To start with I love our house and the area we live in but since lockdown Dh has been working primarily from home. At first he started out in the conservatory, then moved to the kitchen table and eventually ended up working from a desk under our sons cabin bed. It's obviously not ideal so we've decided to move on.
We hadn't really planned on doing anything until after the summer but when a house on our estate went up we rang the agents who were really abrupt with us. The house had actually sold before they put it on RM.
Then they arranged with Dh to come value ours with a view to marketing it. In the meantime I spoke to local friends and this EA doesn't have the best reputation. One said 'avoid like the plague'!!
Dh called a few other EA's and organised three valuations to be done.
A week after we saw neighbouring house it went back on the market.
We rang on the Saturday and viewed on the Sunday.
We called on the Saturday and put a full asking price offer in. The EA changed the details online to 'offers over' what we had offered. They then rang Dh back and said that they wouldn't pass any offers onto the vendor until we had sold ours. (Which we didn't know was a thing!)
As we'd had a long chat with the vendor about his time wasting first offer we felt bad that he would think we were the same so I dropped a note through his door saying we did offer. He came round that evening and said he appreciated the note and that he had a second viewing booked for that week so if they offered he would have to accept. Fair enough. They didn't and it sat on the market for a further two weeks. We visited another house that weekend and put an offer in which the vendor was seriously considering until someone came in with a 'substantially higher' offer which meant it must have been at least 30k over asking. So we lose that house.
Meantime we have our house valued. Two come through the same. One of those being the first EA and one is higher. We go with the second EA as we didn't really want to do much business with EA 1 because of their rep and just snotty attitude towards us like they don't think we can afford what we are looking at.
House goes up and has 15 viewings booked for the weekend.
The Friday Dh goes round to the neighbouring house to explain where we are up too and what our plan is re offering as soon as we accept an offer. He tells us that he has one other person interested who is a little way behind us with their house sale.
So viewings all happen and we get two offers. One is asking price although we said offers over and one is for 10k more. I'm in work when they come in so Dh is ringing me, the EA, the bank etc and then sees a missed call from EA 1 after he's been on a conference call. He rings our EA and accepts the over price offer then calls me to double check I'm ok with offering on the neighbouring house,
You can see where this goes can't you?
It's gone. An hour before we rang. The vendor passed on our phone number to his EA and asked them to call us to see if we were ready to offer. They didn't leave a VM or try to call back so the vendor, thinking we weren't interested anymore, accepted the offer. He actually came round that evening to speak to Dh and explain what went on. Felt like his EA just didn't want to deal with us. Imagine not calling back someone who could push up your sellers sold price!?
So I spend the evening in tears about it all. It just felt really shitty.
Dh says all things happen for a reason but we've sold now so we are in a good place.
Another house goes up just across the road and it's stunning. House 1 needed a lot of work doing on it. House 2 was stunning but we missed out on that too so this is house viewing number 3.
Guess who it's on the market with? ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
Yep EA 1.
So we view it and it's amazing. I did that stupid thing were I was planning it all out in my head. We are the first viewers and the EA is being super nice to us now.
We leave, meeting the second viewers on the way out.
Dh calls and says we want to put in an offer, we've sold ours and the EA asks what the position of our buyers is. They've not sold yet. They've just gone on the market basically to buy ours.
When the EA hears this they say they won't accept offers unless our buyers have sold. Wtaf is this torture?
An hour later we hear the house has been sold to a cash buyer.
This all just feels like a massive head fuck. Nothing good is on for more than five minutes. The lovely people buying ours haven't sold and as of Saturday hadn't even had any viewings booked despite being on the market for twice as long as ours was when we had 15 booked in.
How long do we give them to have interest before it's no longer viable?
What would you knowledgeable lot do?
I just need some reassurance that it will all click into place?
What's not helping is that the stupid EA like to leave a sold house on RM for as long as possible before moving it to SSTC so it's still showing as available even though it's been sold since Saturday. ðŸ˜
Sorry for the ridiculously long post.