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!

@hididdlyho we did two viewings of a few properties (and had a few second viewings of ours).

Second viewers said the third bedroom is too small which made me cross as the size is clear on the floor plan. Why go and see a house and declare one of the rooms is too small when you already know what size it is?? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Nothing yet from viewer one but I’m guessing radio silence is a no.

So… yeah… not great. Still looks like I’ll be losing both my job and my dream house.

@hididdlyhoWe viewed the house we love once and basically immediately made an offer. Estate agent told us we could view as many times as we wanted though as it’s empty.

Sorry about your viewer frustration @TheBirdintheCave sometimes I think people make up daft excuses because they feel they have to say something.

Im bracing myself for disappointment this Saturday. The interested parties are not proceedable (unless their situation has changed since they booked the viewing 3 weeks ago), so we are just seeing it as our first interest and hope for some useful feedback ha ha.

nil desperandum. Things can change but obviously time is of the essence for you if you've found something you love.

@daisychain01Yeah selling a house is already rubbish and we’re only a week in 😆 I’m not sure what we’ll do if we do end up selling but ‘our’ house has gone. There’s just nothing else out there at the moment.

May I also hop on? Buying but not selling. I'm hopeful that we will have exchange and completion dates lined up this week, as we've been going since January. We've had lots of issues getting our mortgage sorted due to an unusual situation - we are mortgage free but want to stay in our current house for now because the new house requires work. So we (but in fact our bank) are now the ones causing the hold up and out sellers are getting tetchy and my anxiety is through the roof. I really don't think (🤞) they'll pull the plug at this stage, but I can understand their frustration. And they've asked for several weeks between exchange and completion, so it doesn't look like we'll be getting the keys before mid July

@newrubylane Welcome :) Best of luck! I hope the bank moves quickly for you. The place we want is a bit of a project too 😅

I’m also wobbling about the one we have an eye on. We want detached, quite specific on layout and it needs to have garage. We’re also picky about the location. The one we like doesn’t have the greatest layout and is a little smaller than we’d like. The garden is also overlooked and north facing. On the upside it has new kitchen and bathrooms and is immaculate and decorated exactly to my style.

We got our mortgage approved today 🥳🥳 one big tick towards exchange! We need to ask our bank what happens with our current mortgage because our fix doesn't finish until the end of August and by all accounts, we should be ready to go by mid/late July 😬 I really don't want to be lumped with an early exit fee for a month but it would absolutely suck to hold up the chain (and miss summer holiday move in, I work in a school) just so we don't have to pay 1-5% of our outstanding balance in one hit...

Just need the survey and searches to get done then we are good to go. In a way I hope the rest of the chain is slower at sorting everything out!

Welcome @newrubylane gosh that sounds stressful. Well not too much longer to go, but it probably feels like a lifetime. Property buying is not for the faint hearted.

so are you having to take out a short term loan to enable you to keep your current home while your new home is being renovated? We're in a similar but different situation in that we will have a gap between any prospective sale on our current home and whenever the new one is ready to occupy as it hasn't yet been built (it's a new development) so we're having to figure out how we will put a roof over our head during that gap.

Renting is the obvious one, but we can't believe how expensive it has become. Airbnb is absolutely extortionate.

We’ve been trying to book a second viewing on the house we like but the EA has gone silent on us. I suspect they think they may have an offer coming from someone else. I did ask if we could see inside the garage this time as it was locked before and I asked first s slightly longer visit to take some measurements. I can’t imagine that this is why they won’t let us visit surely? Isn’t that level of ‘intrusion’ normal for a second visit?

@TheBirdintheCave I think some people must not bother looking at the floorplans before viewing, which is wild to me. I remember some of the post viewing feedback we got when selling MIL's was not liking aspects of the layout and 'dated' decor (basically white walls with one feature wallpaper in each of the 3 bedrooms, so nothing crazy). One buyer even pulled out months into the process, just before exchange of contracts because he decided there wasn't enough parking!

Photos seemed to go well yesterday and EA thinks he should be able to get the listing up by Wednesday. We e-mailed the EA of the house we're wanting to buy to see if he'll allow us to view yet. The problem is we went for a drive by yesterday and the house is half a mile down an unadopted road, shared with one other house (previously we'd just drive to the point the adopted road stopped). It's not in too bad shape but quite bumpy, I'm now thinking it's going to be a massive headache when it needs repairs and it's really put me off the house. I'm guessing we may as well go view it if they'll let us and ask the vendor about the road - repairs, bin collections, deliveries etc the answers may be reassuring.

