Spring house selling/buying support thread

[PyjamasForever]

After quite a lengthy time on the market I finally have an offer on my house and have had an offer accepted on a house I want to buy. I’m feeling a bit uncertain it will happen with the current financial situation and wondered if anyone else in a similar position wanted a thread for a bit of moral support?!

We’ve instructed solicitors, filled out our TA6 and TA10 forms, applied for a mortgage and have some documents to send them… I then find the next bit the hardest bit about buying and selling when you have all those uncertain weeks with searches/surveys etc and it could all fall apart at any minute!

Without knowing how large the chain is, I’d ask the solicitor to speak to the others about potential dates. Do you have one in mind they can put forward? Try and get a date everyone is working to now. Whilst it may change it gives you some structure and something to work with.

Only 3 of us in the chain (as long as our seller sticks to plans to rent!). Good idea to have something to aim towards.

Ugh I am here in solidarity. Had an offer on our house this morning, a bit lower than we hoped so we went back with a counter offer and now I think we should have just gone with it, so I’m on edge wondering if they’ll walk away. And that’s before we’ve even got to surveys and all that! It’s such a fucking horrible process.

@BurntSausagethat was entirely the right thing to do… hold your nerve

Definitely the right thing to do. I think most people would expect a first offer to be rejected and you’ve shown you’re interest by giving a counter.

We accepted an offer on ours yesterday. Now waiting to see how long it will take. We are ready to go (empty house). Apparently they are as well. 3-4 months?

Hi All, good luck with your house selling journeys. If you don’t mind me asking,
how long were your houses on the market? We’ve been listed for 2 months and only had a handful of people view and no offers. We are just about to lower the price of ours by £25k. Is it the market in general or just our house / list price?

Market is rubbish @Numnumbirdy in many areas. Ours went on middle of last year, had nothing. Took it off, relisted in March £25k lower than previous asking, agreed at 20K under that so £45k less than hoped for last year. But with a lower asking price did get an other after a month.

@FallenNight I think it’s a bit of market and a bit of price. We were on the market for a while last year, came off for 4 months, dropped the price and had a good offer within a week.

We sold for £30k less in winter than what we’d been told to expect but purchased for £30k less, so in a way we were ok. Viewed as a two way transaction of both buying and selling it’s not as painful. But in isolation it is.

We are looking to downsize. We had 3 agents round last week and got 3 hugely different opinions. It's a character property so harder to value but the highest is 50% more than the lowest! At the lowest it wouldn't be worth us moving, highest I think is ambitious. Will probably go with the middle one and if we don't sell by September take it off the market until spring next year.

This seems like a good pragmatic approach! So hard to know what to do when stage agents say such different things. I think some have forgotten that the Covid era property boom is over.

We have just accepted an offer on our house, but there is literally nothing coming onto the market in our budget that we would buy…. I’m hoping it picks up a bit!! 😬

Thanks @PyjamasForever and @Mum5net they got back to us today, half way between their first offer and our counter. We’ve just accepted it. I just think the way things are going we wouldn’t have got full asking price, and this is still a decent offer. It could have been sat on the market for ages. There’s a similar house over the road been on for months now, on their third agent.

I’m just not cut out for the emotional side of it all. I don’t handle stress well, and this whole buying/selling shenanigans has been the most stressful thing I’ve experienced. I’ve aged horribly in the last year and I don’t think I’ve had a decent night’s sleep since 1979 😁

@Chickenandegg8 We had a similar issue. We decided we are so keen to move that the ideal house hasn’t cropped up, but we’d be happy with a compromise.

Would you move into rented to keep your buyers?

@BurntSausage I’m also finding this intensely stressful despite no drama (yet!).

Same here. Annoying as we agreed on a good price for our house. Chomping at the bit to find our new home but there's literally nothing in our desired area to even view. We are only moving for secondary schools, so have a fairly narrow search area.

I'm feeling so impatient today even though I should just get a grip. We put our house on the market after seeing our (hopefully) forever home and putting in an offer. Our house sold in a week and the house I'm buying is in a chain of I think 4 and seems to be devoid of any urgency. I broke the chain and now I live in rented accommodation, waiting.

I know my sale went through rapidly at 9 weeks end to end (FTB no chain), but I'm now 16 weeks into my purchase and have only vague details of the chain, with nothing seemingly moving. Every time I ask the EA for an update they tell me things will be progressing very quickly now, but they don't. It's not the timeline that particularly bothers me, it's the total lack of communication and transparency. I've never been in a chain before so don't know what level of knowledge is acceptable.

When I told them I was moving into rented the EA initially tried to object and steer me towards an Airbnb because 'it would be cheaper as it's only short term'. Glad I told them to stay out of it.

We put our house on the market seven weeks ago and it went for asking price a week later, so we are six weeks into that process now. It’s a chain of four. I think everything is almost done for the sale - mortgage, survey, queries, just one search left to come back. We are buying a probate property, offered immediately but it took them four weeks to accept. Then another week to find a solicitor. Now they’ve just cancelled the survey today last minute as they are busy. It’s three siblings who I assume are pretty old who are dealing with the sale and there’s absolutely no sense of urgency from them at all. We’ve received no paperwork from the sale so we can’t even order searches. Radio silence from their solicitor who apparently is very good so I presume they just haven’t filled out any forms yet At this rate, we are going to end up in rented too. Their estate agent is also absolutely useless. It’s a different branch of the same company my estate agent is at so I thought there would be some improved communication between them and they would tell them to get a move on, but no. Very frustrating.

We went on the market in January, no real driver to move, just fancied a change after four years here. Accepted an offer five weeks ago about 50K less than asking. Were fairly far down the road on our intended purchase when level 2 survey came back with disturbing news about spray foam insulation, we loved the house but couldn't make it work so walked away from that one. Had an offer accepted yesterday on a slightly worse house in a better (for us) location, which is also 50K under asking, which has softened the blow somewhat on our sale. Now doing paperwork for another EA, KYC RTB etc etc. We checked the loft ourselves first on this one though before committing anything lol

Yep, I feel you, it is all very frustrating! I guess I was spoiled as I was basically in instant communication with my EA on my sale. I work in stakeholder management so pretty used to keeping everyone in the loop and this blase vaguery is driving me insane.

@PyjamasForever no we wouldn’t rent. We have a 2.24% mortgage we want to port, it lasts until 2032 so definitely don’t want to lose it and start again.

We did sell within a week though, so if our buyers get fed up we should be able to find someone else!

Yep I work in high capital sales and shit salespersonship gets my goat, too. But I honestly just can’t fathom putting off paperwork that needs to be done for weeks on end - it’s just not in my nature. I have to hold myself back from calling everyone or firing out a load of emails.

vendors estate agent has been asking our solicitor for an update. I messaged her to tell her the delay was with her clients. She called their solicitor and the solicitor confirmed she’s received nothing from them at all. What do you do with vendors with zero motivation?

Our buyers have been on the phone to the Estate Agents to chivvy us along, but I feel like we all need to just poke the solicitors into more action.

I wish there was a more transparent way of knowing accurately what each bit of the chain is up to. I have a huge (hopefully irrational) fear that our buyers will just change their minds overnight…

Oh yes I share your irrational fear! We sorted our solicitor today, I’m hoping they’ll be able to be clearer on where everyone else in the chain is at. The estate agent thinks they’re quite a way through the process already but I’d like to be sure and I don’t know if that’s a solicitor or estate agent kinda question!

In my experience so far no one knows what’s happening!