Buying and selling support thread?!

[GinIsIn]

Hi, I know there's a sellers' thread, and a buyers' thread, but I am knee deep in trying to do both at the same time and starting to feel like my head might explode and not sure which thread to visit to beg for someone to send Anyone else?!

Good luck for today's viewing Snail! It really does only take one - it took 5 weeks and 13 viewings to sell our house - next door neighbour has sold his in a week! Didn't even have a For Sale sign up, the lucky bugger. Fingers crossed for you that the right person turns up soon.
As usual, been lurking but not posting, glad things seem to be ticking over for everyone.
Bexley did you get a resolution on the buyers' loan thingy? Seems totally illogical not to just pay it off!

Well after a lot of stress and crap (mostly thanks to buyers' evil, wanky solicitors) we finally exchanged on Monday! Even that wasn't straightforward - looked like it was going to get pushed back yet again. Then my lovely solicitor rang well after 5pm and was like "We've done it! We've actually done it!" Great excitement all round and completing/moving next Wednesday. I so, SO cannot wait for this process to be over!

Sorry been a bit awol. They're fairly confident that the loan can be ported over, but the loan company has been asking for official documents which are taking their time to come through.

They're keeping us up to date now, we're holding off searches etc on the new house so we don't lose any money if our sale goes belly up. Connells are going super slow at the new house end, so that might actually work in our favour.

Good luck snail and well done glencoco - it's always a major relief when you exchange. Hope things progress soon Bexley. We have been on the market three weeks today but it feels like months! I've purposely not cleaned this week and will wait until the weekend when I have a viewer. Keeping the place tidy has been so hard, especially now the kids are on study leave and I'm at work. The kids keep talking as if we will move to eco house but I keep saying we have to sell first!

We are on holiday so lots of paperwork to deal with when we et back. Mortgage broker has part submitted our application and no queries yet on bank statements or on anything else. Only needs another proof of address and a more up to date mortgage statement.

Enjoy your hols mummy. We are away soon. Am hoping for a flurry of viewers as the house will be tidy!

Yes enjoy your holiday!

I'm jealous of the exchange Four.

DH phoned our vendor to have a chat today. It's a private sale, which means you can speak directly to them easily. He's very keen to get things moving so he's bothering his solicitors regularly. Apparently they're waiting for the solicitors they used when they originally bought the house to send through paperwork about the original planning permission for the house (I'm not clear why they can't just get that from the council though). And the estate management company need to return a standard questionnaire.

It appears that the cheeky buggers have added on a purchase to the chain. But of a new build that's actually built. So the developers are pretty keen that it should complete before the end of June because presumably that's the end of their financial year. But the end of June is bloody ages away.

That's cheeky Step away, although at least it's built. I'm sure June feels like a lifetime away.

So my two viewings turned into three, the estate agent rang this morning with another one which they squeezed in the middle of the two already arranged. Hopefully I'll hear some feedback tomorrow, would be lovely to get an offer (fingers very tightly crossed)

I'm very tentatively joining this thread

Just finished refurbing our entire house and doing a loft extension and something quite special has caught our eye

It's very big and needs a lot of work. I also think the sellers are a bit fishy. It's being rented out at the moment.

We've had two estate agents round and both say they could sell our house in a week - market is a bit mad around here at the moment

But we have 3 children under the age of 3 and I'm wondering if I have the appetite for another huge building job.....however, it could be our forever home and very rarely do things this massive come up. The good thing is the size is putting off other purchasers.

Don't want to put an offer on without being proceedable and don't want to play our hand too early.

Am wondering about getting our house on the market and a mortgage in principle and then trying to do a quick deal. If it falls through, we're happy to stay here

Or.....do we put an offer in now but not be proceedable and risk the dodgy sellers using our offer to bid other people up? Aaarrghhhh - it has been on the market fir ages and we know the vendors' bottom line but we just want another 3-4% off

Am reading this thread avidly and trying to pick up some tips!

Sounds good snail. Go for it Gobbolin! What have you got to lose?

On my God - just my sanity

I'm also a risk averse control freak so the thought of a chain is filling me with horror!

Kind of wondering about putting a cheeky offer I next week but think we would be better to wait until the mortgage is sorted. On the other hand, I don't really want to go to the palaver of putting the house on the market if we can't do a deal

But, but......we could afford what the vendors want now. Although we don't want to pay that. Argghhhhhh . How have you all stayed so sane?!

Hope you get some feedback (and offers) snail.

Gobbolino: I agree that it's worth a try. Although, obviously none of this buying and selling stuff is actually fun!

Sympathies and admiration to everyone else who has got so far

We're trying to sort out the mortgage. Have had a chat with manager who looks after DH's stuff who said it should be fine to extend the mortgage but isn't in the office today so we can't progress things. I've called his colleague so hopefully she'll call me back.

Had feedback from our viewing last night- really positive. They loved it, said it was a beautiful house, the nicest they've seen. The woman is a bit concerned that it is a bit far from her family (same city) but they are going to get back on Monday and let us know.

Had another viewing this morning. Think it went well, seemed positive, but the third room might be a little bit too small for them. Not much we can do about that!

That sounds good Huckleberry. We're still awaiting feedback from a second viewing almost two weeks ago, who apparently liked the house, but won't return the EAs calls... People are strange.

