Buyers support thread - stressed? Worried? Stuck in a chain? Gazumped? Well come and join us here

[Bakingnovice]

I can't see if there is already a thread like this so here goes..

We finally upped our offer enough for it to be accepted on our dream house. It's been stressful so far and this is just the beginning. We have had so many let downs: vendor changing mind, vendor getting higher offer etc and we hope this sale goes through smoothly. We've been looking for years. Come and join me if you're buying and equally stressed....

Sorry. Never dealt with that situation. Is there a time cut off point for all bids to be in by and then highest wins?

Huge dissappointment and frustration indeed! Especially it has been so hard to even reach my own conveyancer...

Only a week after the purchase process started, the conveyancer left her job, the day before the exchange of the contract the second conveyancer went on annual leave without any notice, now the third conveynancer needs time to go through the file...

Have tried to speak to their manager who was not available...

Oh Ffs cherry. Why would they even let her take on your case if she was leaving??? Was this unforeseen ? Not what you want happening. Sorry that you are stressing

Ladies, I need to join you, I feel like I'm going insane... Our buyer is fudging around and I want to scream, it's 9 weeks since offers accepted, mortgages all arranged, surveys done, and our buyer is creating a huge hoo hah over the survey result coming back category 2, recommendation to get electrics tested as not complaint with regs.

House is less than 25 years old, electrics are fine, all reports advice you check this as most houses minus new builds and those rewired after the last change of regs will not meet requirements per se, but only a fool would realise this meant nothing!! Report also suggested not enough plug sockets in each room, now I'm confused as it's a two bed house and the kitchen and living room have 8 sockets each, hall and landing two each, bedrooms two each - how many more would you need?!

So she wants an electrical report done and got us to pay, for which I have refused to pay... Were buying a 30s semi and not doing anything like this, she at first said it was a requirement of her mortgage but not it turns out just a suggestion...

Now she wants to come round and view again Saturday, which is fine but I think she actually wants to come and gazzunder us!!

Husband will be in when she comes and had said in no uncertain terms he will be telling her no to negotiating the price and that if she's unsure then house goes back on the market today.

I'm do stressed and thinking about it 24/7, also pregnant and feel like crap!!

The estate agent isn't helping as in instead of working for us and trying to calm the buyers obvious nerves (ie the people who pay the commission) she is communicating with the buyer and I feel adding flames to the fire

I can't take much more, does this ever end well?!

Can I have a huge moan? We accepted an offer on our place in June, and had an offer accepted on the house we want to buy the week after. Since then, our buyer has taken months to get sorted, and now his buyer has decided they aren't a cash buyer after all and need a mortgage.

I'm terrified our vendor is going to pull out - higher up in the chain wanted to complete this Friday (ha!) and now it looks more like Christmas.

I'm due with DC2 in January, and my DS has just started reception - so will be needing to get him settled, us moved, and have a baby in the space of about 4 weeks the way it looks at the minute. Alternatively, the chain collapses and we have to sell again with a house full of newborn stuff. Aaaarrrgh.

Oh science, I'm with you on this, it's beyond draining and I actually want it all to go away, but then I also want to move!! I'm about -- that far from chucking all my toys out if the pram!

Science, that sounds so horribly stressful! Fx you get moved and settled in before Christmas, the waiting around is nerve wracking.

We are now at £500 increments, it's a bit ridiculous. I'm tempted to start moving up in £50 ones just to be a pain.

Bludger I hope we manage to avoid your situation - I don't know how you can take the suspense! There aren't any other interested parties as far as we know on the house we like but it is just a bit out of reach price wise, the estate agent doesn't reckon the vendors want to accept less than the asking price (but isn't that what they would say?!) so we are going to have to offer and fingers crossed. We can't work out how desperate the vendors are to move - it's been on the market almost a year, price dropped once already and the vendors say they're ready to move into a new build whenever suits our time scales...

Osmiornica Yay, that's great!

Fingers crossed for everyone else - we're still bidding, but another property came on the market yesterday that would suit. It's a new built, the same type we had considered buying off plan but considerably cheaper and ready to move in. We'll try and view early next week, and if we can't reach an agreement on the other property we'll go straight in above asking on that one and see whether we can do a quick deal.

