Tell me your second time lucky stories

[Paddingtonthebear]

Or third or fourth time. Just had to pull out of a house purchase and feeling rather deflated. Back to square one and there’s nothing at all on the market to view, there’s been nothing for more than 2 months.

If you had to give up on a house and then went on to find success please share and cheer me up!

I'm currently sat in my (I think) 5th time lucky house, 9 days in and we're loving it more and more by the day and are very very glad it didn't work out with the house with the falling down boundary and rotting everything or the other countless houses we got outbid on. I read so many threads on here with people saying the same that something better would come along and I never believed them until now. To make it even luckier, we very very nearly didn't even view this house as it didn't quite meet our criteria on paper.

It's really bloody hard and stressful but something will eventually come along that you love.

We are on the fourth house, we haven’t completed yet but each time we have found something else that is better, and quickly too.

We were in the process of buying our dream home and then our buyer pulled out. We werent able to get a new buyer for ours quick enough so our sellers re-marketed the house and sold it to someone else. We'd had enough of the whole moving process so took our house off the market and decided to stay put for another few years. However, about 8 months later whilst browsing rightmove, I noticed our dream home back on the market again. Managed to get our house back on the market within days and accepted an offer from the first person who viewed it. We have now been in our dream home almost 8 years. Whilst we ended up paying a bit more for the house than we'd offered 1st time round, the sellers had done a couple of things to the house that would have been quite inconvenient to do with all our furniture in etc, so that was a bonus in our eyes!

We got really far into the process with buying a house on a lovely estate where houses didn't come up often.
The place was overrun with mattresses and builders. Estate agent says they've no lease and will be out for close , this was the red flag I was focusing on and planned around. But it turned out the estate agents mother owned the house he had no permission to sell it and it was cross mortgaged so several banks also objected. We told his bosses and they parted ways.

Anyway we saw a for sale sign going up while looking at that house and saw it immediately and bought it. It's much nicer , less work needed doing and there's a green outside for the kids.

We had an offer accepted on a wonderful house in April, such a good price for the size, we were thrilled. But since then the vendor has made an offer on one single property and not got it. They don’t really want to move unless it’s a specific house in a specific location that will only come on the market about once every two years

Anyway, we lost our first buyers because of this delay but the second buyers (people who lost out before) made a good offer on the same day and they’re in a better position than our first buyers.

And three days ago we had an offer accepted on a better property for us, with a much shorter chain that looks like it’ll be complete/closed very quickly.

So it does work out - it’s hard but sometimes things are just meant to be!

We spent 7 months trying to push through a disaster purchase on a house where everything kept going wrong and new problems came up all the time.
We were sure it was the best we could afford and hung on, we wanted somewhere big enough to raise a family.

On the end our solicitor advised us that the problems were serious and we needed to be aware that cost to rectify them would be significant.
We pulled out, the very next house we viewed was stunning, ready to move into and decorated similar to our taste, same size internally but additional double drive and slightly bigger garden. We've been here 2 years now and often comment how bloody thankful we are that the first purchase fell through!

We viewed a property which we missed out on when it when to best and final. We'd started discussing what we were going to do to it so it was very disappointing to not get it.

We then viewed 5 properties one Saturday in late March - we offered on a lovely property in a village about 5 miles outside of our preferred location. It went to best and final and we offered £562,000 and were absolutely gutted to have missed out. The driveway was very small and it was in a busy cul de sac but the house was lovely and ready to move into.

A week later (then April) we second viewed one of the other properties that we'd discounted the previous weekend due to it needing too much work (we finally had a buyer for our place after 8 months and didn't want to risk her pulling out because we were taking too long to find an onwards purchase!) and we put in an offer at £495,000 which was accepted. We completed before the SDLT deadline. We have £57k to spend on the property and will end up with a really lovely home! Plus it's much larger than the two we missed out on. Oh - and it's in our preferred location! So I can walk daughter to school still!

The two other properties haven't completed yet either - so very much counting our blessings really!

Hello! We had to pull out of buying our perfect house at survey stage due to surveyor discovering an invasive plant species unexpectedly. I was gutted, and we were well advanced with selling our home and had a fantastic buyer so we just went ahead with our sale, making ourselves simultaneously homeless and meaning we would be in a good position to offer. Then there was NOTHING to buy in our target neighbourhoods, it was awful. We were staying with family, all our stuff in storage, then had to move into a short term rental.

And then, miraculously, an even better house came on the market, and we snapped it up. It is absolutely perfect for us, and I really cannot see us ever moving on.

It's stressful but things do work out eventually.

I'm sat in my third time lucky house. Cheaper and better than the two that came before it. It will happen for you. This one was a lot of work because it was semi derelict but we have been here 11 years now and love it.

Still a way to go with the decorating but hey ho

We got gazumped in November after our offer was accepted through best and final. It was a lovely house , compromise on the fourth bedroom size and the busy road though. And they were chain free as were we so we thought it would be simple. We were very upset.

