So tired of house purchase process...

[Onaladder]

Been at it for 1.5yrs, have seen more than 100 places, made few offers and was in process three times (Fell apart due to sellers pulling out, once we pulled out)
We are so depressed that yesterday we talked about moving to another country (lol) instead of buying in London

To add to the stress, we are dealing with some unethical and some purely stupid agents (not all but quite a few). We have had agents lie to us...

• Realized many times they say the vendors cannot do the viewing but its their schedule availabilty issue (you can call the office and check with another agent and sometimes they have availability at the same time the other agenst said the vendors not available!)
• Lied about other offers suddenly materializing when we show interest! we had a few cases wher we upped against our offers due to this imaginary other higher offers. Now we ALWAYS ask them to write that ther are other higher offers before we up ours

Just ranting as we have made three offers recently and lost out to cash buyers...why are there so many cash buyers in London???

I have recently moved. I was mortgage free so would be buying outright.

Didn't get the first house we offered on and actually gave up on it because the seller's estate agent was 'playing us'.

We offered on the property at the asking price and he didn't get back to us. We contacted him again three days later and he said that he hadn't spoken to the sellers yet. Heard nothing for a couple of weeks and he then contacted us saying that there had been a counter offer in for five thousand more than our offer. In the meantime, we had looked at the reviews for his business and read that he used phantom buyers to get interested parties to up their offer. We responded to him saying that we did not want to up our offer. Interestingly, the house remained on the market and he had lost us as buyers.

However a month later, we found out that somebody new had offered on the property at the same price that we had offered.

A couple of months after that, the estate agent contacted us again to say that the potential buyers were 'taking too long'. They had had a survey done etc, but they were dragging their feet, asking lots of questions and he wanted a quicker sale and told us that if we offered on the property, he would tell the buyers that there had been a higher offer (even though we would not be a higher offer) and sell to us instead. We decided not to respond!

I think we had a lucky escape!

Hi OP, I think if you have been seriously looking for 1.5 years then there is something wrong. Either you are looking at properties way over your budget, or you are looking for too much for your budget. You will have to get serious, narrow down exactly what you want, what is most important and what you can compromise on.

Then go and look in a more defined search.

I agree with @Iloveshihtzus

I understand that you have encountered some shit EAs along the way and not putting the blame entirely on you at all. But to have looked at more than 100 places over 1.5 years - I think you need to look at yourself honestly too and question whether you have been a bit unrealistic. Yes there are lots of cash buyers in London as it’s a place that attracts wealthy people & investors. But that can’t explain the whole picture about why you are struggling so much to buy somewhere suitable.

Yes you are completely right. We are looking for a garden flat over 70sq, in z1-3 under 800k that doesnt have a long chain, so it hasn’t been easy. A lot of the stock we managed to view needed quite a bit of work, or small or on a big road. We did like about 20 of the 100s we saw and made offers and mostly outbid by cash buyers. I think we are competing not with FTB but usu with downsizers. We are thinking now to either increase our budget or decide to do extension work…or not buy / just continue to rent in London and move to another country in 5-6 years

I sympathise - was viewing London flats in 2022 with my daughter and so many of them were in really bad condition. Many had been tenanted out for years and it gave me a lot of sympathy for tenants expected to live in such poor conditions despite no doubt paying high rent.