If you sold soon after buying, please share advice and experiences

[storminacupoftea]

We bought our first house last summer and we’re absolutely miserable and desperate to sell and move ASAP. It’s absolutely not normal buying remorse. This house was a terrible mistake and my mental health is really suffering.

I know some people will say it’s normal to feel like this even after six months, but I really am not looking to be talked out of it. We compromised on all the wrong things in terms of the house and the location, and missed a lot of issues due to being FTBs - we’ve learned a lot about what to look out for and check! There’s nothing objectively wrong with the house - it’s just absolutely wrong for us. I realise prices have dropped but they’ve also dropped in the area we want to live in.

We’ve spoken to our mortgage provider (we deal with them direct not through a broker) who’ve done an AIP and confirmed we can port our current rate and borrowing amount to a new property (it’s a portable mortgage so no ERC involved). I’m going to phone some estate agents tomorrow and ask if they think they can sell a property in this area right now (I hope so as it’s supposedly sought after and some other houses have sold here in the last few months). Going to start with an agent who’s selling some chain-free in our budget in the area we want to move back to as maybe it will help if they handle both our sale and purchase. We’ve got some boxes we’ve not unpacked and will shove those in the wardrobe, car etc.

What else do we need to do? Do we need to instruct a solicitor when we start viewings, or when we accept an offer?

In general I’d appreciate any advice or tips from people who’ve sold quite soon after buying. I saw another thread asking what the shortest time was between buying and selling a house and a few people posted but without any details about what the process had been like and I’d appreciate your tips.

I was planning to ask estate agents to tell potential buyers this location isn’t working out for us due to a change in working patterns / needing to go to the office more (which is true! it’s just not the whole reason).

The land registry transfer went through in the summer, we aren’t caught in the backlog and it’s coming up to six months (I know it would be an issue for some mortgage providers if it was less).

What else do we need to do or think about?

Thanks for any advice, experiences of selling quickly. But please, it’s not helpful to post about how you felt this way and then it was fine - please trust me that it is not going to be fine and we need to get out.

Very best wishes to you x

Thank you!

This reminds me of our first house. As soon as we moved in I wanted to sell it. Dh asked if we could hold off for 1 year, then sell. I agreed as I knew we'd lose money (that we didn't have).

We ended up staying 7.5 years and it nearly doubled in price. So we were lucky, and ultimately it was actually the right thing for us to do.

We've now bought our 3rd home, and I did have buyers remorse again but I've realised I hate being 'trapped' in a location, and as long as there is a plan (even a 5+ years one 😂) to move on again, I can deal with the 'remorse'.

Good luck OP. You know if this is the right thing for you, and life is too short to be miserable when you don't have to be.

Hi OP I’m just writing this whilst sitting in a house my DH and I bought 3 months ago and can’t wait to sell. We moved across the country to be closer to my parents and bought a house that we probably knew at the time wasn’t right for us but family encouraged us to buy. We are hoping to freshen it up and put it on the market in summer so around 9 months after we bought. It will have cost us both time and money making this mistake but sometimes I feel so overwhelmed and anxious about it I can’t sleep.

Just wanted you to know you are 100% not alone in how you are feeling. I suspect there are quite a lot of people who feel this way but can’t admit it due to either the financial or personal implications. We are prepared to lose money when we sell for the peace of mind and happiness of being somewhere we want to be. Good luck with everything over the next few months OP. I'm about to listen to my meditation app to try and deal with my buyers remorse/house anxiety 😂

Thank you and good luck to you too! I really appreciate you posting - this thread has made me feel so much less alone.

“It will have cost us both time and money making this mistake but sometimes I feel so overwhelmed and anxious about it I can’t sleep.”

This is me too (sorry can’t work out how to do the proper quote thing on just part of a post). I also tend to panic when I wake up in the morning and remember the situation.

Hoping for successful moves for us all.

Good luck op, you're doing the right thing as happiness and mental health are so important. You'll likely make a better choice next time as you are more aware of what works and what's important.

I would say though just to double check with your portable mortgage if you end up finding something cheaper. Ours is only portable if we borrow the same amount or more.

Thanks for your kind words and this advice.

Have talked through various scenarios with our mortgage provider (First Direct) and they’re amazingly flexible! We don’t have to keep the same LTV or amount of borrowing as long as the LTV stays under 95% (even though we originally needed an LTV below 75% to secure this rate).

We plan to keep the same amount of borrowing and initially increase our LTV a bit to free up some cash, then overpay lots down the line.

We’ve actually found a house we want to buy, but need to get ours on the market.

Thanks again for your very kind words, this is definitely the right thing for my sanity!

