The decluttering, cleaning, vacating, pandering, nailbiting antics of the stressed out house sellers

[Spirael]

Starting a new thread, since our old one was almost full!

Anyone suffering the stresses of trying to sell a house is welcome to join us; anyone here to tell us our houses are crap and/or overpriced is not.

I'm still decluttering here and there almost is if we are getting ready to move (I wish). Just do it in bit sized chunks - a drawer one day, a cupboard the next etc. I have tried to get my husband to do the garage but he just doesn't see the urgency or point! I am pretty chilled about packing the house up when the time comes but the thought of tackling a double garage full of crap scares me!

Hello fellow sellers. Sorry I dropped off the thread for a while but I got a bit nervous that somehow I was jinxing our situation by posting about it. Irrational I know, but there you go.

Things have moved on a lot for us and I am not sure how I feel about it. We've accepted a ~95% offer on our house (yay!) from a couple with no chain and put an offer on the house we wanted. We offered 95% as well as this was as much as we could do (we had previously put a lower offer in on it before we sold our house). The vendor took 5 days in which my hopes were getting higher and higher to come back and reject it . We then panicked a little because there is very little in our price range around and we weren't sure how long we would take to move. Then another house came on in the village we want to move to which looked nice so we went to see it, put in an offer thinking it would be rejected, it was, we didn't increase, they negotiated on the house they want to buy and came back and said yes!

So we've now accepted and had an offer accepted and we are the only bit of the chain.

We're a bit nervous about our mortgage going through so won't trust it is going to happen until then (though the broker keeps on assuring me it is fine). I am a little worried though that we have panicked bought a house. I was hoping that this could be a 'forever' house move but there are things that are less than ideal about the house (just about useable 3rd bedroom, on a busyish road, not very big garden) but I think I realise now that we can't live where we want to and afford perfect (and we can't move further away as we are about at the edge of what is commutable for DH as it is).

Part of the reason we wanted to move now was so that we could move to a bigger house before we had a second child but I am not starting to worry that we won't be able to afford to anyway. Our mortgage won't be much more in the new house as we are increasing the loan term but we could decrease our current mortgage and stay where we are. I think we can just go for it and it will be ok - if it happens, we will have one incredibly tight year while we have 2 DC in nursery and then it should be ok - but I still worry I'm wanting more than we can afford.

Anyway, sorry for the mammoth post! I've been lurking to see what you have been up to. Cuddy sorry things haven't moved forward but good you are still getting viewers. Spirael you're house sounds great - I think you have things the right way around - location is more important than wardrobes! Yellow - I love the house you posted! Hello everyone else as well

Just in case anyone is curious, a link to the house we're (hopefully!!) buying is in my profile. :) I'll remove it in a few days, so if you're interested then look while you can-!

Well, the house we saw this lunchtime was ok. It's certainly where we want as we'd already looked at next door and the private sale we're still interested in is across the road! Though it's not got all of our desirables it's big enough and we could make it as we want eventually. Unfortunately it's asking price is lots more than next door and across the road went for and it's not that different (terrace) .
We're seeing another tonight but suspect that the lunchtime one might be better. I'm still tempted to wait til after Christmas and leaflet and hope others come up then. And still crossing fingers on the private sale.

We're moving for almost the same reason as Spirael - have dd now, maybe another in the future and want room for guests to stay. One of the main things we want is a garden, currently we only have a yard, the house we saw earlier has a kind of formal garden, nice but not child friendly - I'd be making it all lawn.

House looks fab Spirael - lots of room and that all important sold STC int he corner is yours!

Well done Sunset!

House looks fab Spirael - very spacious too!

Chilli it must be hard not finding the house that you feel is the one. I guess it's wait or compromise. I often wonder what will be available for us when we have sold. Husband is adamant that he won't move again.

Well I have had no feedback from Saturday's viewing so I guess I didn't make their shortlist. I wonder if this Sunday's out of area viewer will make it with the forecast snow?

Spireal I am insanely jealous of your dressing room! X

Thats a lovely house Spireal! Very jealous. It will surely feel very odd for a little while going from a 2.5 bed house to that?! It's really lovely, lots of room for future mini-Spireals!

Thanks all. We like it, enough to spend the rest of our working lives paying for it! Hopefully though we'll eventually hold the deeds ourself, having been in the house since it was built. :)

I think our plan is to use the top floor as a big loft and pretend the rooms don't exist for a while, Pootles. It is going to feel weird though, going from a pokey house with one bathroom to a house with more toilets and bedrooms than we have people!

We just need to lose the STC part, chilli! More harrassing of solicitors is going on today. Just need the sign off from one of them. At least we're starting to talk dates now, finally!

14th was proposed, but that's the day we're taking DD to see Father Christmas - and I doubt we'd get removals for that day anymore. There also isn't enough time to set redirection up. We've countered with the 17th, hopefully that will be accepted.

Found out we absolutely have to exchange a few days before completion though, because the bank won't authorise the installation of carpets/flooring until after exchange. They've said they can always come in and install the carpets after we've moved in... I've said no! The rooms will be full of furniture and boxes.

Is the snow bad where you are, Cuddy? We've none at all here, yet. Hopefully your viewer will make it ok!

Let us know how you get on, Toomuchtea!

