Sold but nowhere to buy (despair)

[PippiLongstromp]

We got a sale agreed on our house in March, and thought spring would be a good time to find a new and bigger house, surely something would come up! But it didn't, it hasn't, and now three months later I feel so despondent !! I don't think we are picky, we have a reasonable budget, and are up for a project, but we have seen everything there is in our area of search and so little new is coming on.... Is anyone else in the same situation at all? Just looking for some sympathy I guess. The way it's going we will be moving into renting before long. Luckily our buyers are understanding, but have asked that we move out by September which we will do. Would rather take the sale than lose out. Anyone got anything encouraging to say, feel like crying today...

@FunSpunge I had to google PMA! . So true, am really trying to speak to myself today, that it will be all be ok and worth it in the end. But am definitely having some down days about this.

@xandesrmom2 I hadn't thought about this - of course people who are selling may not be motivated if they don't actually have to move. Thanks for adding this layer of further despair..

We are in a similar situation. Houses are few and far between around here and we recently made the mistake of falling in love with a property before we had ours on the market. It had been on sale for a few months so we thought we could get ours on the market and be in a position to proceed quickly. Unfortunately the owners accepted an offer a week before we instructed our ea. We've decided to put ours on the market anyway and hope that something else comes up (or the other sale falls through)
The way I look at it is like this: there are two potential 'worst case' scenarios- We could leave our house off the market and watch another potentially good house pass us by or we could lose a buyer because we don't find anywhere to buy ourselves. Having been through the first scenario already, we've decided to risk the latter scenario but hope it all falls into place. Best laid plans and all...

In my area the market seemed to flip back in late 2014 - early 2015....

up until then it had been very much a buyers market with loads of houses for sale, very few actually selling and even reasonably priced ones were having to knock at least 10% off to achieve a sale.

All of a sudden in early 2015 there seemed to be far fewer houses on the market, virtually nothing new coming up for sale and suddenly far more buyers willing and able to pay prices that were previously being baulked at... and it's stayed that way ever since

the tv programme location location location might be looking for prospective buyers in your area - its a long shot but might be worth checking out their fb page.

Like a pp said - leaflet? Why not put a personal note through the door of some houses you love?

That happened to me once. I wasn't selling, but was flattered . If I had tempted to sell, it may have pushed me to!

We were in this position and also had offers accepted and then collapsed. We rented for 6 months in our new area.

This really helped because we became no chain/first time buyers all over again and estate agents loved us.

mayhew - I'm so relieved you say six months, I think I could live with that. It's the thought of wasting money on rent for a longer period of time that really gets to me. But I guess I just need to get over that.

MrMen - do it, put your house on the market now! We need this whole thing to start moving again. If everyone is so afraid of not finding something to buy that they won't put theirs on the market, we will never get out of this cycle of doom!!

Its not wasting money on rent, its putting yourself in a better buying position.

For us it was also helpful to be on the ground in the area.

I recognise this problem. We were lucky, and a house came in the market as we received an offer. It's the only house to have come up that we would have seriously considered in the past six months though. We the. Waited ages for our vendors to find somewhere.

Can you get your EA to leaflet the areas you like? They will have a better idea on the value of houses etc. Our vendors EA went out and did this for them.

Yes, renting since last summer. I don't think our old house would have gone up in value by much since then, but the area we are looking at has. DH is all about the deal though, I would have gone higher in a few bids to get the house.

I'd consider going into rented
We kept our buyers waiting and lost them 😞