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!

You'd think so wouldn't you? We was told their solicitor was ready to talk dates on Monday. Yet here we are. No completion or exchange dates even mentioned. Offer was 15th Feb.

No boundary issues for us, that's another poster.

@BraOffPjsOn I think we need a diagram!
It would be helpful if the estate agent asked your vendor about it. If it happened before they moved in, they might already have paperwork about it.

Apologies! That was meant for @BraOffPjsOn

@BraOffPjsOn we are currently selling our home. Its a three bed old listed end terraced cottage. The cottages all have their own outbuilding at the back. Ours has always been larger than everyone else on the row. Anyway, fast forward to getting the title deeds to check, we (and our buyers) noticed that about a 3rd of our outbuilding is actually on next doors title and not ours. And that half of our neighbours garden (which is fenced) is actually on OUR title.

We have been unable to move along with the sale until the boundaries reflect things as they are on the ground.

This seemingly simple procedure has taken 6 months to sort and is still ongoing, although we are (fingers crossed) currently coming to the end of the process.

As both ourselves, and our neighbours have mortgages on our properties, the lenders for each of us has had to be contacted to give their approval to the title corrections. Each lender has sent the request to their underwriters, then have come back wanting to send surveyors out. One of the surveyors couldn't come for 8 weeks because he was too busy! Hence a massive delay. The surveyor has then had to issue a report, which has then gone back to the lender. The lender then gives approval in writing and then there are forms to fill in. We have also had to instruct our own surveyor to draw up plans of where the corrected boundaries should be and everyone has had to sign to say they agree.

Its been a very long and drawn out process, which, like I say, has taken MONTHS to go through.

We are lucky in that we have cash buyers in rented accommodation that have been willing to wait. And sellers buying a new build who have also been willing to wait.

We are finally getting close to the end of this very stressful process.

I just wanted to make you aware of the hoops we have had to jump through to correct this, as the sellers of the property.

Hopefully there is already something in place for you that has already corrected the boundaries. A Boundary Agreement linked to the title perhaps?

If not, then your Solicitor should advise you not to proceed until this is sorted and corrected. If you plough ahead without it this could be YOUR problem if you decide to sell in the future.

We are in a similar although different situation. We are buying a property with three acres of land surrounding the house, and a private driveway. Just got the deeds through, and it seems we don’t own the driveway. Not sure who does. It gives access to the field next door, and I downloaded their deeds and they don’t own the drive either, they just have access rights over it. We’re already two and a half months in and the rest of the chain have finished their enquiries. Our solicitor hasn’t responded to our questions about what to do. I was hoping things would move quickly now we’ve finally got the deeds in hand but it seems not. The property has never been registered either so that’s an extra complication.

Our listing has been live since 8am this morning. Open day is next Saturday but only one viewing confirmed so far 😕 I’m so worried we’ll end up pinning our hopes on one person 😆

Has anyone's EA run an "Open Day"? I'm not close minded to having one but does it just attract time wasters with time on their hands on a Sunday rather than genuine buyers?

Ours are doing one. They’re vetting the applicants first and only allowing proceedable viewers so it’s not an ‘open day’ in terms of anyone can show up but rather a block of bookings in a row to (hopefully) trigger a bidding war. It’s worked well for my brother and my parents sold their house last week in the same way :)

Very helpful, @TheBirdintheCave thank you. I would love to have enough people expressing interest in our property to make an Open Day viable. It has been horribly quiet,

we are pinning our hopes on the one person who have expressed interest who will be coming round next weekend. They are out of area and will be making the journey from the Home Counties.

I'm hoping it's the hot weather that's putting people off wanting to go house viewing this long weekend.

@daisychain01It’s not going to well so far as we only have one person booked too 😆

Augh I was really hopeful we might have more viewings booked this morning as the estate agents catch up over the bank holiday weekend but there’s been nothing 😭 It really looks like we’ll be pinning all of our hopes to one person.

Good luck! It only takes 1

I think most people are on hold waiting to see what happen with interest rates again as rate stayed the same last time and we’re only a few weeks off the next one.
Lots of houses are still overpriced too and people are clinging onto the high prices from before.
We waited for a long time and then all of a sudden when we’d half given up we got an offer.