Hello, do you mind if I join you? We accepted an offer on our house the day before yesterday after 23 viewings and now need to find somewhere to live. We didn't want to look before because the market is very slow where we are and we were afraid of becoming attached to somewhere and then being unable to sell...

Anyway, there is a major complication in that DH is going away on Saturday for a fortnight, so we won't have much opportunity to look at houses. He has agreed to take tomorrow off to look with me, and I have 6 viewings lined up for the day. So, any tips? Has anyone else tried to look at lots of houses in the same day? How did you keep track of good/bad points and reach any decisions? Any advice gratefully received :)

Precious I hope it all goes well for you.

I don't think we did anything unusual to sell our house, although it did take a lot of viewings, so perhaps we should have done! We just tidied, tidied and then tidied a bit more! We had a look at every room and tried to imagine how it would look to others. We put away everything that could be put away and became adept at hiding things that couldn't - cars are a great place to store things during viewings!

I think it's worth asking agents for their impression of the market in your area. I say this because the media seems full of rising house prices and competition for houses but that's absolutely not the case here. It really is a buyers' market where we are and there seemed little urgency to make an offer.

Ask the agent if they will be doing the viewings or you will. If you need to do some yourself it's worth asking for some tips. Mine said to make sure I allowed the viewers to walk into rooms first, and to give them time to look around on their own after you've shown them around.

Good luck!

I went out and bought 5 removals boxes and really decluttered ESP the dc bedrooms. Have some fresh air thru the house. I did all the viewings as ours all happened so quickly. But when the people came round I asked them if they would like to look round by themselves or prefer I'd I showed them. All of them wanted to be shown. But then I did say I'd would give them time to mooch around in their own afterwards. Turn the lights on ESP as its getting dark so early now. If you have kids/partner try and get rid if them for 20 mins! Nothing worse than people lolling around getting in the way good luck !

I agree with that too. I have felt sometimes like I want to save everyone's time as I know as soon as I've walked into. A few rooms if I like the house or not...no point even looking upstairs sometimes

bludger that sounds good for you - a back up plan . Good luck to all those selling/viewing.

We offered on the house we liked today, 95% of the asking price and was rejected . it's been on the market for ages and as the estate agents says; it's already had 30K knocked off next time they say that I'm going to ask if they got any offers before the 30K was knocked off, of course not it was overpriced FFS so not sure what to do, we don't have a real back up plan other than renting... really would like to call the vendor's bluff but time is not on our side!

Thank you for the tips. It hadn't occurred to me to take photos but it would be a good idea if the vendors don't mind. If we had a choice we wouldn't do it this way but I suppose I'm hoping that we might just 'know' and so it's worth seeing as much as we can before DH goes away.

Sorry about your offer MILdesperandum. It sounds as if you were being very reasonable. I hope they reconsider - the offer we've accepted was something like 93% and I am happy with it.

Sorry to hear so many of you are having a stressful time. Congrats to Osmiornica!

Janey we had a day full of viewings when we started looking and left ourselves 10 mins after each one to discuss and make some notes, but then never looked at the notes as one of them just felt right. Didn't get it though!

Our sale seems to be going OK, but we still can't find anything to buy. We're going on holiday tomorrow, so won't be able to view anything for a week - fingers crossed we don't miss a perfect house while we're away! A lovely house has just come up, but it's right next door to a pub. Would that put you off? It's a small quiet pub but I'd be worried that it could change hands and get noisier in future. I think we'll view it if it doesn't sell while we're away.

Thank you for your helpful suggestions. As predicted, it wasn't an easy day but we did find out a lot about what we like and don't like. Low point was when I got two of the viewings the wrong way around and we went to our 2pm appt at 1pm. Everyone was very nice about it though.

We also looked at a house with an agent that hadn't been prepared for a viewing. The agency was sure they'd spoken to the vendor, but it was obvious that they'd just walked out of the house this morning without remembering/knowing there was a viewing. There were clothes everywhere, dirty underwear on the floor, all the wardrobes open, beds unmade, dirty dishes, food, and empty wrappers all over the worktops. I was cringing for them!

Oh dear Janey! Maybe they did know - some people have no shame! mind you sounds like our house now that we've sold - I've had a week off housework and tidying to celebrate!