The FTB club

kirstypea

MMG wrote: »

First post in here! Who could have thought buying a house was so difficult!

Saw a house back in June that was really nice, and agreed on a decent price with the vendors. Stated they wanted to rent, so no chain which was a big bonus!

All was going smoothly, mortgage went smoothly, survey valuation came back spot on. Completion estimated within 4 weeks

Then the vendors stated they were actually wanting to buy a property, and wanted to put the completion back for a couple of months. Before I even got a chance to reply to this, they stated that the house was now off the market.

Survey fee lost, time and effort wasted - I was fuming!

So, have a mortgage sitting approved and nowhere to move to. Frustrating!

This sounds exactly like what happened to us! Found a property back in March, vendors agreed to go into rented accommodation, got our survey & mortgage app sorted within their 2 week deadline, then waited, and waited..........then our solicitor started to push for exchange, but they wouldn't agree a date. Then last week (4 months later!) changed their mind and decided they wanted to find somewhere to buy! Unfortunately that left us with only 2 months on our 6 month mortgage offer (fixed rates have risen significantly since!) and when we told them this they pulled out as they didn't think they'd be able to complete in time.

However, this weekend we had an offer accepted on somewhere new :T
It is possible to use your mortgage offer else where, so don't give up! We're desperate to use ours because as well as the survey fee, we'd also lose £999 booking fee for the mortgage which we had to pay upfront:eek:

kibs88

Well at least you had a good outcome, congratulations.

It seems like this is happening a lot, I know that sellers are desperate to sell, but is seems that it is always the buyers get the short end of the stick, as soon as any news comes of an increase, they see it as a shot at getting more money, this is of course just my opinion, but there are a lot of stories recently about buyers getting let down by sellers!

Kirstypea - is the new house better than the previous one?

[Deleted User]

LTRFTW I pick my keys up next Friday!!! has taken an age with one or two hicups ( the person I was buying i with pulling out half way through) but I'm there nearly and it feels fantastic!!!

MMG

kirstypea wrote: »

This sounds exactly like what happened to us! Found a property back in March, vendors agreed to go into rented accommodation, got our survey & mortgage app sorted within their 2 week deadline, then waited, and waited..........then our solicitor started to push for exchange, but they wouldn't agree a date. Then last week (4 months later!) changed their mind and decided they wanted to find somewhere to buy! Unfortunately that left us with only 2 months on our 6 month mortgage offer (fixed rates have risen significantly since!) and when we told them this they pulled out as they didn't think they'd be able to complete in time.

However, this weekend we had an offer accepted on somewhere new :T
It is possible to use your mortgage offer else where, so don't give up! We're desperate to use ours because as well as the survey fee, we'd also lose £999 booking fee for the mortgage which we had to pay upfront:eek:

Glad you got sorted. I am out by £270 for the survey fee, but the fee for the mortgage (with Post Office, £599) doesnt have to be paid up front, so at least won't have lost too much money. Offer doesnt expire until the end of January anyway, so have a couple of months to have a look about and find something better!

kirstypea

kibs88 wrote: »

Kirstypea - is the new house better than the previous one?

It's a compromise. We stretched our target location a little as we felt under pressure to find somewhere; having to reapply with a new, higher fixed rate would have cut our budget quite a bit. The first house was our dream house, sadly!

My theory is that FTBs in particular are getting the short end of the stick as they now have to be the first part of the chain. From what I understand it wasn't previously such a problem to have an offer accepted without a buyer for your own place, so it was feasible for a chain to start from the top rather than the bottom, with an FTB slotting into place at the last minute. Now FTBs have to wait the longest. I dread to think how long it could have taken if we'd waited it out with with each link of the potential chain not looking for somewhere until they had a buyer, if it takes everyone as long to find a place as it did our first vendors.. 4 months per link?!:rotfl:

kibs88

I know exactly what you mean!

I dread to think how long it would have taken if it hadn't been a repo that we were buying! It has taken 53 days from offer being accepted to exchange of contracts and it was supposed to be 28 days!

RTNI

Hi everyone,

Just thought I would add my experiences to this thread. My fianc!e and I are looking to buy a house in Northern Ireland. We started looking around December time last year and found a ouse that we both like after a few months of viewings. We put an offer in and this was accepted, but I saw a house literally around the corner and we decided to go and see it just to confirm how good/bad the house was that we had the offer in on...... Well, my fiancees firsts words to me were "I wish you had never shown me that house!" :rotfl:

It was so much better than the first one and was asking the same amount of money as the first so we withdrew our offer and put it onto this second house. They were all for renting in the interim but to cut a long story short, they would not make a decision on the offer until they had found somewhere to move to. This was very disappointing for us and after giving them a deadline to decide what they we going to do with our offer, we ended up walking away.

So the third (time lucky) house was again round the corner from these other two houses and it ticked pretty much most of the boxes for us so we had an offer in and within three hours we had it sale agreed! :j Got the mortgage sorted out, survey carried out and just on Saturday we got a letter from the solicitors confirming Friday 4th September as the completion date :T. We are so pleased that after some "false starts" that things are moving forward and we can now see the finish line! Don't think that it will actually sink in until we get the keys, but we are very excited and can't wait! :beer:

So to any other FTB's out there, just remember that you will get there eventually and the road is never totally smooth - there are hiccups along the way and you just need to take one at a time and overcome it and move on; it will be worth it in the end!

mistrihelen

Ours is going less well now. Apparently there are problems (tunnel access/it's down as lease and freehold) with the deeds which will take time to sort out, but as it's a repossession I'm not sure how the vendors will feel about it.

The property has been sold and bought in the past with these problems - clearly we are lucky to have diligent solicitors, but the vendor might prefer someone who just went ahead regardless of them!

I feel like we're going to lose it, but only after I've given the solicitor lots of money. Money that I'd have to save all over again if we have to go for another house. *sigh*

kibs88

Our repo purchase to 53 days rather than 28 days due to problems with the coal report and the repo company were fine with this.

I suppose its because they knew that other buyers would come up with the same problem, which would be the same in your case and therefore I can see no problem why they would pull out at this stage!

mistrihelen

Thanks, your words are very reassuring

I am hoping that, like you say, they'll realise the deeds or whatever need to be fixed no matter who buys.