How long did it take you to find your house?

[Ladyof]

We are really struggling we have put good offers in for 5 houses now and not got any. We have sold and have AIP, we have offered some under, some asking and 1 over asking. It is so stressful and I wonder if we will ever find anything suitable and get acceptable for it.

from starting to seriously look, to exchange, it took us a year.

7 months and counting...had one accepted last August but it fell through due to legal/survey issues. Have been looking since December and had an offer rejected today. Unsure whether to wait or go higher!

7 months too. Renting post sale. 2 fell through just before exchange due to massive problems. Just had offer accepted on property off market. Fingers crossed this one will be ok. It’s really opened my eyes to how dishonest and shoddy people can be.

Oh OP, I feel you, I could have written this exact post myself! We had an offer over the asking price rejected today; we've been looking for almost a year now. It's so frustrating! No advice just heaps of sympathy.

We have posted about 50 letters, once before christmas and literally 2 weeks ago. Nothing. Running out of patience and ideas and I can feel myself thinking should we settle for this one or that one. So stressful

We were looking in the Spring of 2019, so before the current madness. Add in that we were moving to a not particularly popular area it took just a week to h
ave an offer accepted on a house after we had a buyer lined up for ours. Then approx four months to completion. Really feel for everyone, it's stressful enough in normal times. Personally I think things will calm down if Sunak doesn't extend the stamp duty holiday again.

Me: This one's nice, shall we buy it?
DH: I want it closer to the station, but quieter, cheaper, with a coffee shop nearby, a grand hallway and higher ceilings.

Let's just say it took a while.

Sounds like the market near you is quite lively op. Do you know how far off your offers were?

We moved to current home in December.

Sold ours in august to the third viewer. Bought the second one we viewed.

Went straight in at asking- they had other asking offers but we were first in the door and we were the most in love with it - at least that's how we appeared to the estate agent who swung it in our favour (so vendor told us anyway).

I think we were very lucky when I read a the posts here.

4 days

Lucky because it was a new build plot so avoided many sales difficulties, we were happy to wait in rented ( or with family as it turned out saving us cash)

Very pragmatic attitude. We had skimmed the estate agents for a month or two before ( relocating and waiting for ours to sell) so we knew we could not afford perfection or anything close which made it much easier I think

We are looking, the agents say that very little is coming on the market and that everything they had on the books sold in the second half of 2020.

A week.

Walked past EA on the Monday and realised the stars had aligned and we could afford a house (we already had a flat). Got a mortgage agreed in principle the next Saturday morning then went straight to EA. They asked us what we wanted and we said ideally a 3 bed on X Road. They had one that hadn't even gone on the market yet. Viewed Sunday. Offer accepted Monday. Moved four months later. Would have been quicker but our buyer was an utter twat.

July- 1st november however we viewed so many houses in that time! We found the one we bought mid August so it was about 5 weeks of 4 viewings a week

We've seen 14 houses and put in unsuccessful over-asking offers on 2. I think we will end up in rented as we have a deadline in the summer by which we need to be out of our current home. Starting to feel a little bit panicky tbh, but trying to find the balance between 'compromise' and 'desperation'. Don't want to be renting for months and months but equally don't want to end up in a 'this will have to do' house.

There is very little coming onto the market and what does come on is snapped up within hours if it's half-decent. It's a pretty depressing process.

We saw 4 flats in a span of an hour. The 4th one was what we wanted to see in the first place but I reckon the estate agent took us to flats that were not "selling". But after insisting we see the flat of our choice, we realised it was just too small and how wide angle lens tricks you into thinking how amazing a room looks! We put an offer on the second house and 10 mins later was accepted!

We were first time house buyers in 2018 (quite a few teething problems but I love the flat now). Having said that I will not be buying another place that quickly ever again!

Couple weeks and mainly because I live 70 miles away from where I'm moving so could inly make a couple trips.
I was motivated. I had been scouring rightmive fjr months to see how fast the market was and what things went for. As soon as mine was under offer I went viewing.
My seller sounds like you - multiple offers made but no joy. I want to tell her she's obviously not reading the market and needs to offer more. It is getting frustrating because, after saying she will move in to rented, has now says she will not - after I had paid for searches and survey. I may now have to pay the extra stamp duty plus rent myself.
Up your budget or look at cheaper properties.