In February we saw the perfect house. We offered asking (still less than the other house) better location, better size. There was a 4 household chain. We managed to complete and move in in April.

We think it was a lucky escape! We love love love our house. And so quiet!

And to my mean satisfaction the sellers of the first house and buyers that gazumped us still haven't completed!

Also realised that with nothing else on the market we won’t complete a sale in time for the 1st Oct stamp duty deadline so will need to have more money saved now to cover that

I'm hopefully buying my third time lucky house.
We are moving 70 miles back to London, partly for my daughter's school, so planned this move two years ago.
As soon as I accepted an offer on mine (actually had to sell three properties to afford the move so it's been going on for a while) found one in great location, though it needed work. Seller couldn't find a property to buy so after waiting over two months I pulled out. Found another but lost out to cash buyer. Found another, chain free. By now beginning to panic and had moved from 'dream home' to 'it will do'. Best and final but secured it. Moved heaven and earth to be ready for June 30, but silence from seller - turns out he was ill so decided to withdraw his house. Rushed back to London, found a house just back on as previous buyers had pulled out, so bagged it. Sellers live abroad so it is empty. It is cheaper than all the other properties, which helps ease the blow of not making stamp duty savings and extra costs incurred with other two aborted purchases, and needs less work - which after all the horror stories of skyrocketing materials costs is a relief. It is not on as good a location as the first house, but is bigger, and I'm sure we can make it a lovely home.

We've not completed yet but we're on our (fingers crossed) third time lucky house and looking back at the 2 that got away I'm so happy they didn't work out.
One was a head over heart purchase on a new estate that I would have hated, the second needed lots of work and was in a strange location. Both of them I feel like we talked ourselves into whereas this house, whilst it isn't perfect (we will need to extend at some point) feels like it's going to be a house to love.

We also got a substantially higher price for ours than we would have done if purchase had gone through in September 2019 when the process started.

Yes, we put an offer in on one place for £50k over asking, it ended up going for closer to. £150k over asking (and they knocked the house down 😳)

The other we were messed around by our buyer and the vendor accepted a cash off after about 6 weeks.

In retrospect I'm glad we didn't get those as neither were in the catchment for the school we now attend and neither property had the wow factor of our current home.

This is a while ago but relevant I think. We spent ages trying and failing to buy a house from a divorcing couple. We eventually moved into rented while they battled it out in court and kept reassuring us that we could buy the house, just wait until this is settled, etc. In the end they admitted defeat and said she said she wasn't moving so we had better think again. We had obsessed about this house for ages (lovely barn conversion, middle of nowhere, private lane, with a paddock) and ended up buying something sort of on the rebound from it which was totally different (Victorian semi in a big village) but turned out to be the best house for us all. The one we lost we often think about as being a completely mad choice and thinking how difficult life would have been there for us and our dc. Lovely as it was, the location was just wrong for us and the house we ended up with, although we have since moved, was the best family house we could have had and we stayed there the longest we have ever stayed anywhere. I hope you find your dream house soon.

We got lucky the second time... first time I fell madly in love.. imagined my family growing up in the house... I picked out the tableware, curtains furnishing.. etc... then two weeks before exchange, the water pipe burst, and the owner took it off the market and refused to sell to us.

We then bought our we house- completed on 29th. It’s a million times better, but this time I didn’t let myself fall in love... so it wasn’t a love at first sight, but more a gradual and hopefully a longer lasting love.. good luck.. the right house at the right time will come along!

twoyears ago house hunting saw a house we liked ticked most of the boxes at a decent price. seller messed us around wouldnt accept any of our increasing offers couldnt find anything she liked 2 months later still at stalemate, then on my way home from work house for sale in next street to where we were renting empty so no chain (estate sale), looked at it two days later made offer 2 hours after viewing it was ours and taken off the market, needed more work than first one but we have now made it our little house

We’re sitting in our home of one week-it was third time lucky for us. We lost our first house because the vendor got too worried about Covid and wouldn’t let our surveyor in the house to do a survey. We found a second one (by this time we’d missed out on several others), but then found it had a legal dispute on the financial responsibilities of the house owner-and the court case put back to some indeterminate date in the future because of Covid backlog. We then found this one 4 months ago and all the time I was worried something would go wrong-nailbiting up to the last minute as we ended up with a simultaneous exchange and completion. But we’re so glad we’ve got this house-ina a great area and really suits the way we live. So things will get better for you OP-something WILL come on-I’d even lined up alternatives if it all went tits up, but it all came good in the end. Glad we didn’t end up with those others now-after a year of renting it feels great!

We were buying a new build a few years ago and then route of Hs2 changed and was literally within 50m of the back of the house. We pulled out on advice of our solicitor and found a new house in a totally different area.

We are so pleased we moved here the area suits us far better and is nicer. The house (with work!) is far better and the countryside here makes us so happy.

Third time lucky for us, we were gutted about one of the other houses in particular. I had mentally moved in and planned out lives out there. We now regularly talk about how we're glad it happened and we've ended up where we have. Best of luck