Thread 2: "Anyone not being picky - and STILL can't find anything?"

[Momniscient]

Just spotted the first one is full so have set up thread two so we can keep talking with minimal delay. Hoping that tagging works regardless ...

RightMove addicts, and serial refreshers of other property websites, share your troubles!

Posters from last two pages in the thread and OP:
@PessimisticOptimist
@Eastie77Returns
@RidingMyBike
@beguilingeyes
@DanisEndo
@EmmaH2022
@dubyalass
@BennyBean
@ByeByeMissAmericanPie
@areyouhavingagiraffe
@CheltenhamLady
@doubleraspberry
@YukoandHiro
@TulipsfromAmsterdam
@MummyJ12
@starseeking
@GoinSouth
@MiracleBaby2022

Original thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/4346330-Anyone-not-being-picky-and-STILL-cant-find-anything

Congratulations Eastie! Hurrah, and nice that it went well with the vendor too.

A few more coming on here, still nothing I want to view but at least something is happening. Overpriced stuff still hanging around, although it's selling eventually. I've all but given up with it tbh, although that might be partly because of anxiety around world events.

Oh @Eastie77Returns that's brilliant news! And also fab that she's got things like cleaners organised. Fingers crossed now for completion.

It's not officially on the market yet @Doubleraspberry - they haven't quite finished the work on it and pics/blurb not ready yet but we got an advance view after I emailed the EA to remind them of our existence at the weekend. Think he was hoping he could sell it before they got the pics taken!

Sounds sensible! The photos done of the one I’m viewing tomorrow won’t be online for a few days either although the listing is up. It’s a house I’ve admired the front door of in the past, with a beautiful cat. The agent and I bonded over how beautiful the day is!

Six viewings now booked in for us. If they all view, and are just totally uninterested, I shall cry.

Congratulations Eastie. So pleased for you. On Sun, we walked past a house we saw on RM and booked a viewing tomorrow. The EA rang and said it's off the market and sold for over £30k over asking price.

Amazing news Eastie, that's brilliant, I can feel your relief from here! You must be so pleased to have got to this point; it's pretty much a done deal now.

@Eastie77Returns

We've exchanged! The words I never thought I'd write.

I had to do a pre-exchange viewing in the morning before giving the go-ahead. The vendor was actually unwell but she was really nice which was unexpected as she had been a bit tricky before. Ushered me in, made tea and answered all my questions as I checked the house was still standing. DP arrived to also view and then I was keen to leave so she could rest but she insisted on us staying so she could tell us more about the house, the neighbours and meet the cleaning team doing a deep clean prior to completion (they turned up a week early as she gave them the wrong date but nice to know she has organised this..) We ended up almost having to force our way out after 2 hours of talking and countless offers of tea. She said she loves the house but it has been lonely for her on her own for many years. Keeping fingers crossed Completion also goes smoothly!

@CheltenhamLady - I am so hoping you hear good news soon. I truly understand how tortuous the wait is. Have your buyers indicated if they will accept your offer to settle the open issue?

@Doubleraspberry - great you have so many viewings lined up, this is hopefully a good sign!

Congrats @Eastie77Returns!

I think I am going crazy.

The house that I have previously offered on, the EA have gone radio silence. Well they have gone radio silence after all the houses in the area I am looking are gone.

I am angry, I am angry that they mis-led me into believing that they will find a property soon. They never said this but you know what I mean.

It's so unfair! For all the pain that we are going thru! For the money that we have lost in 100k+

If they are not committed to the sale, why sign the memo of sale? What the hell is it for?

Sorry ! I think I am going crazy.

I couldn't trust anybody now.

P.S. - I saw the vendor walking by. the house is 2 mins walk from my rental

I am sorry everyone.

I couldn't accept a 650k @ June last year is now 750k+

I keep asking myself, why I am punished? Did I do anything wrong ?

Congratulations @Eastie77Returns that’s brilliant news! You must be so relieved, when do you complete?

@J417

You didn't do anything wrong then, but you do need to take a step back. It's a big ask, but for your own peace of mind, you need to change your perspective.

A house sale, no matter how much emotion it generates- the tingles, the elation, sadness at the end of an era, whatever- IT IS A BUSINESS TRANSACTION. When people agree to buy/sell a house, it's the number crunching and the individual needs of the buyer/ seller that are utmost in their own minds. They are not considering how you feel, they are just interested that you can pay what you have agreed and that they can find somewhere at a price they can afford.

