Buyers/ sellers roll call - are we on number 10 now?!

[kerrymucklowe2020]

Hope this is the final one for us!

@Anyoneoutthere123 massive congrats!!

@Shelley54 I feel your pain - we have been trying to exchange contracts since Monday and OBVIOUSLY didn't happen today because, as it turned out, the solicitor sent us the wrong fucking form to sign. She "reassured" us that we will "definitely" exchange on Monday. This is such a fucking joke.

Can I join in.

We’ve gone on the market this week. We had our house on last year but the house we wanted fell through.

2 viewings booked for Saturday. Slightly annoyed by the usual estate agent banter of ‘oh you’ll be swapped with interest’ which hasn’t come about to the extent that he suggested

We completed today! It was long, exhausting and astonishingly stressful, but it turns out that house buying is like labour - once you get to the nice bit at the end you forget all the pain and trauma that has come before 🤣 there are boxes and random stuff everywhere and it still feels a bit like someone else’s house that we’re just borrowing for a while, but I’m so happy. I love the house even more now than when we viewed it. It’s definitely our forever home and was well worth all the stress ❤️

And for the stats - we were a 2 house chain (FTB, us, empty house) and it’s taken 13 weeks from us accepting an offer, 12 weeks from having our offer accepted. So not terrible I suppose but an AGE compared to what it should have taken! All done now though

Not quite 2 weeks and our second viewers have put an offer in. They've got a property to sell 5 minutes walk away in a popular area so fingers crossed however we've told them we're still going to continue marketing until they've got an offer.

@FourForYouGlenCoco Congratulations - I like your point about labour, I can imagine that's very true! Hence why people do it again :-)

Still waiting for searches here, everything but local authority one was back in 48 hours but they are taking weeks! Mortgage was approved in 6 days, a welcome surprise considering the broker said typically 26 days.

I got an update from our solicitor and we're still waiting for our drainage searches. All our other ones are back but I think these have taken 4 weeks!
Other than that we're nearly ready, we just need the top of the chain to catch up.

Congratulations @FourForYouGlenCoco!

@movingonup20 we’re in the same boat. The other two searches came back in days but the local authority one is likely to take at least 6 weeks our mortgage was approved in 2 days, we couldn’t believe how fast it was (although we’re porting and only borrowing a small extra amount)!

Anyone getting nervous about increasing talks of lockdowns?

(In the context of house buying!)

I love the house even more now than when we viewed it. It’s definitely our forever home and was well worth all the stress ❤️
Congratulations @FourForYouGlenCoco! Hope you have a lovely first weekend getting everything feeling like home! I’m really nervous that I won’t have that feeling when we get in. It’s so weird, we don’t really know the property at the moment, only 1 viewing and other than that relying less than a dozen (bad!) internal photos, google earth images and the occasional drive past the outside! What if I don’t like it when we get in?!?!? I couldn’t sleep last night, and distracted myself adding various house & garden ideas to my Pinterest. What if none of it works in the space when I see it again? I think I’m just done with the uncertainty of it all tbh!

@notheragain4 I’m not too worried about Lockdown 2 in terms of house stuff, as I don’t think they’ll shutdown the housing market like they did last time. It’s not like moving house actually involves much unavoidable close contact with people and we’re all used to distancing and PPE now. And all of our solicitors/brokers etc are already WFH anyway so it shouldn’t disrupt those things!

I am, I'm wondering about the searches taking longer if eg fewer staff at work in local authority.

Although in our personal circumstances it shouldn't have a massive impact as we are in rented currently and buying a house that is vacant, so no chain, and surveyor can visit a vacant house even if lockdown to do the Survey.

But until Exchange I will have a worry about something going wrong, so a delay means longer to worry!

Also a bit worried about the logistical aspects of moving day if lockdown/ high number of cases.