You and me both @TheBirdintheCave just one person is all it needs.

fingers crossed for your One Person.

our One Person is next Saturday 10:30am The weather is meant to be a bit miserable, cloud and possibly some rain, but probably better than 30c!

I'm getting the EA to bring along some red carpet and see if they want to stay for lunch 😆

Apparently we have to make ourselves scarce, so we'll sit over the road in our camper van and make a cuppa.

Lots of houses are still overpriced too and people are clinging onto the high prices from before.

I don't get that impression at all. Most people will happily accept an offer, they aren't clinging onto a set price. It's pointless reducing the price, as it looks bad on the portals (Price reduced on xxx date) the EA is there to set the expectation that reasonable offers are invited. In the current market I doubt anyone would refuse an offer if someone is genuine and proceedable .

Our house is the cheapest three bed in our area at the moment at £415k. An identical house (Linden Elliott style) on a busier road in the development is listed for £45k more (!) There are also two similar three bed homes for £425k on the busy road.

£415k is literally the lowest we can accept though as we won’t be able to make an onward purchase with anything less :( I’d be devastated if the only offer we had was for lower than our asking price.

That sounds like a very realistic price, fingers crossed you get some strong interest.

@TheBirdintheCave we went on the market at the minimum we could accept and got an asking price offer (after a little negotiation). Fingers crossed the same for you.

I’m still annoyed with my solicitors. Spoke to them last week and they said they’re waiting on enquiries to come back from sellers. Sellers solicitors have sent everything and we still haven’t heard back.

No, there are plenty of deluded sellers who’ve had their houses on for months at wildly inflated prices. We’ve had two chain-free offers rejected in the last week, one bluntly ‘nothing below asking price’, no counter offer.

The other one think a house they’ve owned for 2 years exactly is now worth £50k more than they paid for it. Zero renovations, not even any cosmetic changes we can see from the old listing photos. On since February, still not willing to negotiate starting from what they bought it for.

There’s also very inconsistent pricing: an agent with two near identical houses on with a £50k price difference. Another far worse property that needed everything doing and smelled of dog, on a busy road, on for £50k more than either of them.

The market isn’t dead - the houses that are well priced and in good cosmetic shape all get multiple offers and sell in a single weekend.

The market isn’t dead - the houses that are well priced and in good cosmetic shape all get multiple offers and sell in a single weekend.

I wish.

The thing is, the buyers have to think it's well priced, not just the person selling.

Hello I’m joining in, we went on the market 2 weeks ago. Large house near to a great primary school - houses in this street are usually snapped up but apart from 2 viewings in the first two days……..tumbleweed. Our house is in immaculate condition, new kitchen, bathrooms, flooring etc. 4 big bedrooms - fantastic for families. The first viewer made an offer in principle 5k under full asking price but of course that means nothing until they can actually sell themselves.
Estate agent says the market has gone dead over the last week, no viewings on anything.
Typically, we’ve found something we like and nothing is moving! - I’m hating the stress of this already - really don’t want to lose the house :(

@WWBWBapparentlyI feel your pain. I’m so scared we’ll lose the house we want too x_x

Not easy at the moment is it ?! Agent was talking about doing something to promote ours as nearly 3 weeks in and 1 viewing. I don’t actually want any viewings as have seen 2, 1 we wanted to view went under offer after a year and can’t see anything else to look at.

Thought it was me being fussy so asked friend to look and she has failed to see anything and said she had never seen market like this. People seem to be holding off for now which is pretty understandable. I think we will take ours off after 6 week contract ends.

4 houses that would have been equally ideal for us all went within a week of each other around 6-7 weeks into our selling process ☹️ we have got a house that ticks 95% of our boxes but our choices were very limited by the time we sold. The house will be lovely when we've finished with it and I do like a project!

Hopefully you guys have better luck - if the market has dropped off completely then it will have done for the houses you're eyeing up too! Keep positive!

Small silver lining to our sale taking so long is that the mortgage rate we have been offered has gone down by 0.18%!

I really feel for everyone waiting for their house to sell. We were on for 6m last year before coming off for Christmas and going on the market at a much reduced price. I think it’s a mixture of being cheap enough to be attractive and lucky enough to have the right buyer looking at the right time.