Positive stories of finding your family home in a deadline??

[museumum]

We have an 18mo old ds and are in a 1bed/1boxroom flat we love. Decided this was the year to move somewhere for essentially the rest of ds's childhood. Houses we were looking at were selling in 1-2weeks so we had to put this place on the market first. It sold in 6 days. We now have just under three months till we must move out!!!
Last week there were five properties we wanted to view this weekend. Only one is still on the market now and no new ones (because of Easter??).
Will we find anywhere? When do we start looking at interim rented?

Grrr should obv be "on" a deadline not in one!

Feel your pain as am in same boat.
We cannot find ANYTHING we all agree on.
An even considering renting till dream house comes along .

I would say don't get too hung up on the 'dreamhouse' thing. We found a house quite quickly in an area our friends have been renting in for the past 3 years. Our friends have so many criteria, I don't think they are actually ever going to find the house they want. (They really like the space our new house has but the garden is too small for them). We had a backup house and since we have had our offer accepted I've seen 2 more I would have been happy with, for different reasons. It's really sad, because the property market has gone up drastically in their area in the time they have been renting (think around 100K increase for a 300k property ie. it is now 400K). They have thrown money away on rent when they could have bought, and sold, somewhere and at least they would have made the equity.

Get somewhere. It doesn't need to be a dream house, you don't need to live in the same house for ages. If it is in the right area, but you're not happy with the house, just look in another few years, when your ds is in a school you like (you don't even need to stay in the catchment as long as you're not too far away). But I wouldn't keep waiting for the perfect house to come along as it may not.

If you are registered with agents, they can ring you before houses even come onto rightmove. Also get rightmove emails so you get it the day they appear on rightmove.

We're not too hung up on the house I don't think. Needs a garage (huge bike collection), a home office (I work from home) and an eat-in kitchen (or could make one by removing a wall - would rather not build an extension). But location is important as I really don't want to move ds in primary or in the transition to secondary (we are in Scotland so primaries all feed to one secondary unless you go private). However we have three secondaries we'd be happy with so that's a big geographical area.
Today we're seeing a townhouse that needs new kitchen and decorating throughout, a house way way far away on the edge of the city with the tiniest bit of triangular decking instead of a garden, and a house that would need the kitchen/dining room wall removed and a new kitchen.
Hohum. If we buy a house I just want to be able to say I'm pleased with it, not that we will make do althou it's far smaller, darker, further away than we wanted :(

We did. What were a week from exchange and our seller pulled out. We agreed with the rest of chain that we would get it sorted within 6 weeks otherwise chain would have collapsed.

We saw EVERYTHING we could in a weekend, about 12 houses, found the house I am now sitting in last. We completed 7 weeks later, so it can be done!

Also, I thought our house was okay - served the purpose we needed. But preferred the one we had lost.

I was completely wrong, this one was cheaper, had more room and actually is more convenient in different ways. But I was disappointed until we had properly settled in.

Yes, the house we had the offer accepted on was my second choice, and dh's first choice, so I was a bit disappointed. But when we viewed a second time, and took my sister, she was really impressed. And the friends who haven't been able to buy in the area keep going on about the square footage. Plus was considerably cheaper than my preferred house. So actually, I now prefer it and I'm looking forward to moving in.