Is there a new thread for “Anyone putting their home on the market in early 2025”?

[IWasBornIn1989]

The other thread is full 😏

@ScoobyDoesnt hope it's all sorted for you. I find with house moves there's always something else and more to do! Don't feel easy until we are in that house. Fingers crossed for us both 😆

Well, after weeks of putting little things right for the buyers, we’ve had the garden sorted, and paid to have the electrics fixed, they’ve now pulled out saying it needs new fence panels, a new bloody kitchen and more worrying the front wall and roof need fixing. They’ve wasted months saying they were buying and now we’re back on the market. I can’t cope.

Oh no, I am so sorry, that is shit. How disappointing. How long did it take you to sell originally?

We feel we are jumping through hoops for our buyers at the moment and are seriously questioning their commitment to buy. They keep saying they are booking a survey and don't. Meanwhile we are putting little things right and doing everything they are asking of us and they are giving us nothing back in return. They have made no financial commitment yet other than searches which concerns us.

They have so far wasted the last few months making demands of us and I just have this awful feeling they are going to pull the rug at any moment. To be honest, if they are going to I wish they would just get on with it and allow us to move on and go back on the market. I feel an ultimatum coming. 🙄

That sounds so like our situation @andweallloveclover . It’s so upsetting. Ours went up in March and had an offer in April. It’s half way through July now and we’re back to square one.

I hope yours doesn’t go the same way.

@Jollyjollyjollygoodie At least you sold fairly quickly so lets hope you find a new buyer again soon and you can push on with things.

I am sorry this has happened its really upsetting isn't it?

Last time we sold a house over 10 years ago, our buyer went awol just before exchange of contracts. No-one could get hold of him. He literally just disappeared off the face of the earth. Then we found out from the guy who did the survey for him that his bill had gone unpaid and they too couldn't find him.

To this day we have no idea where he went. We may have been scammed or he may have gone missing or something for all we know. We never did get to the bottom of it. But 4 months of hard work to get to a point of exchange and we were back to square one. Lost our beautiful onward purchase which was my dream house. A detached cottage right on the seafront. It is and will always be, the one that got away.

Our mortgage got declined today, not for any financial reason but because of a bloody electricity pole thing! It's one of those two poles with a box in between things - the kind you see everywhere, especially in rural areas - and it's not even on the property. You can just see it, if you look past the trees for it, and according to Barclays the presence of this thing makes a 3.5 acre property with a big 4 bed house, garages, etc "not suitable for lending". It's utterly ridiculous!
Seriously, that's the one, sole reason they've given for refusing to lend. More annoyingly, they would never have lent so the application was doomed from the start.

So, back to the mortgage drawing board and this time our broker had better do his homework before bunging an application in! I knew it was all going too well when the searches only took a week to come back... 😩

What? I mean seriously, what????

I have never ever heard of anything like that before. That's bonkers!!

I feel for you, I really do. Just when you think the whole process can't get anymore ridiculous than it is you hear of something like this.

Hope you manage to find a lender elsewhere.
Good Luck

Thank you, and yes it is completely ridiculous! Neither the broker nor the seller's estate agent could understand it and neither had ever heard of a refusal for that reason, either. I reckon they just decided they didn't want to lend on a rural property and looked for whatever excuse they could in the surveyor's report. That report didn't exactly help, though - it calls it an "electricity mast", which makes it sound like a pylon. It's definitely not a pylon!

That's misleading. I live rurally and its a pole mounted electricity transformer box. They are everywhere where I live. They are really common and no-one has ever been refused a mortgage because there was one nearby. Electricity mast is one of those massive huge ones!!

Exactly! I know that, you know that, the sodding surveyor knows that but the report makes out that it's a dirty great pylon or a cell tower. I could totally understand the refusal if that’s what it was, and I wouldn’t be buying somewhere overlooked by one of those anyway, but it’s just regular local energy infrastructure. We would struggle to find somewhere rural that doesn’t have something like that near by.
I've thought about it overnight and I think I’m going to speak to the surveyor company (it’s Countrywide). It might not do any good, but at least I’ll feel like I’ve tried and it might stop a future valuation being similarly misleading.

@PiercedMrsP that sounds nuts.

I’ve got a valuer coming out today for my buyers mortgage - also Barclays and Countrywide. I’ve been worrying about it since Barclays decided to do this last Friday, as we were hoping to exchange this week / next - week are literally at that point.