Depends how picky you are! 3 years of looking, 2 unsuccessful offers before we finally had offer accepted on what was the best house we’d seen. But we were ‘steadfastly tolerate it or list it’ rather than ‘love it or list it’ so it was going to take something good for us both to agree...

About 3 weeks, but we saw 12 houses in that time frame. The market is pretty dead around here so we were feeling demoralised and viewing lots of places that had compromises (ie no spare room/ small garden / lack of parking) but we felt we had to try and be open minded given how little there was coming up. We then happened upon a property freshly listed that was hugely overpriced, it's literally a time machine back to the 1980s so needs complete modernisation throughout. We were the first to view and offered £50k under asking which the agent advised the vendor to accept. We have still made a compromise to some degree in that we didn't envisage taking on anything that needed much doing to it but we've decided seeing the long term potential is worth more to us than paying above the odds for something that's more modern in the short term.

It’s a weird time. You’d think with all the economic uncertainty the market might have dropped in value but instead there’s a boom. Working at home now established means people want to move further out of cities into suburbs or rural, people are sick of their 4 walls, want more space, garden, etc. At the same time I guess there is less movement from elderly who might have been shielding or nervous about house viewing. So there has been less coming on at certain price points. What does come on where I live is often sold within 24 hours. The one we are buying never even hit rightmove.

18 months from start to finish.

The house I eventually bought hadn’t even been advertised yet. Was viewing another property and made a comment like “I’d love a house, like this, on this street but with more space. If it had been a bit bigger I would have made an offer today. Do you often get houses like this in this area come up?”

He said “give me a minute...”

Phoned the owners of a house opposite that had extended who had contacted him the week before for a valuation and were ready to go on the market. I was the first to view, made an offer same day and they accepted. Was nervous as the EA then marketed the house and I did think I might get gazumped but luckily it worked out.

Prior to that I feel my main problem was that the EAs didn’t take me seriously. There was a house that had been on the market 2 years and the owner was desperate to sell (she’d moved and it was lying empty). I viewed it 3 times and mentioned I was keen. The EAs kept trying to push other houses on the same estate. I had to follow up every time I viewed and often no one called me back. I nearly tried to hunt down the owner and write to say I had viewed 3 times and was trying to make an offer but no one at the EA was making any effort to keep in contact. She ended up taking it off the market (after THREE years) and renting it out. But in the midst of this I found the other street and the home I wanted.

The biggest difference for me was finding a EA who actually treated me like I was legit and serious about buying from day 1. I would only now use him if I wanted to sell or buy again. The actual owner of the EAs met me rather than sending out teenagers who were always late or disorganised and knew little about the property or area.

My advice is to strike up a really good rapport with local EAs. And ask friends and family to put the word out online you are looking to buy. A lot of friends have bought and sold through word of mouth.

2 years, we put in two offers on a house but they wanted more and we couldn’t afford more. But this is the last renovation before we get too old and downsize so it needed to be the right house .👍

Following this as hoping to start viewings soon!

We started looking just over a year ago, so right before everything went crazy :|

Must have seen 50-60 houses now, we started picky but are getting pickier because we want the best bits from all the houses we’ve seen in one house! We’ve waited for long enough - we can wait some more.

The biggest issue has been the shortage of good houses in our price range, especially over winter as there is massive pent up demand for the houses we are after. Hopefully things will calm down after the stamp duty holiday ends and more properties come to market as lockdown ends :)

About a month but I got kind of lucky.

Viewed 4 houses, this was number 4. Offer went in about 19th April 2019 I got the keys 8th July and moved in 23rd August ish after having the place redecorated and some major maintenance work done.

The buyer demanded completion date of mid June but then dragged her feet on absolutely everything and kept making

Sorry posted by accident..

Seller made life impossible and then denied things that were on the structural survey, refused to provide confirmation of some insurance repairs that they had had done etc.

She was a fricking nightmare