How to not get too emotionally attached to new house!

[Areyootakingthepish]

We are yet to exchange, everything is running smoothly with our purchase so far which is end of chain, but our buyer (start of chain) is being slow and previously tried to get money off but we did agree to meet in the middle in the end.

what we are buying is perfect for us and we’ve been looking for so long. I’m just so worried something will go wrong and it will fall through! How do you cope with the stress of it all? How do you not get too emotionally invested in your new house and life?! Any words of wisdom?

Hi OP, I've been there. We moved into our dream forever home 2.5 years ago. We had the added pressure of a split chain and the stamp duty deadline. Everyone was slow and it was sooooo stressful. DH lost sleep over it and our conveyancer was painfully slow.
Unfortunately I have no advice but to just try and breath, talk to people about it to get the frustration off your chest and just be positive and hope for the best.
The day we exchanged was honestly one of the best days of my life. DH and I jumped around like children and popped open a bottle.
You're nearly there!!

I feel for you, it's truly stressful.
When we bought our mortgage lender was painfully slow. They kept requesting additional things like bank statements, which we supplied straight away, but then they would sit on it for weeks and then request it again as they said it was no longer up to date! So frustrating.
Our house was perfect for us too and a really good price. I was so scared to lose it, I couldn't even watch property shows on tv!
All I can say is try and relax, keep chasing people, keep everything and everyone updated. Don't assume people are doing what they should be doing, sometimes they need a nudge!
You will get there eventually, and it's a cliche but what is meant to be will be.
Good luck!

For me, a house is just a pile of bricks, windows and tiles. A home is wherever my family are. I understand that this may be different for singles and some others.

I know it doesn’t help that I keep looking at it on Rightmove either!

I wish I could tell you but I can’t because I was totally emotionally invested when we bought our current house.

I felt it was the most important goal in my life at the time to get to Exchange and wasn’t focussed on anything else like my job. I doubt my employer appreciated that I would drop everything the moment a call came in from my EA or solicitor. And there was the daily call to the Mortgage company until they processed our application.

I don’t normally get so obsessed but the house was perfect for us. We did everything in our power to help the deal proceed quickly including several things not recommended like not getting a survey in case it slowed things down. It only took 2 months from offer to Completion.

We fell in love with our house the minute we stepped through the door. What - counterintuitively - didn’t help our nerves is that it all just went sooo smoothly: chain of three with both our buyers and sellers keen to get it over the post. I just kept waiting for our luck to change and honestly until those keys were in our hands, I still didn’t believe it would happen. No advice because I couldn’t stop the emotional attachment either, but I’d have been disappointed no matter if I’d become attached or not, and at least I enjoyed the looking forward to it! It all worked out for us and we’ve been in six months now. I still walk round marvelling that it’s ours.

Enjoy the process and keep faith! If it doesn’t work out, you’ll be devastated but you will be okay and chances are all will be fine!

I remember doing this! And we drove past it slowly a million times 🤣 I reckon the neighbours saw our cat on move in day and said "that was the weird people who kept driving past!"

The other thing I did was look at the floor plan constantly and invisage how I was going to decorate and what piece of furniture will go where.

I have everything crossed for you OP that it'll go through quickly.

Oh - I get you- offer accepted today and I'm already ordering paint swatches for the kitchen cabinets. Vendors are yet to find something and if we're in by summer I'll be surprised but I'm soooo excited. Really trying not to be but we both love it so I really hope it happens for us.

I totally hear you, we are in the same boat and a lot of things have gone wrong already but they actually ended up working out for the best. The house is def a dream house, very modern architect designed with an A EPC rating, huge garden, large balcony overlooking protected land and in a lovely village just outside of Cambridge. I haven't seen anything remotely like it on Rightmove so I kept getting worried about what we will do if it falls through. Then, as we are getting ready to exchange our solicitor decides to pull out due to a "conflict of interest" and our mortgage agreement expires. We thought we had lost the house, but told the developer that a new mortgage will now be much more expensive so if they want to keep the sale we have to reduce the offer by 35k. I thought they would tell us to get fucked but they accepted within hours. Clearly not a great market. So, long story long, stick in there, it will happen, it's just so much more nerve wracking here than it has to be!

@UnfriendMe wow good for you!

A different perspective but ours did fall through at the 12 week and near completion stage. The buyer had continued to view houses and decided on a different house. Searches, surveys etc all done. I was furious. However, we got over it. We'd reduced our house to reflect that it needed work doing and we decided to stay and do the work. The renovations are tough going and we sometimes wonder how it might be different if we'd moved but we're fine. If it all goes wrong then it's out of your control and the initial anger and upset will pass. I hope it all works out for you. It's a hugely stressful process.

Hard to advise, because it's such a tricky place to be in.
With this house, it was exactly what we wanted, and very hard to find anything that would do at all, but needed a lot doing to it, so I could at least try to focus on all the work and tell myself that maybe if it fell through it might be for the best. I did have a horrible moment in the HA's office when it looked like we were going to be gazumped, and endless legal difficulties going on for months between the sellers drove me to distraction (luckily my DH is patient and my rage at the behaviour of one of the vendors at various points didn't derail it- another stress point I fervently hope you don't have to deal with).

It sort of helped because we'd seen the place on a dreary and gloomy day, and it had less than zero kerb appeal either, so my desire for it, though very strong, was more cerebral than emotional, -it didn't have the roses-round-the-door enthusiasms along with it.

I do hope everything drops into place for you. All I can say is, hang on in there, and try to distract yourself when you can with other things. I know I spent a lot of time out on my bike, that's my stress buster!