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!

Our chain is small too and we SSTC at the start of May or end of April I think. We had an email from the solicitor today saying the last search will be complete on or before 24th and the she’ll raise additional enquiries (I don’t think there will be any). Our buyer has their survey booked for 17th (not sure why they’ve taken so long).
hoping to exchange start or July and complete before we go on holiday the last week of July but it’s going to be tight I think!

Good luck - I hope it all
moves quickly.

thanks everyone - I’m really keen to get in ASAP, I’m normally quite laid back with letting things play out in whatever timeframe happens, but in this instance I have committed to spending my every waking moment making sure this stays on track!

good luck with completing in time for your holidays braoffpjson, you are keeping my timeline optimism alive 😂

The chain was probably complete mid-March. But one house had a buyer pull out, so I think the rest of the chain was more ready.

We are looking to complete end of June, so will have been around 3months.
I think that feels quick to me! 😳

Thanks - although being on mumsnet is giving me nightmares that our buyers will suddenly try and drop the price by exchange!

it would be a no but scary what some people pull!

Our solicitor doesn't think we'll be in by the end of August after the chain was formed mid may but who knows! Anything could happen. In a way I'm quite pleased tbh as that way we don't have to worry about the early exit fee on our current mortgage. Would have been nice to move in the summer holiday but what'll be will be.

Our solicitor received our contract pack today! So now we can get on with the searches and all that jazz. Only taken 4 weeks to get to this point 🙄

Once someone has made an offer on your house how long has it then taken until you’ve found your next place please? I’m sure it’s variable but just wondering what the average usually is.

We’ve been looking for 4 weeks now and we’ve not found the absolute right house yet. We are looking in a small area which won’t help - plus we are fussy with garden positioning and room sizes. There’s a chance that we could lose our buyer but we don’t have to move. We’ve done too much to our house to settle for less.

@WWBWBapparently i don’t think 4 weeks is very long at all!

I suppose it depends on how long your buyer will wait for. It feels a bit pressured now as they naturally won’t wait forever. We are now wobbling over a house we had dismissed and I know it’s because we are feeling pressured to find something

It’s my daughter who is first time buying and it’s 6 weeks since the offer. We’ve never been in a chain. There’s been zero communication other than the seller is on a 3 week holiday albeit back now. The house was listed in March so you can appreciate them having a holiday! DD doesn’t want to do survey etc until the seller has found something. According to zoopla the house was for sale twice last year but the EA says they know nothing about that. Tricky to know how motivated someone is. Tbf she’s in no rush.

We sold ours on the Wednesday, had our offer accepted on the house we're buying on the following Saturday, they had their offer accepted on their house the following week and then the chain was finished the week after that so quite speedy for us. We also had a very small area to work with and our house was the only one we could afford that ticked all of our boxes!

Needless to say, knowing there were two other people viewing it before us on that Saturday really piled the pressure on!

Crikey @TeddyBeans that was all very swift!

We’ve got a couple of viewings booked and I am dreading them just in case either result in an offer. Had hoped that more would be coming on the market by now but it just isn’t .

Also it is suddenly looking likely that family member returning from abroad after 25 years and is going to need accommodating for a bit which we can do without issue here. I think we’ll do the 2 viewings then take off end of next week which is the end of our contract.

It was! I think we all had eyes on specific houses and were itching to get on them asap 🤣

@Seaitoverthere are you on the books of ALL the local estate agents with your specific list of wants? I’ve no clue what your area is like but where I live hardly anything goes in Rightmove. They’re mostly under the radar. The house we bought here was never advertised in any shape or form (not even in the EA window) and in the 9 years we’ve lived on our street about ten have sold and only two were ever advertised on Rightmove. In this area, without being in with all the EAs you’d miss lots. Could be totally different in your area but just a thought.

@NotDonna no we aren’t and waiting for things to go on RM which might be a mistake. There are a couple I would view but council tax are F and G, E is our max. I would think that maybe we are just completely unrealistic but one we liked that sold finally after a year just before we were going to look was a band E.

One place we like just down the road there were about 4 places that we would have looked at last year if had been on market, there is the grand total of one house on currently. I think people are just sitting tight. Ones sold prior to marketing usually do appear on RM but haven’t seen any recently,

I even got a friend to look in case I was being too fussy or missed something but she couldn’t see anything either. We have an unwell adult DC who may be with us for many more years so I think somewhere that accommodates us all with a decent amount of privacy is the sticking point.

@Seaitoverthere yes I think there was a bit more activity last year. If you don’t need to move then there’s no need to settle or compromise. We’ve had to move in the past so a bit of compromise was essential. Whereas my DD doesn’t need to move so she can afford to be fussy and wait. She’s found one but there’s a fair bit wrong with it other than location & the price is high for what it is. But there’s just nothing else coming on.

@NotDonna we don’t need to move and stuck this on the market after months of renovation from next door and we lost our minds and decided we want to be detached. House next door is 3 flats, one let to a lovely lady. The other 2 are struggling to let as too expensive but landlord being good and declined corporate let for remaining 2 flats as said no control over who comes in and out and he was worried for existing tenant and neighbours which is very encouraging.

So you’ve probably put up with the worst of it now!

No loan, luckily, just a maxed-out mortgage to buy. We will be a bit tight financially until we sell our current house, which we'll aim to do as soon as the new house is livable - i.e. watertight with a kitchen and at least one bathroom. We can do the rest together works once we are in, but didn't fancy camping on a building site with two seven year olds! Hoping we might be in by next spring all being well.

We are still waiting on the bank at the moment. It's all approved and they did the valuation last week, so assuming this is just them putting paperwork together now. It should be any time now. Sellers chasing lots but seem to still be ok. Hoping possibly exchange by end of next week.

We are still

I have just made an offer on my first home :) No chain either end

@Grghf that's impressive! New build?

Offer rejected :(

@Grghf sorry to hear that. Are you going to increase or was that your best offer?

It's hard, sorry! You still have options if you can go higher. We lost out to higher bidders after an open day on our dream house yielded a 'best offer' situation between 7 buyers 😰

But now we have successfully offered on a better dream house, so don't give up😅