Aaaarrrggghhh - House Buying and Selling

[AdamC]

Just had a phone call from the estate agent and confirmed things were going far far too smoothly and just days away from a contract exchange the partner of the couple buying out property has been made redundent and they cannot proceed with the purchase. Apparently they still really want the house and hope that he can find another job as the lender has agreed to hold the offer open for a month. Not sure how much of this I believe, but either way I am pretty gutted.

 

Still, desperately on the lookout for positives, until we move I have more free money and time to go shooting!

 

Anyway, anyone else wish to share their home buying\selling horror stories?

[the last engineer]

something else im glad i dont have to do again back there, much easier here imo, private or with a realator, never had a problem all of them went ok, last one was private, from saying yes to the possesion was 2-1/2 weeks, including inspection reports, lean searches, evaluation and insurance.

 

it seems back home you can light out at lesuire, no recourse or penalty impossed, personaly reading all the horror stories cant understand why guys dont go postal.

 

 

Martin

[Cranfield]

On our last move , our old house was not sold until 14 months after we moved out.

 

It was "sold" on 3 occasions during that time.

The first time the couple (who had lived together for 5 years and had 2 children) split up.

 

The second couple went right through to a few days before exchange and then had their mortgage offer withdrawn as there was a problem with the information they had given the Building Society (we think they exaggerated their income).

 

The third couple had also lived together for 2 years and rented a house, but they decided to get married and buy a house (with help from parents), they had a big row over the wedding plans and split up.

 

Every time a sale fell through, a local Indian business man offered us a silly price for the property, fortunately we didn't have to sell it, so I was able to tell him to go away.

 

We eventually sold for more than the original asking price, as every time a sale fell through, I reappraised the price.

 

The one thing that really surprised me was how difficult it was to insure an empty property.

All the major Insurance Companies don't want to know.

We were able to insure the building, but not any contents.

 

They say that buying and selling a house is one of the most stressful thing you can do, but the other 8 property moves we had been involved in all went very smoothly.

[AdamC]

I know, that is what everyone tells me. This is my 3rd move (second sale), none of the others went smoothly, but this takes the biscuit. We were ready to exchange this week.... The only plus is that we do not need to move from our house. It is plenty big enough and in a nice location, we just wanted something out of the town and a bit of a project. It is just hard as mentally you have already left and are thinking what you are going to do with the next place.

 

We are lucky that we can go an live with my parents should we sell and have not found anywhere. The property is being marketed again and we will see how things go. Unless we get someone come along with an offer matching or very close to the existing couple, we will hold on for 3 or 4 weeks. We are so close with the other couple that we are at least that time away from getitng to our current position. If he can just get a job offer we are back on, providing I am being told the truth.

 

I sympathise with anyone that is enduring the stress or has done in the past.

[pin]

Not many things more stressful mate, I feel your pain. Me and Mrs Pin tried twice to move recently and both times ended up loosing out on surveys / fees - probably out of pocket to the tune of £3k with both together because of unreliable liars. Would be my fourth and her third, all bar one was painful and costly.

 

The worst one of the lot was a couple who ended up pulling out of a purchase one up the chain because they couldn't get a mortgage, I mean really why would you put an offer in before you'd got an agreement in principle?

 

I think there are people out there who like the idea of buying a house, or upgrading, enjoy the process but when it comes to it they **** it and drop out

[Dr W]

We're waiting for an offer, been on market since beginning of Sept and it's doing my head as want to get out of London but need every penny to afford next place (hopefully in Godalming) so can't really afford to drop the price to encourage a sale, not in too much of a rush to sell but it's fairly tedious having to live in a show home where all my stuff is in boxes in the cellar and we have to tidy up every day before work in case someone comes round during the day.

 

It's going to be my first experience on being in chain and not looking forward to it.

[al4x]

Its very stressfull and expensive, My last one we had to sell to get the house I'm in at the moment and as we'd got that lined up at an absolute steal knew we had to sell the house fast and that was grim with two offers coming in and being withdrawn. Its a bad time to be selling at the moment as its just beginning to be a buyers market.

[trakker01]

gotta say, im amaised how ya do it..

 

i bought my pad 19 yrs ago, (is it really that long) although i lived here there & every where with the job...& it was a struggle then....give me a clue, how do you buy property at these prices??,

 

my last offer for a mortgate was £36k ......

[pin]

Christ!

 

My folks paid £9k for theirs and it's worth £300k now, and that's in Newcastle.

 

To get what I want in today's market the last places we looked at were about half a million, which terrifies me considering that's only a modest 4 bed house with decent garden.

[Cranfield]

Almost the worst thing when you are selling is the "tourist buyers" who come round for a look , but have no interest (or the financial ability) to actually purchase.

 

I wish I had £1 for every wasted cup of tea or coffee my wife has made these time wasters.

