we viewed a house which looked good in the photos, but the work was very much a DIY job and the laminate floor was lifting up, the tiles weren’t straight, the cupboard doors didn’t line up - it sounds minor, but when someone wants the same price as a beautifully renovated house but we would have to take it all apart to renovate, it’s just not worth it. Our favourite part of this DIY house was the agent drawing parallels between the vendors and us - “oh, one of them is from the north and the other is from the south like you”, “one of them has served in the army like you”, “the vendors are in their 20s like you” this went on throughout the whole viewing, until the end when the agent said “they’re going through a divorce” and I had to fight the temptation to add the words “like us?” afterwards.

@LittleMissTeacup

The vendor wasn’t actually the owner so couldn’t sell the house.

You mean it was attempted fraud? Or some kind of cock-up?

One I remember is a 3 bed flat where 2 of the bedroom doors were locked and the owner who showed us around wouldn't unlock!!! She said oh you can see them another time! She seemed to think we'd be making an offer too!!!

@GiantKitten

More of an awkward dispute relating to wills and the house ownership hadn’t been settled. I’m sure if we’d wait long enough we would have got it eventually but we didn’t want to.

@krustykittens we are looking at moving from the south of England to the Scottish Borders! So pleased to hear you are living the dream!

KindnessCrusdaer drop me a PM if you have any questions! Nowhere is a dream but the lifestyle we wanted just wasn't affordable in the south of England. We have a lovely smallholding with 45 acres of grazing and woodland and now have a small herd of native ponies that my daughters and myself ride and compete. We have miles of off road riding and yet Edinburgh is only an hour and a half away.

A few years ago we lived in a very desirable area of SW London and used to look at the beautiful big Victorian houses on this one street, dreaming of owning one one day.

Then we spotted that one was for sale at a drastically lower price than all the others (think £700k vs £1.2mn+). We couldn't work out why - the pictures looked amazing and the outside was very well kept. But it turned out that they had sold off their back garden to the house next door and they had built across it so the house had no light coming in from the back on the ground floor and no rear garden.

I have absolutely no idea how that was possible (or legal) but no surprise that the house never sold.

My son looked at a 2 bed fairly new house just in his price range, but although in good order it was far smaller that it appeared in the EA photos. 1st bed just about fitted a double bed and wardrobe, 2nd bed was 5ft 9in wide and 8ft long radiator one end, cupboard and door the other would barely fit a single bed. The bathroom was so small that the basin overhung the bath so if you sat back in the bath you would have hit your head on the basin. The garden was hardly big enough for 2 sun loungers and there was a right of way path to the others in the terrace through the centre.