Sellers/Buyers Roll Call 8 and still going

[Fern204]

Hope it's ok to start a new thread.
Bottom of our chain should exchange on Monday and then the top will hopefully exchange a week later. I dont quite understand, something to do with a charge on our buyers house which needs to be released first.
Aiming to complete on 15th July, so hopefully not much longer.
I will never move again, and definitely not in a chain of 10!

Hi everyone, FTB over here. Viewed a house (been on the market since Jan) last week and EA told us the vendors accepted 10% below asking just before lockdown but unfortunately the sale fell through. We offered exactly the same as what they accepted pre-lockdown (10% below asking) on Fri and they rejected our offer within 1 hr of submitting! Submitted our best and final offer this morning (6% below asking) and they rejected, again within an hour. Feeling very deflated as we cannot go to asking as we need the money for the renovation, and it seriously needs a lot of work done. Really thought they’d have accepted the offer considering it was more than what they apparently accepted previously . It’s an executor selling so I guess they are holding out, time to walk away me thinks!

@calialilly

Hi everyone, FTB over here. Viewed a house (been on the market since Jan) last week and EA told us the vendors accepted 10% below asking just before lockdown but unfortunately the sale fell through. We offered exactly the same as what they accepted pre-lockdown (10% below asking) on Fri and they rejected our offer within 1 hr of submitting! Submitted our best and final offer this morning (6% below asking) and they rejected, again within an hour. Feeling very deflated as we cannot go to asking as we need the money for the renovation, and it seriously needs a lot of work done. Really thought they’d have accepted the offer considering it was more than what they apparently accepted previously . It’s an executor selling so I guess they are holding out, time to walk away me thinks!

Yes, they are being greedy!

they are being greedy and trying to take advantage of what is currently a hot market. It may also be the previous seller was in a more secure position than you or they found something and need all the funds they can get.

If it's not meant to be its not meant to be

AHH that sucks.

We just had survey date come through. Eek.

We have also accepted an offer on house. We viewed a potential house that we might offer on. It is more expensive and on the same road as the other one that we liked but needed more work. We are torn as the one we saw today is a lovely house and half of the work we would like to do is already done but it has a north facing garden with at least 6 gardens surrounding it. The other house across the rd has a very south facing garden that is not overlooked. I really liked it but the house needs everything doing. The deco is very dated and we would like to add a dormer to the upstairs and reconfigure the rooms up there. Not forgetting the nicotine soaked fabric of the house that will require stripping straight away to get rid of the stench. We shall view this one again tomorrow and hopefully make an offer on it but we keep changing our minds as the other is the easier option now but i have a niggle that slightly over looked north facing garden will get to me.

@notheragain4 oh go for the doer upper we can create a graduates from this threads, thread for the next stressful adventure!
I was going to buy a nice new house with nothing to do... but instead im going back to the future 1980s style!

calialily
That’s a shame.

However I disagree that they are necessarily being greedy. Maybe someone is offering more and is a cash buyer or maybe they felt they were selling it way too cheap before. It’s not greedy trying to get the best price for your house, it’s what almost everyone tries to do.

OMG that previous post is so confusing.

House A has a south facing garden but needs a lot of work and scrubbing just to get into i.

House B has a north facing garden but is in a better state deco-wise and has the dormer we would put in house A; so half of the work done.

@Notyetthere - I must admit I would go for the south facing garden - I love spending time in the sun (when we have it)!

@Notyetthere North facing garden is a big no no for us.

@Notyetthere I’d buy the doer upper for sure, assuming it’s priced to reflect the work needed. Is this a long term house (sounds like it if you’re planning to do lots of work). I’d want to do it my way and I think you’d kick yourself down the line for not taking on a bit more work for a better long term outcome - you can change the house but not its direction!

We finally got our mortgage application sorted today - has gone to the next stage, they might request a few more bits of paperwork from us apparently but other than that there’s nothing else for us to do except wait and see now. Have read lots of news stories about how hard it is to get a mortgage offer right now so feeling a bit nervous even though we’ve not defaulted or taken any payment holidays or anything!

Also waiting with slightly baited breath for the stamp duty announcement - would save us £10k if they get rid for houses under £500k so I’m keeping fingers crossed!

@notthereyet unless the garden is huge in the north facing
... Just don't do it.

