Your House Buying and Selling stories.

[Nobby]

What have you got ?

[Count Steer]

Only one and it's probably not unusual. Sat outside the new place behind removal van full of all our worldly goods waiting for notification of completion.

Outgoing resident hands me the keys and said 'Meh, it's going to happen, let's crack on'.

So we did.

[Cousin Jack]

Long story, long delay.. Expected to be moved by November, then Xmas, then January, .. . .
My buyers buyer gets antsy, sorted.
My buyer get antsy. Now Feb, and builders estimate is end of the month so we move out.
Finally move in mid July!

NEVER EVER trust a builder!

[MrLongbeard]

We bought a house, some years later we sold it, no delays, hold ups, chain problems or issues of any kind at either end of the process, all rather straight forward.

[Taff]

The last move was horrendous and I'll only put the short version here.
Moving from Somerset to Gloucestershire. Start process on 1st Sept with a target date of April 4th to start new job in glos.

1st Sept viewed a house to buy, liked it but couldn't put an offer in without ours being on the market, next day ours was in the market for a very fair price and had an offer within 2 days.

3 months later the seller hasn't found anywhere to move to but had put in offers on at least 5 houses and withdrawn within 3 or 4 days.
Surveys revealed some pretty big problems but we were cool with that work.
Christmas week we issued an ultimatum, find a house or move into rented or we're out.
1st week in Jan we lost our buyer.
4 days later got another one with £5k more.
We started looking for another house and found this one being sold by an elderly couple, one had severe dementia - this created lots of problems.
The chain had an alcoholic who didn't do stuff because he was constantly pissed, and another person that was going on a 2 month holiday and wanted to leave everything until they got back.
Our mortgage offer ran out on the 10th April and the rules had changed since Sept, our mortgage advisor told us we wouldn't get the mortgage if we needed to reapply.

Estate agents repeatedly lied to me, even about the amount that we agreed to offer. Because I called them out and told them that they were lying they refused to talk to me so the wife had to deal with them.

March brought severe chest pains brought on by stress and a couple of days in hospital.

We moved on the 4th April.

This is the highlights, there was lots more that I'm not going into here, but the end result is that we've got a house that we love in a place that we love, but the stress was horrific.

[Count Steer]

I have an 'easy move' story. A neighbour found out we were looking to move and her friend would be interested. The friend lived where we needed to be and we loved the house, so we swapped (we had to pay a chunk of difference).

On moving day we pitched up with the removal van and decanted our stuff, he loaded his in and used the same lot to move the other way.

The icing on the cake was, six months later, the solicitor sent us a decent cheque because no Stamp Duty was payable on the price difference.

House swapping.

[the_priest]

Had to sell our shared ownership house when I started life as a Priest. Had a curate's house provided by church, so that was an easy move. Because it was leasehold, we could not sublet/rent it out. So it had to be sold full freehold and L&Q would get 1/2 the proceeds.

Took a year to sell our place, so had to continue paying mortgage/rent on that with reduced income. Tough, but we survived. Our buyers wanted the place, so were prepared to wait.

Buying out new place was not a stress for us, we had a house to live in, but our seller was caught out by the fact that they had developed a bit of land as a driveway that did not belong to the house, even though it had always been used by previous owners. The housing agency did not know it was their land either until the Land Registry checks were done. Our seller had to buy that land from the housing agency, which, because of their infrequent board meetings, took a year to process etc. But we told them that we would wait and still pay the full amount in cash for the property.

Took a visit to the house to see the issue and know that all was going to be okay. Told our solicitor to not mess about and just do an exchange. All worked out fine and seller was grateful as they could move into their own "forever" home that they were in danger of losing because of continued delays. My niece and her husband moved in three days later, so it suited them perfectly. So we have a paid off home that we rent for a little bit of money and it worked out nicely.

[Taipan]

Grew up a council house boy. Thatcher said buy your own home and invest in your future. So I did . Mortgage free in my 50s and future secured and will never be beholding to landlords. Cheers Mags!

[KungFooBob]

Told the neighbours we were going to sell.

Instructed an estate agent to list the house.

The day after the for sale sign went up in the garden the neighbours knocked on the door and said he wanted to buy it.

Silly sod could have saved us a grand if he'd only said earlier.

[Sadlonelygit]

Been mortgage free this century.
Bought a couple of places sans mortgage in the meantime. One to retire to, one for income.
It's nice dealing with a vendor's solicitor and telling THEM exactly what's going to happen timescale wise....otherwise I'll go elsewhere.
House bought in France, make offer, offer accepted, you then have 10 days to withdraw from the sale otherwise you have to stump up 10% of the offer as a penalty.......enforced by the courts!
No pissing about, sealed bids etc!
Just ask me my opinion about conveyancing solicitors.........

[MingtheMerciless]

Last move attempt about 15 years ago, height of housing down turn so had to take an offer significantly lower than what the useless estate agent suggested we would get initially. Found a house where we wanted to move to, offer accepted but the seller had moved into sheltered accommodation and their useless estate agent/solicitor had turned their heating off! It was a very cold spell and pipes froze in the loft and the ceilings came down when it thawed. They agreed to make good which took weeks and I was getting a bad feeling about the whole thing by this point. Then on the week we were due to exchange I was looking at the local paper website and found that the council wanted to open a traveller camp about 300 yards from where we would be moving too. More digging showed that this wasn't the first time they'd tried this and at this point we pulled out.

[KungFooBob]

I live very close to a traveller site, as much as I detest the lot of them, they don't shit on their own door step, there's next to no crime locally.

[Horse]

...they had developed a bit of land as a driveway that did not belong to the house, even though it had always been used by previous owners.