@notheragain4 that was my biggest worry! This move was supposed to be next year but lockdown with 3 kids in a tiny house and no proper garden (we just had a tiny yard before) nearly killed me off and precipitated the move. Hopefully though as lemony says moves will still be able to go ahead - even in the first, most strict lockdown, moves that were in the end stages still went ahead so fingers crossed.

@Lemonylemony funnily enough I never worried about that but DH did! He fessed up yesterday that he’d been secretly worried that he wouldn’t like the house as much as he’d thought he would, but in the event and on the day it was even better than he’d remembered - he was clearly v relieved! It is crazy that it’s such a massive decision and you probably spend an hour or so total in the place before you actually buy it - I’ve spent more time reading amazon reviews for things that cost a fiver than I have looking at any of the houses we’ve bought 🤣 hopefully once you’re in and it’s yours you’ll love it. And it sounds massively cheesey, but

Oops pressed post 🙈 was going to say, sounds massively cheesey but it’s not the house that really matters, it’s the people in it. Our previous houses have been very much stepping stone type houses (the last one especially was barely fit for purpose by the end there!) but we had SUCH lovely times and I look back on all of it so fondly. Lots and lots of happy memories wrapped up in those places ❤️

@FourForYouGlenCoco yes similar, we were waiting for some specific houses to be built but after lockdown and working in the living room surrounded by people I needed an office so we opted to move ASAP. I just hope we can get in next week and the internet set up so I can work comfortably. My next concern will be furniture deliveries but I know that's very small in the scheme of things, although my poor mum was without a sofa the whole of lockdown. She got rid of it the day before and lockdown happened the night before it was due to be delivered!

We have a utility in the new house so I'm going to start building reserves, nothing silly I'm not going to empty shelves, but just start buying a couple of extra things a week now we have space to store. DH is deploying for 4 months in November and I really can't be doing with shortages on top of everything else!

Update - I’m the one who made an offer on a house then Connells kept trying to force us to have a mortgage appointment. Rang up today and now there is a magical higher offer so it’s off the table.

It’s been on three weeks (not long admittedly) and on Tuesday there were no active offers, then every time we say no to the mortgage appt another offer appears! It was over budget anyway so will keep an eye out to see if it goes off the market or they were lying.

The most disappointing thing is that there are no good houses to look at and we will lose our buyer if too slow.

@InescapableDeath have you checked they've definitely passed on the offer? They are legally obligated to. Why is it off the table? I would leave your offer on the table, give your position, and leave it to the seller to decide what they want to do whether there is another offer on the table or not.

Apparently there's a higher offer now but if it doesn't come off rightmove we're going to pop a letter into the vendor I think. We have no idea how 'real' any of this is!

Oooh just got an email from my solicitor that he's requested the final contract and preferred exchange and completion dates from the other side. Does that mean all the enqueries are done?

@InescapableDeath I’d do that with the letter if it stays on Rightmove, the EA sounds shady!

@Bells3032 yes it sounds like you are ready to go how exciting!

Question: our buyer is having their mortgage agreement reissued as they have “negotiated” 🙄 us lower. It’s the only thing stopping us exchanging now. Anyone have any idea how long that might take?

We viewed our house again today, I want to move in. It's just perfect and will be worth all this waiting

Hello everyone. Isn’t this stressful?
Lived here for 15 years but want something bigger and it’s now or never. Sold after a week on the market but haven’t found anything yet. Viewed today but much too big and the amount of money it needed to make it right would be way over our budget. Viewing a new listing on Monday. Our buyer has a buy to let investor pushing them to move quickly which is good. Resigned myself to go into rental if needed.

We got a friend to ring the EA who said the property we wanted has sold, so we think it must have gone to another buyer now. A bit shabby though considering we offered what they wanted only on Thursday.

Looked at three places today, none right. One the box room was so small I can't see how you can get a bed in there, one was nice but there are tenants in until March (and we want to be done by end of March latest), and the other was a bit grubby in person and very expensive.

Quite down now. Hope something comes on this week.

One the box room was so small I can't see how you can get a bed in there
Any chance of moving the wall to enlarge it with space from neighbouring room?