House buying anxiety - any advice?

[HollyBrrr]

Hi all,

DH and I are buying our first house in an area that has very suddenly seen massive price increases. We had an offer accepted on a flat about a month ago and have been pushing forward with solicitors, mortgage agreements etc. We're a few days away from receiving our mortgage company's final decision.

The scary thing is that 'our' flat is now worth at least £10k more than our offer, and we're worried that the vendor is dragging her feet over sending the final paperwork to our solicitor. We're at the very top of our budget so can't push our offer any further if she were to decide to be difficult. We are being accommodating in other ways: we don't have a chain obviously and there's also a tenant who might cause problems, so we've tried to assure them that as long as we exchange contracts asap we're more flexible on completing and moving in.

In the paperwork we do have, we've discovered that the flat's outside area isn't actually part of the 'plot'. Our estate agent has negotiated with the management company to sell us the attached patio for a further sum. We had initially planned on taking out a loan to buy this after completing, as our mortgage company wouldn't countenance us getting another loan before then. However, we're now wondering whether we should take up our parents' offer of an interest-free loan and buy the outside space asap. Our thinking is that if the vendor suddenly decides to pull out we would have some leverage as owners of this space, which is a big selling point of the property, and could make life difficult for them.

On the one hand, we recognise it's a fairly shitty thing to do and also that we've no idea if we could enforce our ownership of the patio. On the other hand, we love this property and would be absolutely gutted to lose it, as it ticks so many boxes. As I said, we're first time buyers so are very inexperienced and desperately trying not to let that show.

Any advice or thoughts greatly appreciated!

I'm hazarding a guess that you are buying in London, which is stressful for anyone at the moment so you are not alone! If not, an area that is experiencing a similar property boom.

My advice would be get all the leverage you can. Loan from parents to buy patio sounds good, naturally it needs to be timed with the sale of the flat so you don't end up with a patio and no flat.

We bought in London when the market was depressed so didn't have to go through this.

Two friends have bought during this period. One had to enter the dreaded sealed bids scenario and won £10k) over original asking price. The other didn't have a sealed bids scenario but vendor was dragging heels. She decided to give a date by which they exchanged or the deal was off. It worked. She figured that it would be a real pain to lose the place but could find another property if she had to.

Thanks Vesta, and you are right about where we're buying! We know that if we were to get this place we will be some of the luckiest FTB around as it would be a massive bargain.

We were actually wondering about securing the patio before the flat, in the hope that even if the vendor did put the flat on the market again they wouldn't be able to include the patio in the selling points, and if needs be we could sell the patio to the new buyers at a greater price. The more I think about it, the more I realise that probably wouldn't work though - there would be no real way to enforce our ownership or prove trespass if the new owners used it, would there?

What final paperwork are you waiting for? If it's something the vendor has never had or mislaid, they will probably have requested it from someone else and be waiting on them. You could always ask your solicitor if the paperwork is taking an unusually long time to come through.

It's stuff about the leasehold/management company so I guess it could be that they're just waiting on it. Our solicitor is just saying that they haven't received it yet, but maybe we can ask them to actively chase the vendor's solicitor.

You may be right! - we veer between listing all the reasons the vendor has for just sticking with us (there's more I didn't include in OP as didn't want to out anyone) and thinking "They could easily get much more for this, it would almost be stupid of them not to put it back on the market".

I can now totally see why people say buying a house is the most stressful thing you can do! I've had that sick, anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach pretty much constantly for the last month!