Hi OP,

I am in a very similar situation to you - We are 3 months into our new house (also FTB) and I am miserable too. The house itself is actually lovely, but the location is shockingly awful. We are right on a busy road which of course I knew going into this, but I didn't think it would affect me as much as it now does. We are late 20's and thinking about kids in the near future, it is not a safe location.

I am curious as to how you are approaching all the solicitors fees again? Our last fees came to about 10k, which was covered by my DH parents as a gift. This really complicates my desire to move again though, as they will likely be offended at the waste of their money on helping purchase this house (is it a waste though?). I am really unsure how to navigate this whole situation and don't have much support from DH.

Just bumping this thread to see if any posters has a hopefully positive update on their sale? Same position and looking to sell - four months after purchase…

@LadyDancealot I’m the OP but have deleted my MN account and started a different one so won’t show up as such. Another thread on a similar topic reminded me to dig this out and update on what happened next.

We sold the house! We’re now in a house we absolutely love!

We missed out on the house I mentioned upthread as weren’t sold yet, but it wasn’t ideal for us anyway.

We put our house on the market, had multiple viewings despite the weird market and sold to the very first person who viewed, a chain-free buyer who knew and loved the area. We sold for a bit under asking, but negotiated a similar amount off our onward purchase. Because we didn’t have to keep the same deposit split to keep our mortgage rate, we were able to use some of our equity to pay for stamp duty, estate agents etc (which we would’ve paid at some point anyway however long we’d stayed). Ended up in a fairly short chain and somehow it all went fine despite this weird market.

I am still in (good) shock that we sold and everything went smoothly. The house needs a lot of work but we’re so happy and enjoying it all in a way we just couldn’t in the other one. And hopefully our buyer is very happy too.

Also, sorry you’re in the same position. The house needs to have been registered with the Land Registry for 6 months for a new buyer to get a mortgage with most lenders. If you plan to sell I’d start sprucing the place up for photos now and get some EAs round to discuss. Best of luck to you.

Oh and we had no problem selling despite the boxes being in the wardrobe 😄

Lovely update OP! I also went through this recently and my story is similar to yours. We put the house back on the market within months, sold to the first viewer for asking price (increased a little which covered legal fees). We didn’t lose any money and bought the house of our dreams.

The buyer was so excited! She was itching to move in and we were dying to move out - we were gone within 12 weeks.

mental health not quite fully recovered yet but will get there 😂

Oh yes and their mortgage company weren’t fussed at all! They went with Lloyds I believe :) by the time we readvertised and conveyancing was sorted I reckon it would have ticked over 6 months, but only just!

@storminacupoftea do NOT say change of circumstances as most buyers will jump to ...Divorce...they are desperate. We recently sold our condo that we had owned a bit longer (in a foreign country) We had it rented out, and retired and moved to it. We lasted about 10 months before we listed. We told anyone that asked (it is different here, owners are around for viewings and sometimes actually do them)..We are selling as we have two large dogs and decided that condo/apartment living is not for us. We want our own big back garden so we have bought a villa. We already own it , so if this does not sell , maybe we will go back to renting it out. ( 5 min walk to the beach in a very tourist area) . We got full price. Never ever seem desperate. The vultures come out then if they even get a whiff.

I am the OP with a different account. We’ve sold and moved - it’s all sorted!

awesome!!! I did not see that this was a zombie thread lol!!!

@EEvermore we used some of our equity to pay for the solicitors, stamp duty and estate agents fee.

My parents had given us a gift towards the first house, and they were fine about us moving - we explained that we couldn’t have got the new house without buying the previous one first (which is true for various reasons) and they’re just happy it worked out.

Sorry, my bad for resurrecting!

We did a similar thing nearly seven years ago. I hated the house from the first day . We couldn’t move because we’d over paid and the stamp duty would have been crippling. We’re still here and I still hate it. Moving next year. Life is too short to be miserable .

@storminacupoftea Thank you so much for your happy update - delighted to hear all has gone through. I've put my house on the market and after an initial horrifyingly shaky start (talk of offers 20% under asking), I've now had two offers. That said, I may have an issue with the six months Land Reg ruling though - although agent thinks it should be OK... and they never lie, do they?! Thanks again and wishing you every happiness in your new home.

That’s great news that you sold. I dream of moving and am
praying the right house comes up for us. Wishing you all the best in your new home.

Wasn't the one that fell through equally far from the station?! That can't be the only thing wrong with it.

Yes. There were other things wrong but I didn’t want to share it all on here as would be identifiable. We’ve sold and moved on now, I just came back to update the thread.