[AdamC]

Whilst your stories horribly painfull, it is nice to know that it is not just us.

 

House prices are criminal in this area, we were going to spend 370k on 2 bed detached bungalow. I agree that it is more a buyers market, but the same applies when you come to make an offer. I just want to be sure that if we need to accept a very low offer, we get to do the same when we come to buy. We are in no rush to sell, we only accepted the offer as it was for the asking price.

 

Tomorrow is another day and hopefully things might be a little better.

[gav]

im fed up with nosey people who see my house on the market book a viewing and waste my time

my weekends go like this

 

saturday at 10 get a call viewing at 11 < panic wash garden down . clean dog room out spray air freshner , hoover house , polish , spray dettol in teenagers room tidy babys room , dogs in van , van off drive and across road , car on drive , kettle on >

12 pm viewers been say mmm nice i like this i like that . but not sure of area

 

 

 

sunday same again

 

arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

 

what a waste of money that home information pack thing is

any one else had one done

the bloke was a ****

[AdamC]

Yep, had an HIP done, complete and utter waste of time. Our bloke was also a ****, nearly told him to "do one" as he was 45 mins late on my hour long lunch break.

[starlight32]

You get used to it- I have moved 8 times in my life.

 

I have the horror sories to match. When I hitched up with Mrs Starlight the II, we bought and 9 weeks later exchanged and were due to move in on a saturday.

 

I always remember looking at the house in the first place- You know nice people neat and tidy, kept a dog but did not know they owned one type of house.

To our horror on the day we went to move in the place was a tip- dog mess & wee everywhere- carpets and house generally trashed. They even left three pet rabbits in a hutch in the work shop, two tortoises and a cat. We could'nt move as the missus was so upset and I went to see my solicitor and estate agent on the monday. In 9 weeks the property was transformed into a tip.

Turned out there was little I could do or prove no-one really wanted to know-you think about it you look at a house and the next time you see it with the keys you own it- don't you?

 

Anyway on the tuesday there was a knock at the door and low and behold it was the previous owners greeting me with a

 

'Hi ya- are you enjoying the house, - We have made a dreadful mistake and left some of our pets- can we take them?

 

I immediately gave them a verbal hammering- to which they were saying what the hell you on about??

I showed them the mess to which they were duly shocked about. Turned out they had gone to France for the duration of the sale and let her sister house sit to and that is when the problems occoured.

Being in a foul mood about the whole affair I just told them to clear off- If you want your pets back you can buy them back.....then slammed the door in their face!!

 

Two days later money was exchanged and the healthy pets were returned. I won't say how much money was involved- but we had a complete house clean an all new carpets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gav]

Yep, had an HIP done, complete and utter waste of time. Our bloke was also a ****, nearly told him to "do one" as he was 45 mins late on my hour long lunch break.

 

 

 

lol

 

 

my guy said no drains or manholes on the property .

 

im like well whats that frigging great manhole i put the dog **** down !!!!! doh : :

 

and if i spent 500 quid changing the boiler id save 38 quid a year !!

[markm]

When the boom was on a couple of years ago we were in the process of buying, we were due to move in on the friday, on the monday i got a call from the estate agent telling me that the seller wanted 20k more for the house but as a gesture of good will me would let me still have it for 10K more. Went through with the sale and gave him the 10k which was to keep the mrs happy. IT WENT AGAINST EVERYTHING I BELIEVE IN. The good news is that the house is now valued at more than double we paid for it.

[al4x]

To an extent it can be worth making sure you've a good estate agent, My brother in law works for a decent one who have a woman dedicated to pushing sales through and vetting people to ensure they have the where with all to buy and where possible if they have a house to sell they try and get the sale of that so they know whats going on and save a lot of the blagging.

Our last house I had 2 women to view it booked in on a Sunday who i satyed in got the house ready and they didn't turn up. They then appologised and booked for the following Sunday and did the same thing I was livid. Especially when they booked the third week but they actually turned up and ended up buying it which I had reservations about all the time till it was all completed.

 

Contrast that to the house we bought that had a **** agent, they marketed it as a house rather than a renovation despite no heating and half of it needing re-building. The bloke selling was 80 and had moved out and the agent let someone try and get planning permission on it while it was under offer which was amazing, they then pulled out and they couldn't get anyone interested as they were just getting people who wanted a house they could move straight into. In the end we got it for 100K less and would have bought it without a survey etc as we knew it needed massive work, on a plus we bought it direct so the agent lost their fee which was quite just in the circumstances

[Highlander]

Change to the Scottish system, put in an offer and you put down 10% which if you don't complete you lose. Seems a damn good way to weed out the time wasters to me. Might also sharpen up some peoples ideas as they seem to think buying a house is different to buying anything else and when all is said and done it isn't it just involves larger amounts of cash.