If there is radio silence, or even if the vendors play hardball further down the line if you need to renegotiate, IT IS NOT A PERSONAL AFFRONT ON YOU. None of this is personal, they don't do these things to tease you. But neither side in the transaction likely has time to sit and work out what the other is going through and how it is impacting them. In effect, it's a selfish way to go into things, but as there is no pressing need for a long-term working relationship, you need a certain degree of detachment.

Regarding properties long gone, the simplest way to put this is that COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY. You aren't missing what you never got, only what you thought you would be getting. That may have been an illusion anyway. I do believe that everything happens for a reason. If you don't get a house, it just wasn't quite the right time for you. Sometimes you just choose a 'settled for' house because it's going to teach you something/ the timing wasn't quite there. It's all part of living life and moving forward, rather than hiding under the duvet and wishing for something that probably didn't exist anyway.

It's a rubbish, crumbly system in England. Perhaps your vendors genuinely haven't found anything yet? Lots more stuff is coming to market at the moment, their time will come. In the meantime, if your nerves can take it, keep looking to see if anything better has come along. BUT this is just to keep you proactive and to give you alternatives if the worst happens. If it's making you feel jittery, don't do it (it's still comparison, after all). But somewhere, you just have to take a leap of faith. Not all vendors are out to get you. Most of them just want a decent house!

Good luck with the doctors.

@Eastie77Returns
Congratulations on your exchange. Good luck with all the packing.

@Eastie77Returns, yes, they just capitulated in the end! I think one of my long-winded 'explanatory' emails bored them into submission.

However, still, we wait for exchange due to illness with a solicitor at the bottom of the chain of 3. It should happen soon, fingers crossed.

Do you have a removal company booked in? Will you use packers?

J417
I must be honest, I have been confused by your posts so didn't reply

But if any consolation, mine is going wrong and the part of me is saying "pull out".

However, I simply cannot face looking again so I will hang on in case it goes right.

You sound very young? I think these things get easier to cope with as you get older. If I wanted to get worked up about it, I'd be here all day. My sister is four years older and the price difference between her first flat and mine is ASTONISHING in capital letters!

@J417 wait... there was a signed memorandum of sale and you haven't heard anything since? How long ago was this?

If the memorandum of sale have the seller's solicitors details on it then I'd chase them directly and find out what's going on.

J417 I'd echo the sentiments of Siouxtse1 and EmmaH. The English house buying system is complete madness in the way it is structured, but it's definitely not personal to any individual buyer.

My purchase collapsed a few weeks ago, after 7 months of conveyancing due to my vendor simply changing her mind. While I could rage on about it, or wallow in it, there's no point, given it doesn't change the outcome. I've moved on in the sense that I'm continuing to look for new properties, while acknowledging my (sad) feelings about the house that never was.

Hang in there, and either your current purchase will come good, or you'll find a new place that will be even better for you!

Thank you all! We are due to complete next week Thursday fingers crossed. Most of our stuff is already packed and in storage as we are currently renting a tiny flat. We got rid of a lot of bulky items when we moved. Our lease ends in April so plan is to move as much as we can ourselves over the coming weeks in a friends van.

@cheltenhamLady – fabulous news. Glad you’ve beaten them (figuratively) into submission. Hopefully the solicitor is on the mend soon, frustrating when you are so close to the end.

@J417 - what everyone else said. You have to try and remove the emotion from this process or you will make yourself ill. If you look through my threads I have variously called my vendor ‘unstable’, ‘greedy’, and ‘selfish’ due to various things that happened. I have no idea if she actually is any of those things but anything she did wasn’t personally directed at me, it was because she wanted to get as much money as possible for her property. It’s all a transaction. I know it’s very hard to see it objectively like that when you are in the throes of this awful process though and I did take it personally which didn’t help hence my advice to adopt a businesslike approach to this.

My friend plans to offer on the £825k house that sold for £395 less than 2 years ago. It’s a 4 bed/2 bathroom that has been extended with new appliances, underfloor heating etc . I’m just not sure it’s worth a 100+% increase..!

@J417 it is really hard - as others have said, it's a business transaction but has a huge personal impact (attacks our fundamental need for a home) and it's between individuals who care deeply about what they are selling and buying, often too much. It's a classic case too of irregular verbs - eg 'I'm making sure I know all I need to know about this massive purchase I'm about to make and might be overly nervous but no harm done/she's sending me endless pointless queries just to annoy me'. We ALL get sucked into the emotion of it but please try not to beat yourself up.