@hididdlyho I can see that someone might change their mind on parking. If you love the house and location you get excited, can compromise, then get cold feet! But layouts is odd. I look at those before the pictures, and the houses are almost always worse in real life than they appear in staged photos.

How many homes are down your road? We live on an unadopted road, but its MUCH shorter than yours would be. Its a bit bumpy in one section, another is fine as the houses using it grouped together to get it concreted. The bit outside the houses who refused to pay is a right state.

We didn't give it much thought when we bought, and its not a major problem, bin collectors come down, delivery drivers etc. It's just the upkeep.

edited from adopted to unadopted!

Frustrated today. We’re chain free, ready to go, ideal buyers. We offered on a place week before last, rejected. Offered £10k more last week, vendors counter offered £5k more than that.

We viewed again, noted more problems and work to be done (rotten porch for one). So refused to raise our offer, given the place already needs a new kitchen and bathrooms (and patio), and has clearly had zero done to it in the 2 years they’ve owned it. They still didn’t accept.

Today I’ve heard that the house they hoped to buy has been sold at the weekend, but that they may now be considering our last offer again. Wild behaviour to me if they already know a specific house they want to buy, to quibble over £5k.

@FallenNight there's just one other house down the road, so that makes me think it may not be too bad, if it was multiple households I think I would give it a swerve as the potential for disagreements over upkeep would be stressful. I think I'd want to speak to the neighbour before getting too far into the buying process, I assume they will also want to keep the road usable so they can get to their house. They bought their house a couple of years ago, so it may be that an agreement for upkeep was drawn up then.

The bins situation is a bit of a concern, I suspect we'd be expected to take the rubbish to the adopted road part. I don't fancy wheeling a bin half a mile in winter, but if they'll take bags I guess we could drive the rubbish down there. My DH doesn't seem too worried about the current condition of the road and the location isn't somewhere which would get through traffic as it's a dead end in the middle of nowhere.

That's frustrating, maybe the garage is full of stuff and inaccessible? We bought our house without seeing inside the outbuilding as the vendor had 'lost' the key. It magically reappeared on moving day and it was crammed full of junk the seller clearly couldn't be bothered to get rid of. Hope you hear back from them soon and get your second viewing.

Ugh, had a brief moment of joy after our offer on another place was accepted 2+ weeks after our first offer (it was way over priced).

Then immediately dashed when the estate agent told us that the vendors were moving into a new build not due to be ready till November. How is that not told to us on the first viewing?!!

Not a chance we’re waiting, so back to the drawing board.

@Sheeshbee This is so frustrating!!

Have had the contracts come through to sign and send back for my sale, with a promise that the bits for my purchase aren’t too far behind.

Now I’m going to have to pull my finger out and look at removals!

We're over three months in and have only seen the deeds for our purchase, no property form or fixtures and fittings yet. Our sale has been quicker - all queries answered. But the two properties lower down the chain are further behind. Hoping our purchase catches up but our vendors are painfully slow. Probate sale.

2 back to back viewings today that I have to rush home from work to prep for and this morning my elderly dog decides to crap on the bedroom carpet and track it right through the house. FML. I think the universe is giving me a sign not to bother at the moment. We can’t find anything anyway. 💩

I think a lot of people are holding off going on the market understandably, we can’t find anything and are close to giving up . There is a viewing booked so will have that as tied in for another couple of weeks then give up I think.

@WWBWBapparently it is tough with old dogs, have been there. I hope the viewings go well and that if you get an offer something suitable comes on.

We’ve had two proceedable offers from the viewings today so the EA has advised that they go to best and final. All very well but there’s nothing coming in the market. Just have to see how long they will wait I guess.

@WWBWBapparently congratulations! We had quite a bit of success calling local agents who knew of people who’d either come off the market due to no interest but were still wanting to sell or people who were planning to list their houses soon.

@PyjamasForever thats such a good idea.
@WWBWBapparently thats incredible speed!
We have a second viewing tomorrow, I hope they offer or let us know they won’t before lunchtime Saturday, or we’ll have to wait and wonder all weekend! How many second viewings don’t end up making an offer, I wonder? They said how this was the best house they’d seen when they were here on Monday,