I’m worried about horror stories of undervaluing by countrywide, but my now worry is I’ve got tall trees on council owned land next to me - it’s a lovely elm and 2 birches - they are a good 5-6 metres from my boundary but are taller than the house and the twiggy branches (as opposed to heavy branches) slightly overhang my roof and almost touch the gable.

Of course the council don’t maintain although ‘monitor’ the trees every 3 years.

I think I’m at the point of just worrying about worrying as we are so far down the process now!

@ScoobyDoesntgood luck! If it helps, there are a lot of very tall trees on the property we're buying (its rural and includes a field and woodland) and while the valuation did mention them it didn't cite them as a problem, it was just this non-existent "mast" that was the issue. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, though!.

Thank you - like I say i'm just seeing issues everywhere as we are so far down the line now - was hoping to complete in 2 weeks!

I keep telling myself they can't possibly undervalue given 2 houses the same style / floorplan as mine in my little road have sold recently - one only 4 months ago and one 2.5 years ago - and all of us are within £5k of each other (at high £400ks mark).

On tall trees... you can put a request into the council to come and inspect, I did this recently in Wandsworth and they actually removed the tree within 3 months of asking! Worth thinking about in case it helps

Thanks @Littlebeausheepish - I've made 3 requests since I moved here in 2020 and they say they come and inspect, but nothing actually happens!

Funny though that on their last email they forgot to delete part of an internal conversation and called me a 'serial complainer' even though all I've done is politely ask if they could come and trim back away from my roof. I got a slight apology and was told I could trim back myself to my boundary line. Helpful when the trees are taller than my roof....

@PiercedMrsP sorry another question - when the valuer came around did he/she tell you straight away what their view was? I know they work for the mortgage company and not you, but I was hoping I may get an indication if I'm likely to be moving!

@ScoobyDoesnt the property we're buying (or hoping to!) is about 120 miles away so I didn't even know the valuation had been done until yesterday's bombshell. When our buyers' was done the surveyor didn't come right out and say, and to be fair I didn't ask, but he did hint all was fine and said it was a really nice house, which I took to be positive.

Thank you! Right, have finished my work call and now off to tidy up and hoover....

Good news! Valuer said there's no reason at all to not value what is needed, it's a lovely well maintained house. Trees weren't even mentioned lol.

And he's getting his report to Barclays tonight.

This may yet happen.....

That sounds positive, hope things speed along.

Hey everyone, I need advice. My stupid house won't sell. Valued at £275 and put on the market late April for that price . Only got three viewings and one offer which was withdrawn literally the next day before I could even get a chance to negotiate or accept. After 3 weeks, the estate agent suggested dropping the price to offers over £260. Got nine viewings in 2 months, but each viewer had different feedback to give about why the house wasn't for them: They all said they "loved" the house, BUT.... one said garden doesn't have a lawn, another said they didn't like the flow of the downstairs, another said one bedroom too small, another said the house is too big (!), another said, it just didn't feel right, another said they loved the area, but their partner didn't, etc, etc. Estate agent is now saying I should reduce the price again to offers over £250. It's been on the market now for 12 weeks. Do you thinking I'm reducing it too soon? I feel like at this rate I'm going to give away my house for free. Any advice would be appreciated.

It always comes down to price, so yes reduce it.

I think it does come down to price but also a buyer has to be there. I think the market in some areas including where I am is slow at the moment. I am seeing so many houses reduced every week. Depends how desperate you are to move.

@daffolilly There will always be a buyer if the price is right. The asking price is too high if you are not getting viewings or offers. Yes the market is terrible for sellers currently, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to get better any time soon. I can’t see buyer affordability increasing anytime in the near future with high cost of living, sticky high inflation, economy budget deficits, slow wage growth. It will be at least a few years until this is turned around, if we are optimistic. Your options are either reduce the price sufficiently to attract a buyer or be prepared to wait it out a few years and hope that you are the tiny % of sellers who got lucky.

We are now at the point (if everyone is being truthful) that exchange should be happening in the next few days with a proposed completion of the 8th of August.

I feel sick and I cannot concentrate at work 🙃

If we don't manage to achieve this date everything will get pushed back to September due to people being on holiday in the chain.

@JanuaryBluez we are meant to exchange today and complete 31st July. I feel the same way, couldn't sleep last night. Even had a dream that I didn't bother to call my solicitor to confirm exchange today and then I couldn't sleep after that 😂 It really does take up so much of your life!