So long story…wife and I sold our house last May (2021) and moved to Yorkshire to a rented house whilst we found somewhere to buy. We found a nice place and put in a generous offer on it (which was accepted) in October 2021. We asked at the time “as a condition of accepting the offer, cannot be taken off the market, with no more viewings?” The vendors said they wanted to be fair to everyone, so let the viewings that had already been arranged take place, but no more. Flashforward to February 2022, and absolutely no movement at all. The vendors haven’t found anywhere to live, and we’re getting increasingly frustrated as our mortgage is going to expire. We called the estate agent in our February holidays (we’re both teachers), and we’re told that the vendors, who we’ve been nagging on and off for the last 4 months, have gone away skiing for two weeks. We had enough, so we pulled out. Ok and behold, three days later the house is back on the market for £45,000 more than our offer. Absolutely raging, not least because by this point we’ve spent over £1,000 on solicitors fees, time, searches, surveys, etc, when they clearly had absolutely no intention of selling to us and we’re just stringing us along.
In late February, being more desperate, we made an offer on a different house - not what we wanted, smaller, but then again mortgage prices had gone up by then, so we had to compromise. Flash forward to now (June 2022), and we’re not a step closer to completing. Know why? Some grown up kids are selling it on behalf of their parents, who are both in homes with dementia. The kids don’t have power of attorney, nobody knows where the deeds are, the owners solicitors went out of business in 1997, so they can’t be traced for a copy…all the while the estate agents are stringing along (“of they’re ob it, don’t worry!”, “we understand your frustration…!”) and we’re still without a home, and a extra £1,600 in solicitors fees AGAIN down the pan (approaching £3,000, all told). Add to this that we’ve lost a year of our life. Also, the first mortgage we got on the first property was £930 pcm, on a £385,000 house. The second mortgage was up to £1,100pcm on a £375,000 house (!), and now, having just made ANOTHER offer on a different house, it’s up to £1,270 on a £345,000 house. So these two *ts have literally cost us months of our lives, and tens of thousands of pounds.
Is there ANYTHING we can do to recoup our money, or even just make ourselves feel better? It’s seriously depressed both of us, to the point where we just don’t want to take any positive steps because we feel that it’ll all just crash down around us. Help!