Glad the feedback was positive huckleberry. Hopefully she'll decide it's not too far.

Viewer feedback is a weird thing, both giving it and getting it. Sometimes when you've viewed you don't have a good reason beyond not wanting to buy the house, which can be hard as EAs do try to push for actual reasons. And viewers can be so odd.

We had one older woman looking round our (4 bed, 2 reception room with dining kitchen) house who kept telling me how keen she was and said that she'd be in touch with the EA first thing on Monday about an offer. She didn't offer but said that the house was a bit small for her (on her own).

We had a couple of families round who clearly loved it but realised they couldn't afford it. I think they'd phoned to view another house on the street that's smaller and needs renovation (so was on for a lot less than ours) and had been persuaded to view ours too. One family said how much bigger and nicer it was than everything else they'd viewed (that's was an extra £50k on your budget will do) but then gave quite odd feedback, we think because they didn't just want to say they couldn't afford it.

Another couple in the same situation asked me if we'd had any offers. The EA had phoned during their viewing to tell me that the people who are now our buyers had made an offer during their viewing and I think they overheard. They didn't give any feedback, even though they really loved it, I think because they didn't have enough money to match the offer.

All the older viewers who were supposedly downsizing gave feedback that it was too small, which I assume was just a stock response rather than actual feedback.

So we now have solicitors!!! We have sold within 3 weeks of going on the market and our house is we have 'brought' is now showing as sold stc!!!
I can't believe how quickly this is happening! No chain either way!
It's all exciting.

My new house (argh!) has a high gloss red kitchen that I'm not 100% sure of but its liveable.

The mortgage seems to be on track too...our broker said its one of the smallest mortgages he's dealt with recently!!! Suppose that's a good thing??? It's our 3rd house and lots of equity and buying for 7k less than selling for lol!

Puggy-people are indeed very strange-lots of people avoided my EA even though they wanted 2nd viewings!!! Allegedly!

I really hope all of you get some viewing, positive feedback and some offers-I'm going to be joining the buying thread I think as well...

I feel a bit sick lol!

So one of my viewings from yesterday has put in an offer and I've accepted I'm so stupidly happy!! I've frantically been searching rightmove today at work and went to see a house tonight which is lovely, I wasn't expecting to like it much but wanted to start looking but actually it was much nicer than the photos made it look . I'm seeing two more tomorrow but having seen the outsides of them I'm not sure about either of them (parking looks like a bit of a nightmare for both).

Fantastic news snail. I hope you find something lovely.

Velocity: we put an offer in on a house with a gloss red kitchen, even though we weren't keen on the kitchen. We decided we could live with it until we decided how we wanted to do the kitchen and then replace it. The vendor wanted more for it than we were happy to pay though (based on sold price data).

The house we're buying has a high gloss fake wood effect kitchen and a black worktop. I'm not keen on it but it's something I can live with until we save up enough to put in a really lovely kitchen. It's got some sort of amtico-style floor tiles too that I don't like. They're sort of slate effect but really don't look much like actual slate (we have a slate floor now) and aren't very nice IMO. But it's in good condition and I can live with it until I can have the whole lot ripped out and replaced.

Sounds like lots of good news all round. I'm doing a big clean tomorrow for our viewing on Sunday. They're not proceedable but hey! There are a few more houses in the area going on, so hopefully this will trigger some movement.

Last time we were on the market we got some bizarre feedback. Things like they didn't want road parking- which is clear from the information! Another said the third bedroom isn't big enough for a single bed, which it is and is shown on measurements.

But I get it, it is hard if you just don't like the house. Especially if you are thinking "well if I love the house I'll put up with the parking" and then you don't love it enough.

lots of positive news - hurrah!

we've put an offer on a house, been refused, but we weren't surprised as there's lots of interest and it was low, but it's a start! since then we keep bumping into the seller around town. Not that surprising since his house is only a couple of minutes walk from ours, but it's beginning to feel like we're stalking the poor man!

Anyway, it's our open house tomorrow. Really hoping we get an offer from that, then we can increase our offer and be taken a bit more seriously!

Hope everyone else has a good weekend full of viewings! :)

Good luck with the open house MrsP. How exciting!

Oh - an open house sounds good. Good luck!

We had our final - and highest - valuation last night. The chap was very bullish about the price he could achieve so now we're totally confused about what to put it on at

Could anyone help me in practice with what happens in this situation ?

A house we like is in with agents A and B. We initially contacted A to get us a viewing by email. Agent B was able to get us a viewing quicker. So we have had 2 viewings with them. They also gave us the vendors' lowest price.

However, agent B is quite crap at following things up and we're not sure how easy it will be to negotiate via them.

Agent A could potentially be the estate agents selling our house. We were wondering about fessing up that we had seen the house with agent B - although initial contact was with agent a - and seeing if we could do a deal via agent B.

I'm not sure if this could cause the vendor problems though so obviously don't want to do that. Plus, agent A woukd then realise we loved the house and try and ramp the price up. On the other hand, it's been on the market 2 years.

DH just thinks that if we buy and sell through 1 agent, they would be better at chasing the other side.

Good luck with all the viewings today!

Sorry - seeing if we could do a deal via agent A!