Which is the lesser of two evils - buying or selling?

fannyanna

Someone said to me the other day that they thought buying a property was more stressful than selling a property.

I just wondered what the general consensus was - although I appreciate that each individual transaction is different.

The reason I ask is that we're having a really stressful time selling our property and if we ever get to a point where it looks like it will proceed we'll then be looking to purchase a property. The thought of a purchase being even more stressful makes me want to forget about being a homeowner

Gonzo33

To be honest I am not sure I could put a pin between them. My house is on the market at the moment with an agent I don't trust (they have been given notice) and when buying this property it was stressful because I was going through a divorce, and the vendors were buying a house that was part of probate and they had to get a bankruptcy removed which took the solicitors 7 months to sort out.

My other purchases and sales have gone through relatively stress-free though, so we shall see what the next ourchase brings.

Fortheloveofmoney

I think when doing both together they are equally stressful.

I've bought and sold together once and bought and sold separately once.

Buying without selling was not particularly stressful. It was only a small chain though. Just the 2 of us. From the time I made the offer to completion was only about 8 weeks which included a week shut down at Christmas.

Selling without buying was also straight forward. I wasn't living there at the time though so the agent was doing all the viewings and as I wasn't there so it stayed clean and tidy. Again no chain, just the 2 of us.

Buying and selling at the same time is a bit of a nightmare. Trying to keep the house immaculate whilst living with a partner that says "we still have to live here you know" isn't helpful.

Also if you're buying somewhere that you love you invest emotionally as well as financially so you have the fear factor.

Maybe it's the length of the chain that is the issue rather than the buying and selling together.

We're about to go through it all again. Our house is going on the market next week. We've been saving hard for the last 4 years and now is the time. I'm quite scared actually but I'm hoping this will be the last move for many many years.

If we've lucky, we could find our forever home this time. Having moved 4 times in 11 years I really hope so!

googler

fannyanna wrote: »

The reason I ask is that we're having a really stressful time selling our property

What, specifically, is stressful about it?

fannyanna

googler wrote: »

What, specifically, is stressful about it?

Everything lol.

Our sale has fallen through twice already and we're now on third time lucky with another buyer. Hopefully it will all go smoothly now.

Henry_Hoover_2

I bought a property, and sold the one I already owned a few months later, as I didn't want the stress of buying and selling at the same time.

I found buying much more stressful, as the property was a repo, and other offers were being made (well, that's what the EA told us!) and the valuation was exactly what we'd offered (as is usual, at least with Halifax's valuers, anyway) but that meant that when we increased our offer, the valuer wouldn't change his vauation, and we could only get a mortgage based on the original valuation. Very frustating, as the price we paid was still much less than the property was worth!

Selling was much more straightforward, we had a viewer, she liked it, made us an offer for more than we expected, and the sale went through very quickly.

googler

fannyanna wrote: »

Everything lol.

Wow, that's really specific

fannyanna

googler wrote: »

Wow, that's really specific

Well if you only decide to read as far as the flippant remark

Hello123_2

I think selling is way more stressful. I was constantly on edge when selling thinking will we ever sell? did they like it? how much will we really get? are the estate agents marketing enough? not to mention all the cleaning & tidying & random strangers looking round! and trying to get rid of the kids & dogs for viewings!

Buying is much much pleasant...you are in the driving seat, if the house isnt for you you walk away no sleep lost. You view when it suits you too ;-)

phoebe1989seb

I actually prefer selling......it's rewarding to have potential buyers compliment the work we've done to restore a house to its former glory, especially when you are reconfiguring a property back to its original intended use for example the four flats we restored to one house ......although the last-but-one we sold was rather stressful as we discovered that our buyer was someone our neighbours (a nursery school) would not be too keen on having living next door so we had to hope they wouldn't ask too many questions about our buyer's identity before we'd exchanged as we feared they may put a spanner in the works to prevent the sale going through. This in turn made us feel incredibly guilty but as we desperately wanted to sell, we felt we had little choice :eek:

When buying we have had more problems as we've often found it difficult to find a house that meets our strict criteria especially when trying to buy from some distance away as with our last two purchases. We had to pull out of two purchases last year when we discovered things wrong with the area that were not immediately apparent when viewing.

Also previously we had to wait whilst the vendor of one house we were buying had two of the four tenants evicted before we could exchange and we ended up having to complete on our sale, put our stuff in storage then move in with my parents for a couple of months.........which was extremely stressful in itself, lol! After moving in we even had to put up with threatening visits from one of the former tenants for a while!