aw Levantine, I hate it when buyers get all arsey like that. Invariably they're the ones who end up holding the whole process up.
For me, the clincher is when you walk in to the living room and you're mentally planning where the Christmas tree will go :o
When we bought our place a couple of years ago, we'd already sold our flat when the people who'd accepted our offer on their house pulled out. We decided to go ahead with the sale of our flat as we were worried about losing our buyer. Everything of ours went in to storage for 3 months and we stayed at my mum and dad's for a bit. A hassle, though we did save 3 months worth of mortgage and that did come in very handy! More than paid for the storage.
We bought our place though it wasn't perfect, it was good enough. It ticked enough boxes. It was Victorian, had 3 beds, 2 reception rooms, a nice kitchen, largish garden and was on a lovely road. Downsides are the bathroom is tiny, no offstreet parking and the hall downstairs is non existent. Smally fry when you're house hunting but a hallway makes a huge difference when you're coming in to the house with a double buggy, kids in boots, big coats and loads of shopping. It all gets very crowded for a bit!
But the good points outweigh the bad points. What we didnt' know at the time is that we have lovely neighbours and are close enough to a great school which barring some disaster ds should get in to in September.
The only difference is that instead of being our 15-20 year house, it'll probably be our 7-10 year house (might see if we can move before the kids go on to secondary education so we can be near a good secondary school).