The 'We want to buy a house' support group

[fruitstick]

For like minded souls who are having trouble buying a house even though the property market is supposed to be on its knees.

We've had a vendor pull our, been gazumped and are horrified by the complete lack of any houses for sale at all.

So come share your woes here.

I posted on another thread as I wasn't sure whether I had killed this one

Hooray! But we lost the house we wanted by 1 day onwards and upwards though

Well done Wigeon, fingers crossed for you. Am not doing any celebrating until everything signed.

Nosey - that is awful. have you put letters through any houses? I would sell to you, chain free? I would be rolling out the red carpet for you

Fizzy, we've leafletted twice - even the house that has just sold. It's rather deflating...

Can I join for tea & sympathy. Have accepted offer from couple who have sold to cash buyer (hurrahh!) After 11 viewings, found a fab house which has been on the market for ages. Made an offer £30k below asking, but been rejected despite us being in a good situation, them not having sold, and Zoopla telling me their house is worth what we offered. Now feel down in the dumps at the prospect of searching for more houses. V worried too, as buyers are pushing for mid December exchange and dh refusing to rent. Did I mention we are trying to find a "next 10 yrs" house, not just a stop gap?

I deserted this thread as I decided not to think about house hunting for a few weeks.

But I'm back now for some sympathy.

Nosey I know exactly how you feel. Viewed a lovely house on Saturday which came on the market the day before. Offered 5% below asking price.

Has 4 offers all above asking price and going to sealed bids tomorrow . All 4 buyers are chain free with big deposits and mortgage arranged (like us).

I'm depressed. We sold in April so right at the very bottom of the market. Dh keeps telling me that the housing market is crazy at the moment and things will start to drop again in the new year but I'm nervous it will just run away from us. When we sold everybody said there was no way the housing market would recover quickly!

We are still waiting for completion/ exchange but vaugely optimistic about moving before christmas now - 3 of us in the chain of 4 have agreed a desired completion date so we've just got to get the people at the top to say yes - they are moving into a vacant place (and I need the bloody halifax to pull their fingers out on our mortgage offer...)

fingers crossed for everyone else...

I have sold (as above) and I have now bought, and the vendors are now house hunting.

Not getting excited as having read everyone else's stories on here I know how wrong it can all go.

Fruitstick, how did it all go?

We didn't get it . We offered the asking price as couldn't really justify going higher, hoping that our position would nudge things in our favour. But it didn't.

I'm gutted to be honest as I did really like the house. We just have to keep hoping that the market will drop in the new year. At the moment it feels like it's running away from us.

Knowing our luck it will wait until we buy before it plummets.

Can you tell I'm depressed!

We have exchanged but we don't complete until the 18th Dec! Do you think they'll move out the day before?

Can I join here for some tea and moral support? I have now been to view the house we want 4, yes 4, times!! (once on my own, once with DH, once with builder to quote for all the work that needs doing, and then the surveyor suggested we pop round "so he can show us everything he's talking about, because there's quite a lot..." Amazing customer service, but still not exactly reassuring. So every time I go in I fall in love with it a little bit more, and every time I go in I can feel money we don't have draining away....

Head or heart?? We live in the SE so it's an obscene amount of money for ANY family house, so my logic is it might as well be one we adore...

Oh Fruitstick I am to spend another Christmas here.

New year always sees new properties coming onto the market.

Mcdreamy, probably not.

Really? Are they likely to move out on the day even though completion is to be done by 12.30pm? Bugger! We are moving out the day before and expecting to move in on the day of completion. I bloody knew I should have pushed for completion to be the day before

Haven't been on this thread for ages as thought we were just plodding along waiting for solicitors to do their stuff and were expecting to exchange next week.

But then this happened today:

4pm- spoke to estate agent. Buyer had just been in and said everything was fine and they are ready to exchange.

6.30pm- estate agent phones to say buyer pulling out and Mrs Buyer has changed her mind. I say we'll pay for work they want done, Mr Buyer says he'll speak to his wife (he was at work at the time) and let us know a final decision in morning.

7.30pm- check emails. Solicitor has emailed to say she's had the paperwork returned as the buyer has pulled out and did we know this. The email was sent at 4.30pm!!!!!!!!!

What are they playing at???????????
I am and and feel sick.

Oh Deb I'm so sorry. I hope it works itself out.

This happened to us last year with our first buyer. We were all ready to exchange and then he said he wanted to see a guarantee for the underpinning. There wasn't one (as they cannot guarantee subsidence won't reoccur) but we had a letter from our insurance company to say that there was no evidence of subsidence and, if ever there was, the insurance policy covered it.

But he wouldn't be persuaded and pulled out. Nothing to be done.

We found another buyer (for 25k less) and exchanged on our house - only for our vendor to get cold feet at the last minute and refuse to sell . Hence we are still in rented 9 months later.

But the market is good at the moment so, even if they do pull out, you should be able to find another buyer fairly quickly.

Hope she comes to her senses.

Also, I spoke to the estate agent today who said we were the second highest sealed bid (out of 4) and that we were first in the queue if the sale fell through.