Did my first viewing! House is round the corner from the one we're renting on a 20 year old estate. It has exactly the same footprint as our house but the loft conversion has slightly smaller bedrooms and an additional shower room. Priced 'low' to sell as the owners are desperate to get their onward property and lots of people see where we are as unacceptably far out. With an extension along the back, which is very doable, it would be a bit of a dream house. But I'm not sure. Second viewing on Friday. Also viewing a house on Friday that I suspect @RidingMyBike should buy as it's where she wants to be!

I agree with everyone else. It is a horrendous process but once you try to remove the emotion and see it for what it is - a business transaction, then you cope better with it.

I think that hearing the information via EA's and Solicitors is part of the problem. When we and our buyers began to speak directly to each other we were able to be clearer and firmer and cut through the veil of secrecy and flim-flam that the professionals erect to protect their processes and time.

We are not at the end yet, but it feels a little bit nearer!!...famous last words!

@CheltenhamLady

I agree with everyone else. It is a horrendous process but once you try to remove the emotion and see it for what it is - a business transaction, then you cope better with it.

I think that hearing the information via EA's and Solicitors is part of the problem. When we and our buyers began to speak directly to each other we were able to be clearer and firmer and cut through the veil of secrecy and flim-flam that the professionals erect to protect their processes and time.

We are not at the end yet, but it feels a little bit nearer!!...famous last words!

I completely agree with this! It's like trying to get blood out of a stone with the solicitor and although our sellers just have nothing to tell us (because nothing is happening) it's been really helpful just to be able to have a conversation with them and know that we are all working towards a common goal.

@Siouxtse1, @EmmaH2022, @ToodlesMcGee, @Starseeking, @Eastie77Returns

Thank you I have copied all your words on my notepad so I could review and read it again whenever I feel too emotional/overwhelmed.
You don't know how much importance this means to me.

I am not young, but it is my first time buying property. I have not anticipated it would be so difficult. Friends' experience have been relatively smooth, they exchanged and completed and I was having the same expectation that the same would happen to me.

I got too emotionally attached to the property. I was too naïve and the vendor's EA clearly know where to press and push.

This is the timeline of what happened

1 and 2 Viewings : 1/6/2021, 15/6/2021
Offer accepted : 1/7/2021
15/8/2021: they said they have made a couple of offers and had other viewings and more houses are coming on the market
Hubby wanted to offer on 1 chain-free house, I didn't offer on any of the available 3 REAL chain-free properties. The 3 all completed.

15/9/2021: All houses are sold in my area, vendor's EA went radio silence after repeated attempt to contact. When I managed to get thru to him, he said he will get back to me but never did.

Meanwhile, prices have suddenly shoot thru the roof (100k+) as supply dried up in the area.

I could not face the consequences of putting my family in this agony as we are paying rent and need to shelve out more money .
I felt a complete failure

Thank you for listening.

Still nothing new on rightmove and no calls from any agents saying they have anything new coming on. So fed up of this.

J417 you are not to blame for any of this

Astonishingly we now have 12 viewings booked in for Saturday. Even the agents seem slightly surprised. I worry that we'll end up with no offers at all, and I'll feel like we defrauded people into viewing. There are no details yet - this is just from agent ring rounds.

@J417 so you're waiting for your vendor to find an onward purchase? That's not so bad. Do you have a deadline?

@Starseeking

Amazing news Eastie, that's brilliant, I can feel your relief from here! You must be so pleased to have got to this point; it's pretty much a done deal now.

Thanks @Starseeking. Have you received any more updates after the letters you sent out to some of the houses you are/were potentially interested in?

CheltenhamLady - 100% agree that dialogue between buyer and seller would help. I sometimes think EAs and Solicitors have a vested interested in keep the two apart so they feed whatever message they want to each party and sometimes actively sow confusion!

J1V7 - please don't feel like a failure.

I really wish agents wouldn't post properties on Rightmove that sold before coming on to the market. What does it achieve other than pissing off those of us still looking? It's like a giant fuck you (excuse my language) and makes me want to swerve those agents. I'm making a mental note of who does it so that I know to avoid should I ever be in the happy position of having somewhere to sell!