Took a visit to the house to see the issue and know that all was going to be okay. Told our solicitor to not mess about and just do an exchange.

Bought a house with common access along the back of the six in the row. It had been a footpath (built in 1888) but, by agreement of all owners (Inc the one we bought from) 'expanded' for vehicles.

I bought
I remortgaged
Then sold

It was only the third solicitor who noticed that the common access agreement didn't include the owner at the end whose garden we all drove (rode) across.

"Do you have another letter?" No
"Let's wait and see whether your buyer's solicitor notices."

[Sadlonelygit]

...they had developed a bit of land as a driveway that did not belong to the house, even though it had always been used by previous owners.

Took a visit to the house to see the issue and know that all was going to be okay. Told our solicitor to not mess about and just do an exchange.

Bought a house with common access along the back of the six in the row.

It was only the third solicitor who noticed that the common access agreement didn't include the owner at the end whose garden we all drove (rode) across.

"Do you have another letter?" No
"Let's wait and see whether your buyer's solicitor notices."

Similar thing occured to me, except previous owner had built a garage blocking a neighbours RoW.
The buyers solicitor noticed this, then my solicitor (who was used for our purchase several years previously) wrote to my neighbour asking if they'd relinquish their Row
Turned out the garage had been there long enough not to be an 'issue', however we had to purchase an indemnity insurance just in case.
Then when billed for the sale of the property, my solicitor tried to charge for the hours involved for 'sorting out the garage' issue.
In the end the solicitors tribunal (can't remember the proper name now) were involved and the solicitor involved 'retired' early and I/we didn't have to pay our bill either.
Conveyancing solicitors, those not bright enough to practice proper law!

[Yorick]

Just before we moved over we sold the house in Milton Keynes. First job was to get the tenants out. They'd been good payers and actually done improvements to the place.

When I told them, they informed me that all the landlords now wanted 6 months deposit if you couldn't prove earnings. He'd only been a window cleaner 18 months so his books were short.

I said I'd lend them the money, on condition that I took a charge on his van.

So Pen was in UK so she met them at our bank and the manager witnessed the agreement we had drawn up and gave them the cash.

Their new prospective landlord rang me for a reference. When I said I was paying the deposit, he giggled and said that was good enough.

So, got a buyer pretty quickly and all seemed well. By this time we were living here. Day before sale, the twat pulled out.

The estate agent was pissed off and came back to me an hour later and said, he had good news and great news.

All the EAs in MK had an agreement for these twatty buyers and they all immediately blackballed him.
Then he told me that the house had gone up by £10,000

10 couple saw the house the next few days and we had a full price offer. That went through quickly, thankfully

[asmethurst99]

That's a result.
we moved a year ago - twentysomthing cash buyers - tried to mess us around a bit but we got there in the end - they should have said up front how much they really wanted to pay instead of greasing us out of 2000 with 5 weeks to go-
All good and really happy where we are (could do with a shed though)

[Treadeager]

Sold a house in that there London last month . Tenant ( who had decided that she no longer wanted to pay any rent ) finally left in mid August . About a month to clear and clean ( plus tenant gets an escorted visit of one hour to clear all final property , upto a week after eviction . Property put up for sale mid September. Keen first time buyer found almost instantly. However he has a disagreement with his solicitor and appoints a new one . This delays matter by about a month . Exchange of contracts mid December and completion week before Christmas. No real dramas but still can't understand why selling vacant property to a first time buyer takes so long

[Mr. Dazzle]

We bought our first flat in 2008 when the market was falling apart.

New build property directly opposite our previous rented place, so we could see they weren't selling.

We agreed on 175k, down from the list of 210k. Got all the mortgage etc sorted, but by the time the bank came to do a valuation they reckoned the value had dropped as low as 150k and wouldn't mortgage for 175. So we got it for 150k*.

We bought it on a 75/25 split first time buyer deal thing. The deal was we had to buy out the 25% within 10 years or when we sold. 2 years in they ask us if we want to buy our 25% for 30k, rather than the 37.5k it was "worth". We said no, but we'd but it for 25k. Landed on 27k.

So in the end, we bought the flat for 139.5k. Sold it 2 years later (4 years after we bought it) for 225k. It was on the market for 3 days and the whole sale took less than a month. Should have asked for more

*anyone hazard a guess how much it actually costs a major developer to build a flat in central MK? Much less than 150k I'd guess

[Yorick]

We bought our first flat in 2008 when the market was falling apart.

New build property directly opposite our previous rented place, so we could see they weren't selling.

We agreed on 175k, down from the list of 210k. Got all the mortgage etc sorted, but by the time the bank came to do a valuation they reckoned the value had dropped as low as 150k and wouldn't mortgage for 175. So we got it for 150k*.

We bought it on a 75/25 split first time buyer deal thing. The deal was we had to buy out the 25% within 10 years or when we sold. 2 years in they ask us if we want to buy our 25% for 30k, rather than the 37.5k it was "worth". We said no, but we'd but it for 25k. Landed on 27k.

So in the end, we bought the flat for 139.5k. Sold it 2 years later (4 years after we bought it) for 225k. It was on the market for 3 days and the whole sale took less than a month. Should have asked for more

*anyone hazard a guess how much it actually costs a major developer to build a flat in central MK? Much less than 150k I'd guess

MK had several dips in prices. We bought big 3 bed house in 98 for £65k
Sold it 2014 for £260k

CGT on that was a bit eye watering

[ChrisW]

The night before completing on the sale of my 3rd floor flat in Maida Vale water started pouring in through the bathroom ceiling - went straight to see the bloke in the top floor, who took quite a while to come to the door... By this time the water had stopped coming in and, acting all innocent, he said he had no idea what I was talking about.

His hair was wet, mind, and he was in a bathrobe.