Maybe this is just not meant to be...

[lecce]

So house has been on the market since late June.

First person to view made a good offer. Dropped out after ridiculous survey. By then (after losing out to a higher bidder on one dream house) we had had an offer accepted on another so we dropped the asking price £10 000 and, again, received an offer a day later from the first person from the second lot to view. Vendor of the property we had lowered our price to keep then decided to go with another, more flexible, buyer.

At the weekend we viewed another lovely house and had offer accepted Monday. Now today we learn our buyer cannot get a mortgage due to a debt that has been paid off but still stands due to administrative error. It is two weeks since she made the offer so why it has taken until now to find this out I just don't know - what do agents actually get paid for? The house we are trying to buy is part of a part exchange and we needed to complete in 28 days.

Tomorrow we have 2 viewings - 1 with a cash buyer who is friends with our adjoining neighbour and loves their house and another with a ftber. I should be excited but just feel jaded now and feel we are about to lose the third house we have found and loved, the third great school...

And all this is without mentioning the sale that fell through 2 years ago - we were so jaded after that that it took us two years to try again. Starting to feel we are stuck here for ever, despite the fact that we seem to have no problem getting people to make offers...

Lecce, with regards the 28 day turnaround on the part-ex, I wouldn't get too worried about that, we did this recently and despite being told we needed to get to exchange within 28 days, it was about 12 weeks, all told.

The builders were fine with it, as they were aware that things were being progressed. Is the house your vendors are buying actually completed yet?

Thanks, that sounds more likely to happen. We did wonder about the 28 day thing - highly unlikely to happen in most cases and it wouldn't really benefit them to go four weeks in and then pull out because we weren't quick enough. The really thing is that their house isn't built and the house we are trying to buy won't be available until at least Christmas - so you have to pay in August and move in (hopefuly, maybe...) four months later.

It's a great house, though. So here starts another day of erasing all evidence of 2 children, a dog and a cat from the house...

Right, if their house is not completed yet, there's almost no chance the developer will stick to a rigid 28 days for exchange. They put this in to make sure that people get working on stuff, but as long as they can see that various points in the chain are progressing then they will usually be flexible.

We reserved our house in August last year, meaning exchange should have happened in September, but it didn't. Part of this was down to the mortgage adviser - we were using the builder's preferred one, as they came up with the same offer as an IFA, but they were slow, and the main reason we didn't make the exchange date. I pointed this out to the developer, but they were unconcerned, and told me at that point that the date was more of an incentive than a requirement. We did eventually exchange in November, but our house wasn't ready until May this year, so a long wait!