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?!

Our agent said that it does tend to go quiet over Easter and then ramps up when children back at school, we have one viewing tomorrow but our house is not in a popular area so I am not holding out much hope.
I viewed a house this afternoon which I fell in love with.

Ug , spoke to our solicitor today to find out what the hold up is, and we've been waiting 2 weeks for some stupid window and boiler certificates on the house we are buying. Just find them or shell out for insurance policies like we have had to!

Just checking in. Jealous of the people at the end of the process, and commiserations to those starting it!
Feels like it's all gone quiet now after the flurry of viewings, then being constantly on the phone to mortgage people, solicitors, paperwork, blah blah. Spoke to solicitors on Monday and they were waiting on a response from buyer's sol, and local searches which were due back yesterday, and then we'll be ready to start talking dates, so hopefully that happens soon! Homeowners survey booked in on our house for Tuesday so fingers crossed it doesn't flag up anything terrible. Can't bloody wait to just have a date and something to work towards!
DH going to start moving some stuff down this weekend - he drives a big white van for work and he's convinced he can store some furniture at his dad's (lives nearish new house) for a few weeks and then get everything else in his van on the day and not have to hire a moving van. Personally I think for £200 or whatever it costs, it's worth the peace of mind of knowing we won't end up on moving day with too much stuff and no way of moving it, but it's not me that'll be making the 6-hour round trip from our house to new house if he's wrong, so fuck it. He better be right or he's going to be very pissed off!

Can I join this thread? Am at the very end of journey hopefully as have exchanged and am due to compete two weeks today (eek!). Is it normal to be having last minute panics? I know this is the house for us and it has been a long time coming(2 years to sell ours then a spell in a rental while we waited to buy). But I keep going into panic about money etc. I known we can afford it but with stamp duty, solicitors fees,broker fees, removal fees etc it just feels very scary at the moment. We have gone from being very comfortable in our tiny starter home to our forever home.But then I remember buying our first home and being convinced we were going to have to live I beans and toast forever to afford it! Does anyone else have this panic- I think it just takes my mind off try packing panic ha ha

Hi. Can I join you please?
I sold my property at the beginning of March and (touch wood) it's proceeding smoothly at the moment. I've sold to a FTB who wants to complete by mid-May. The problem is that I can't find anything to buy! There is very little available in the area I want to move to. I was outbid on one property and there isn't much else I like. In addition the lack of supply is really driving up the prices so anything that does come on is massively overpriced. I'm worried that I'll soon be priced out of the area. Do I go into rented? Or buy the best of a bad bunch?!
After the initial excitement of selling, I'm now feeling fairly glum about the whole thing

It's really a rollercoaster, excitement one minute then plunging, down, down down.

House is fairly tidy, and was grumpily hoovered by dd1, and dd2 found her missing phone while tidying her room, I suggested taking the mattress off bed and there it was. She was happy anyway, we have been looking for it all day.

Fingers crossed the woman likes our house tomorrow!

My friend at work spent £600 on a survey having fallen in love with a house and the chap suddenly decided not to sell.

I keep having wobbles Slowly, but have to keep reassuring myself that we didn't take any of the decisions lightly and it will be ok!

Thanks sweep the halls, I'm doing the same. I think once the deposit money went it all felt about real!! I am really excited but also anxious!!

Hi, another newbie here. We went on the market on Tuesday afternoon. No viewings booked yet (although I know, reasonably, that our house has only been on for a day!) - it's a lovely house though and filling a hole in the market where we are so I was hopeful for a a little flurry of viewings!
How long did other people wait for viewings to start coming in - I know Jeremy asked this the other day too!

I had forgotten how much I HATE this process and I'm only on day two

I've got my eyes firmly on the area we're interested in, hoping we'll be in a position to put in an offer promptly if anything comes up. If it doesn't we'll stay put. We're not desperate to move but this seems a good time to try. Fingers crossed.

pass I keep reading that people have six/seven booked in within a few days, I am not sleeping because of it.
Our landlord is selling up too and I know that the house we are renting will go really quickly.

Already of thinking of reducing the price after two days, that's how stupidly desperate I am.

Nooooooooo Jeremy! Don't even think about it! You don't want to look desperate from the start because otherwise you will get crazy offers (when you start getting them). Hold tight!

Prospective buyer has been and gone. I took out dog and two teenagers, one very sullen as wanted to stay in bed study for her imminent GCSEs.

At least she is up now. Also I have fed everyone so hopefully they won't spend the entire day making messes in the kitchen and piling up dirty dishes everywhere, while I go into work.

Jeremy we got one or two viewings a week and the majority were at the weekend. We had an offer about just over a month on the market and it then took about another month to resolve as our buyers lost their first buyer. We exchanged earlier this week. London and SE is crazy in comparison to many other areas. A lot of the posters with lots of viewings will be in those areas. Plus it's the school holidays so a lot of families are likely to be away, etc.