I think that has made me feel worse

Hello, back to the thread but now living in Cambridge in rental. The story so far is that we sold in summer 2008 and went into rental as we couldn't find anything to buy in Rugby, only to realise we needed to move to either Cambridge or Oxford as better workwise. Of course we were outbid in both cities and lost houses left and center. So after losing 2 rental houses, we have secured one in Cambridge. I'm glad we didn't buy in Rugby as then we'd have to sell. So in hindsight it was worth the frustration. Hence I recommend renting if you are not sure where to buy.

We are loving Cambridge, I think I missed living in a city. Not much on the market we like, but we are here at least. Househunting from afar is stressful.

Hello peachy! Glad you've settled in!

Maybe we should start a thread: stuck in rental!

Hello everyone - lots of sympathy for people who are being mucked about - Debi - that's outrageous - what are they doing? Has anything good happened since?

Having fully expected something to go wrong (partly because of all the horror stories on this thread!), we are starting to believe we might actually be moving (scheduled for 22 December at the mo). Felt confident enough to go round to the house to measure up for curtains!

Can anyone think of anything else we should be doing at the moment? Have:

• provisionally booked the removal firm
• got quotes for new buildings & contents
• er, that's it

Am trying to get mega organised so we aren't all doing everything just before Christmas. Any ideas?

have you done all the phoning all the gas, electric, sky, council etc?

Our buyers have definately pulled out, were very rude to estate agent on Wed morn so he was v annoyed too. He said he'd try and get people through the door and will try and make sure we don't lose the house we're buying but I'm not very hopeful. They don't know yet and I don't know when we should tell them. There's no chain above them so I'm hoping they don't need the money instantly and will be ok with giving us a few weeks to find a buyer before giving up on us and putting it back on the market. Obviously it's rubbish timimg for getting potential buyers through the door though.

oh Debi, I really feel for you. The worse thing is is that people have to accept that there isn't a huge range of property on the market and it is all about compromise.

Mcdreamy - where are you sleeping if you are moving out of your place the day before? It is normal for house moves to happen on the day of completion, there is NO way you can get your hands on the keys unless you have paid for a property.

I moved out of a 3 bed house and the removal men were done and packed on that morning by 11am. Completely reasonable to be out by 12.30 but if there are several properties in the chain you might not have your money transferred until mid-afternoon. Banks are very slow as are solicitors (they like a lunch break too)

Wigeon- gives us all hope nothing to add to your list, when are you exchanging? I'm on pins for you until then.

Spoke to solicitor today to ask what she thought we should do re telling our vendors. Our estate agent still doesn't want to tell them even though he's not got us any viewings yet. Solicitor says she's not being hassled from their solicitor yet so suggested just keep quiet for now. Part of me feels like we're being dishonest though.

Debi that is really rubbish, so sorry for you Fingers crossed for a new buyer.

We now have the removal company packing the day before and the day of completion and moving in the next day (19th). I am moving home so I currently have 3 offers of beds for the night - my best friend, my brother and my parents and there's always DH's idea of camping out in the new house

Good luck with your move Wigeon!

Hi can I join in? Had a gutful of the whole process.

Story so far... in the process of a corporate move (so I know we've got it a lot easier than most) but there have been endless delays and we've lost several houses because work couldn't get their act together in time. Found lovely house, just in our price bracket and were finally in a position to start the ball rolling. Then found we were getting rather less for our house than we had expected but were faced with either accepting the drop but being cash buyers or selling it ourselves with no guarantee when we might be able to get a buyer. So no choice at all really.

So we put in a offer for the house which reflected our changed circumstances but was turned down flat by the vendor. We explained that we had not got what we were expecting for our house but were told it was the asking price or no deal. They have had to drop their price considerably to sell so we do have sympathy with their position.

We have scraped together enough money to get within £1500 of the asking price (99.3% of the asking price) but the owners still want the full price as they think as it is a corporate move money is no object even though we have tried to explain our situation. The agent persuaded them to think about it overnight given that we are cash buyers and can move very quickly but I'm not feeling optimistic.

My DH has set his heart on the house and I'm rapidly losing heart and interest but I know how upset he will be if we don't get it. There's very little else on the market other than in areas that we'd hate to be in and not much time before we need to move.

Sorry - needed to get it all off my chest Please tell me to buck up and remind me just how lucky I am not to be selling our own house...

3inthebed, they are crazy if they won't accept an offer £1500 lower than their asking price.

They had to drop their asking price because it is a falling market and now they are still holding onto that little pipe dream that says my house was worth X amount more a year ago!

Your house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If they make you pay the asking price then they are letting themselves in for being knocked down again when the survey is done.

I would leave the offer on the table. Ask the estate agent how many viewings the property has had, especially second viewings and how many in the last 3 months. If the answer is not very many then the house is not worth the asking price. Hang on in there

3inabed - that sounds v stressful, agree with Fizzylemonade that they are crazy!

Debi - we can't tell the gas, electricity, water etc people until we have an actual move date, but I do have a book with a list of all those type of people and am hovvering by the phone to call them as soon as we get a move date agreed (hopefully will hear from our solicitors about that today or tomorrow).

Something still hasn't gone wrong with our move and we are still on track to move on about 22 December. Slight frustration the last couple of weeks is that our buyers' solicitor and our solicitor don't appear to talk to each other much and so we have resorted to just speaking direct to our buyers (who fortunately seem to be nice, reasonable people). Why am I paying the solicitor loads of money?!