Gorgeous house! Just one niggle - why are the plug sockets so high up the walls though - it's not on a floodplain is it? Or is this due to the building regs update a couple of years ago?

Not sure why they're a bit higher than usual, YellowWellies. I was assuming it was something to do with either the style or modern preferences.

House definitely isn't on a flood plain, the town/suburb is on top of a hill. If it floods, then the two nearby cities are in an awful lot of trouble!

Ahhh they are high in the upstairs rooms too - so it's not a flood thing! Sorry for dumbass comment - must be the new building regs!

I'm having a very strong urge to strangle a solicitor right now...

The solicitors of the house we're trying to buy have sat on some queries for a week. They've now just turned around and said they're not answering them because it's a repo case, and that our solicitor should contact the council for answers. The council that takes two weeks for any reply.

This is the same solicitor that, five weeks ago, told us we had to move within four weeks.

Argh! I can see our chances of moving before Christmas slipping away by the second.

Oh I'd be going bats*it at that... good luck

Oh Spirael - how frustrating!

Snow has been and gone here and the forecast has changed from snow to cloud - viewers are coming from Nottingham way.

Locally there have been a handful of new houses come on to the market, one of which is owned by my daughter's friend. It's not too different to mine size wise but is in a road that notoriously sells fast (close to the market square) and it's £75k more. Husband thinks that maybe people will look at ours too for comparison but I'm not sure. My daughter was at her friend's yesterday and they have viewings today and tomorrow. It would be typical that they get an offer quickly - I can't help feeling a little frustrated.

How maddening Spirael. Hope things look up for you!

Have just spoken to DP who's got day off - apparently someone rung up this morning wanting a viewing, dp and his mum blitzed the house bless them, then this chap (investor) looked round and has put an offer in! All in 3 hours! It's too low, 125 when asking price is 135 (and we really do need that), but its a start! Such a relief....

Is your plan still to go into rented then Toomuchtea? Does the house on the busy road have a decent garden?

Heard nothing back from the Nottingham people. To be honest, it didn't actually look like anyone had been in the house at all when we came back - but I'm too chicken to ring the EA and I know the agent who was accompanying the viewers is off until Wednesday! It was Dickens of a Christmas yesterday so Olney was absolutely heaving - hope this didn't put them off (if indeed they came). Heard nothing back from the people who came last Saturday either and although the woman who came the Tuesday before said she would come back with her husband, I'm not sure she will as they have amended their house details to "no upper chain".

Pootles sound like a good starting point. Do you think he'll up the offer at all?

Bloody hell!! There's a house for sale in my street - 5 beds and £50k less. Urgh!! I know they got it cheap and will still make a good profit. I could actually swear right now . I think I give up...

Oh crap Cuddy what are you going to do?

Yellow - I shall sulk and probably do lots of swearing!

I dropped off the thread as also didn't want to jinx things...still don't...so it's all fingers and toes crossed for a move before Christmas and I'll update in a few days if it looks like we're going to manage it! Lots of chasing of agents & solicitors to do tomorrow.

So sorry yours is moving so slowly, Spirael, we had solicitors sitting on documents for a week because they were missing ONE piece of info from the land registry which never turned up anyway, so they decided it wasn't important after all. Gah!

Very weird being on the countdown to 'last full week' in my house. I've loved it so much over the last few years, will be very strange not living here any more.

Morning all! Still manic, confused, chaotic and otherwise stressful here.

Had surprise/hope/nightmare this weekend when the contract and information pack turned up for us to sign on Saturday morning! Nice of the solicitor to warn us. Ended up grabbing it and reading through the 150 pages while DH was driving us down the country to visit SIL.

There, ran round to get non-family witnesses to our signatures and then had to chase around post offices trying to find one where the post hadn't been collected yet. Got to one where the post man was there, getting the bags, but no matter how much I begged he wouldn't wait for me to get to the counter to get the letter on special delivery.

Ended up lurking outside the solicitors yesterday until someone would take the letter inside for me and hand it to our solicitor. Fortunately someone eventually did! Going to be doing the same today, since we had another thing through to sign yesterday.

The rest of the chain is pushing to move this Friday. We've said no and counter suggested next Monday, as they won't put the carpets in our house until we've exchanged and we might not exchange until Thursday, meaning no carpets until after we've moved - nightmare!

We also have no removals set up at present, as the firm we were going to use is now booked up. Found this site however which might solve that problem. A bit risky, but we've roped in friends to carry our valuables and we're only travelling a few miles. Will report back on how it goes-!

Still, at the moment it's looking tentatively optimistic we might be moving in less than a week. I optimistically set up redirection yesterday (it takes a week to kick in), figuring I'd cancel it if the move doesn't go ahead in the next week.

On the plus side, with all this stress I've managed to lose a dress size in two weeks.

Sorry to hear about your rival house, Cuddy. We had/have one, but it's priced £10k more than ours. Have you seen the pictures yet? Maybe they didn't finish the refurbishment, or it's not as nice inside as yours?

Pootles, £125k is the stamp duty barrier... You might struggle to get higher. Though might be able to negotiate some reasonable fixtures and fittings costs?

Glad to hear things seem to be going ok, marshmallow! Sounds like we might actually be in about the same place at the moment. I'm not too sad to be leaving my current house, I'm more excited about living in the new one. Only sad thing is my DD was born in this house (homebirth), but I'm not staying just because of that.