Just exchanged!- it's been stressful

Marquire

This is my first post although I have been lurking on here for the last 6 months since we have been looking to buy a new house and I thought I'd share my experiences.

A bit of background first. In February my OH and I relocated from Aberdeenshire to Newcastle due to new jobs. We sold our house in Scotland fairly quickly and moved into rented while we started looking for house. Prior to this we had bought two house in Scotland through the Scottish system obviously so we had no idea how much more hassle and stress it was going to be buying in England.:eek:

So we got a mortgage offer in principle for £400k and registered with about 10 EAs and started looking for houses to view. This was the first nightmare. I (naively) thought with a £400k budget I'd be able to find a decent sized detached house in Northumberland with a decent sized garden- but apparently not. We certainly received a lot of schedules through the post from EAs but very few of them matched our requirements (why ask us what we are looking for if you are going to send us the complete opposite???)

We then spent the next 2 months trailing around and viewed 20 odd properties and to be honest some were truly terrible and I came to appreciate that schedule pictures bear NO relation to reality:mad: and the term "detached" was applied very loosely. For example we saw one "detached" house where there was a property on either side with less than 30cm distance between the house we viewed and either of the other houses- not my idea of detached.

Anyway viewing 21 we hit the jackpot and saw a lovely detached conversion, big garden, not overlooked etc but it was on at £425k- a lot more than we wanted to spend but I thought in the current climate why not have a punt so I offered £375k subject to survey and was shocked when they came back and agreed:D

The real dramas started after we had the survey done as it showed a number of things needing done such as replacing all the pointing on one side of the house as it had been done (badly) using the wrong type of mortar and was causing errosion plus some roofing things needed done etc. Anyway we had quotes and they came back with an estimate of around £12-15k depending on how much damage there was to the stonework once the mortar was removed.




So off I went back to the EA and said I was revising my offer based on this and offered £355k. There was then much tooing and froing with the vendor where she threatened to walk on about 4 separate occasions but I just stuck to my guns and wouldn't budge. The EA was a real "character" and tried every trick in the book such as:

• Trying the old 'we valued the property at £425k and vendor has already accepted a price reduction of £50k on this- I pointed out that the property was overpriced and was only worth what someone was willing to pay and in my case it was £355k
• She then told me someone else was interested to view the property (it had been on for 6 months before we saw it and had no offers)- I told her to go ahead and let them view it but any survey they did would show up the same problems. Surprisingly the mystery viewer decided they no longer wanted to see it
• She then phoned to say the vendor couldn;t afford to accept my revised offer and was thinking of renting it out, but they would maybe do a deal at £365K- my answer was a resounded no.

It started to get silly with the EA phoning me sometimes twice a day with stupid stories/lies/pressurisation in anm attempt to get me to reconsidered my offer. So I eventually lost the plot and set a deadline for the vendor to either accept my offer or I would be walking and at 4.55pm on deadline day the EA phoned to say they'd accept £355k . As the property was empty it's only taken 3 weeks since then to exchange contracts and we're completing next Friday:T.

I have to admit I have not enjoyed the experince one bit and I hate to think how horrific it would be in a rising market.

Marquire

Eric1

84% of the asking price.
Well done.

Evilm

Congrats on dealing with the issues responsibly and staying level headed. Enjoy the new house when you complete and I hope it works out well for you.

Jowo_2

How long did it take between acceptance of the original offer and getting the survey results back?

How long did it take between getting the survey results back and exchanging contracts?

LunaKamelia

Just got our offer accepted and I know exactly how you feel!!! Have pulled half my hair out and we haven't even started on the nitty gritty!!! Good luck with the new house and congratulations.

Marquire

Jowo wrote: »

How long did it take between acceptance of the original offer and getting the survey results back?

We had the survey done 2 days after the offer was accepted and we got the full report from the surveyors 5 days after that.

How long did it take between getting the survey results back and exchanging contracts?

Because we renegotiated the offer price after we got the survey report back (due to the amount of work needing done) it took 7 weeks to get to exchange. However the time between the vendor accepting our revised offer and exchanging was less than 4 weeks.

We are completing on the 3rd September, 10 days after exchanging.

Catbells

Congratulations. Mines a similar story except I'm the vendor.

Buyers put in offer, had the survey done, came back with a second offer, I put in counter offer and it was agreed. This took about a month after their second offer and we exchanged last Wednesday with completion on the 6th. Phew. Been stressful and a little way to go yet with removals etc.

Apple45

estate agents, well................. I once bidded on a house and suspected the agent might not be passing on my offers, no proof mind. Zoning in on one house is potentially fatal I think