Hello
We have sold our house and are due to exchange soon. Unfortunately we accepted an offer pre price inflation that was lower than we wanted, but had a house sale fall through pre Covid, then difficulty selling due to relisting just prior to Covid lockdowns and decided to cut our losses and accept the offer to at least be in a good position to buy.
Obviously now lots of threads of people realising that nothing is coming onto the market and that which is seems to be suddenly overpriced. This is our experience. We have not found anywhere to buy - only viewed 2 houses vaguely suitable since we accepted our offer!
This leaves us with temporary rental as an option while we search. Rental market here also bonkers!
We had a tip off through a friend who is moving out of her rental, went straight to the agents before it was advertised, filled out all the forms etc, were lead to believe we were first in line after numerous phone calls end of day Friday (now Tues)... Even offered to pay a holding deposit as confident our sale is going through. Today they rang and told us it had been let! It hadn’t even gone on the market.
Seemingly until we’ve exchanged contracts they wouldn’t even accept a non refundable holding deposit from us. Is this normal?