I go against the crowd on north facing gardens, and the property we’re buying is north facing, but I’m really happy with the surroundings and it’s a long garden so has sunny spots further down, I’m planning a cool lush courtyard patio feel next to the house - jungley shade planting and water feature - sunnier pergola decked area mid way down with brighter colourful/tropical planting and then veggie plot & working area at the end. I’ve known some lovely north facing gardens, it’s not all about all sun all of the time. With south facing gardens you can end up struggling for shady places to sit in summer and have to create them.

So updated from yesterday were the mortgage broker saying that the lender had withdrawn the mortgage we were applying for and will not honour it, they’re still the best option for us but it will be 2% rather than 1.8%. Ah well. They had to confirm we’re ok with that (not much choice really is there!) and then that has more rumbling on to do before we hear an outcome but apparently that should be a few more days.

Solicitor replied to my chasing email with a placeholder but at least an individually written one. I’ll give them another 2 or 3 days before chasing again.

Also had a phone call from the estate agent asking how we were getting on, seemed to be a bit of a fishing phone call and I wasn’t quite sure what she was after so was a bit tight-lipped with giving her any specific info (aware she’s working for the vendor not me!) , but I did glean that the vendors’ solicitor sent them a list of 24 questions on Friday - presumably following my solicitor formulating them from the questions I sent her - so at least things are happening even if my solicitor isn’t telling me about them! Maybe they were just looking for reassurance I wasn’t about to pull out, which I didn’t say specifically but hopefully gave off a positive attitude that I was chasing everybody and progressing things my side, I just needed the vendors to answer the property info questions properly without conflicting information.

Rishi might be helping us out on some home improvements once we do buy our houses as well!

Vouchers of up to £5,000 for home insulation www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53313640

We are still no further forward. Number 4 in the chain was still asking questions last week, number 6 has to pay a charge before mortgage offer will be released. Top if the chain haven't decided if they are going into rented. We were supposed to be aiming for 1st July completion, now it's the 15th, but with the Stamp Duty announcement tomorrow, who knows? I would be over the moon if stamp duty was cut, we are due to pay 22k, so any saving would be welcome.

Hi, we are just starting viewings and are first time buyers, finding reading the thread very helpful, thank you. We’re looking at cheap houses in a very fast moving market over the last few years, 20% price rises over each of the last two years. So the house we will see on Saturday is the most expensive and worst condition house on the street but if a nicer one came up we wouldn’t be able to afford it. But it makes me worry about down valuation by the lender, we wouldn’t be able to get the mortgage without our deposit being 20% of purchase price to the lender. Am I right in thinking that this sounds like the sort of situation this might happen in? So nervous already about buying but this seems to be the situation in every house we see, the last one that sold went for a similar price or less but was in much better decorative order.

@SwayingInTime if there's a down valuation it's not all down to you, when we bought our current house it was down valued £12,000, we only had £1000 extra to put down, the seller sold to us £11,000 less as he didn't want to start the process again. 20% is a good deposit, if the house is down valued I would take that as a strong sign you are overpaying and be willing to walk away, then it's up to the seller.

Good advice, thank you. We’re unlikely to get to that stage as we are in the sensible offer emphasising proceed-ability camp rather than going all out to ‘win’ at the open day. Their sale has fallen through twice already in the last 6/7 months. I can also see that they listed the house last week and increased the price on the same day by £5000!

I don't suppose hive heating and bulbs counts as energy efficient haha?! Our house is new so doubt it'll need any insulation, no mention of solar panels?

@Fern204 that all sounds so frustrating!!
So is the stamp duty bracket going to be increased?? My understanding was that it was only up to £500k?

Stamp Duty seems to be main news on most online papers.

Up to £500k is what the papers are reporting currently @tigerbear.

Lots of conflicting information on twitter some say will start tomorrow, some say will start November.

We received an outstanding balance from our solicitor yesterday showing the stamp duty + i advised them i would not be paying until we hear from Sunak.

Not sure i can hold my breath for 24 hours!

Wow so spoken to solicitor and if a stamp duty holiday is announced then we will get the money sent back to us (developer is paying it for us) so that would be £8000 in our pockets!! Eagerly awaiting the speech trying not to get my hopes up!!

How long does it usually take from photographs being taken to the house actually being advertised on the market? Desperate to get mine on the market as a house we loved is going to a closing date for offers but since having my photos done on Friday I've heard nothing.

So thats it, our chain collapsed today. Same problem as before, number 4 in chain got fed up waiting for solicitor to answer queries and offered on an empty house instead. We were number 7, two more above us.
We are waiting to hear if our seller will wait for us, and we have a viewing next week from a chain free buyer who offered before.
I hate this system, we have been on the market since May 2019. We were due to exchange today. Back to square one and wine.