We've been away, so I've been just forgetting the whole house selling and buying nightmare. But now we're back...

Our sale is going well. The buyers are happy with their survey and everything is just ticking along. They've done their searches I think but we haven't heard anything. They're coming round tomorrow to have another look as they've only seen the place once.

We didn't get the house we offered on. The vendors dragged it out for more than a fortnight before saying no. I'm actually quite glad, as we'd have been worried about them all the way to completion. They were very flakey and odd.

We saw the house of the only people who responded to our letter drop today. It's totally fine. I'm not in love with it, but the location, layout and space are all good (everything else can be changed). They let us come round before instructing an EA (they've had valuations though) and their asking price is a bit lower than we had been expecting. So DH is just going to offer them what they've asked for this afternoon. It appears that the husband is keen to just get everything done and would be pleased to not have to involve an EA. DH and I hate all th haggling and game playing nonsense, so we're going in on a 'we're not going to try to haggle you down so please don't try to haggle us up' basis. Luckily DH is doing the negotiations as I do not want to.

Jeremy: don't worry yet. It's been 2 days! And, yes, people will be away. We were away and not doing anything but we are desperately trying to find something t buy. Lots of other people will be too.

We had lots of viewings booked in for the weekend (I pretty much spent a whole weekend just showing people round). We got 3 offers from one weekend of viewings. The viewing bookings came in over the course of a few days once it went on rightmove. We also got more viewings booked after we'd had offers but had to cancel them. Just hold your nerve for now and you will get viewings once everything settles down after Easter.

Thanks , you have made me feel more positive, I wouldn't be panicking so much if our landlord wasn't selling.

Hi :) DH and I are right at the beginning. We've viewed one house but it wasn't right for us.

Had four more viewings booked for this week but two of them have now sold. Nothing new has come on the market in our area/price range for about a month now. Bit distressing!

Yes. That adds extra stress.

However, remember that it may be much harder for your LL to sell with a tenant in situ than it will for you to sell your empty house. They can't guarantee vacant possession until you've actually left and tenants may stay on until they're evicted rather than just going. So that will both put buyers off (unless they're LLs who want to keep going with the tenancy too) and delay everything. Try not to feel too pressured.

We have found the buying process much, much harder than selling was. It is a seller's market at the moment and there's bugger all to buy round here. If this current offer doesn't come off, we're hoping that lots more will come in after Easter otherwise we'll be looking at renting while we wait for something to come up.

Can I join? We sold our house at the beginning of February, in a private sale. We found a house we loved, offer accepted, all going well should have exchanged in the ext few weeks. Then the buyers told us their bank surveyor had down valued our house by £15. So we are halted.

We don't agree with valuation, neither do 3 Estate agents. We've appealed, but not holding out much hope as not much comparable has sold in last 3 months (criteria for appeal). So we've now got EA coming round to value and put on market again. In the meantime our vendor has re-marketed the house we were buying :(

That's very frustrating huckleberry. Maybe it'll sell again very quickly and everything can get back on track.

huckleberry have to tried negotiating with your buyers to find a way to continue the sale? Maybe meeting them halfway on the die valuation or something.u

If there are no comparables to prove the surveyor wrong you could very well end up in the same position with the next prospective buyer (might even get exactly the same surveyor next time too) and you'd have probably missed out on your onward purchase by then too.

Renegotiating might be a good idea. How much, percentage wise, is a £15k reduction? Would meeting them them half way impact in your purchase?

DH put in our offer and we're waiting. The guy said he has 3 options: to sell to us: to put it on the market through an EA and see what happens; or to get his new employer to take the house off his hands and sell it for him (he must be far more important and indispensable than me!). That's all fair enough, I guess. So we'll see.

There is very little on the market, but property on his estate doesn't tend to shift as fast as elsewhere. People who like new builds tend to just buy the new ones they're still building rather than the 8/9 year old houses. And lots of people really, really don't like new builds (or estates on the edge of the city). Our house sold fast because we are in a very popular area with schools, amenities, transport links etc (and not much on the market). This estate isn't far away but it is undeniably not as good a location (and schools are a real issue). If only DH didn't want to buy a detached house!

We can't afford to meet them halfway at the moment, it is worth 10% of agreed price. If the valuation was increased a bit we might be able to.

There are houses with same number of bedrooms and driveway/garage (ours is road parking) sold for £10k more. We've added those to appeal with argument that the extra 10k is for the driveway etc

So gutted if we can't sell. We bought this house in 2007, just before the crash. We'll already lose money even at the agreed price. The valuation price would mean we no equity at all. :(

using figures rather than percentages you wanted £150k for the house but it's been valued at £135k

The houses that have sold for £10k - is that £10k more than you wanted ie £160k or £10k more than the valuation?

If it's the latter then, if they have a drive, your valuation seems realistic.

I'm disappointed we only have one viewing booked in. I was naively hoping we would get a few. But as they say you only need one...
Very envious of those nearly completed. Not sure I'm ready for the stress though