Our house sale and purchase story

moonwitch

Hi everyone,

Just editing post so it's easier to read got a bit excited as it was my first post, taken advice from BazzaDP and hopefully it will be better to understand now.

If you have given up hope of ever being able to sell your house please read on!!

I've been lurking around this forum for ages getting lots of useful hints tips and information about various different things but this is my first post here so please be gentle with me!!

I just thought I would share our house selling and buying story, might be a bit boring but thought I'd put something on so people can see timescale for things happening etc.


We (me, hubby, 3 year old daughter and 18 month son) put our house up for sale in March 2012 with an agent who seemed to know what they were doing, but were in fact not that brilliant they insisted on calling on our house telephone to arrange viewings with us when we had specifically asked them to call on our mobile phones as we were out most of the time and if they rang for a viewer wanting to come on that day/evening and they left a message we wouldn't find out until the evening when we were back at home. They were not that pleasant to speak to on the phone, we had a few viewers through the door but most were put off by the size of our kitchen, we live in a 3 bed mid terrace house and the kitchen is about 8 foot by 8 foot and is not very well laid out, we are moving due to needing/wanting more space.


We had thought about extending at the rear of the house but we are on a hill so to actually be able to build up to the same level of the back of the house where you would step out the back door, would have cost about 20k then the cost of extension on top of this so once we factored that in with the upheaval of building works going on with 2 small kids around we decided that moving would be the better option.


Anyway, we decided to pull the house off the market do some decorating/refreshing inside and out, lots of de-cluttering, new carpets etc, moved a few things round in the kitchen, probably spent about £1500.00 - £2000.00 to get it looking really nice.


We then put our house back up for sale with a different agent in March 2013 who had sold our immediate next door neighbours house in October 2012 and one further down the road in March 2013.
I have to say they were so much better than the first agent we used, they were very good with the marketing of our property and getting the viewers through the door, very easy to talk to nothing seemed too much trouble and the fees were less than the first agent as well.


We had various viewers, first time buyers, property developers and downsizers round.
We averaged about 2 viewings per week so not too bad going, this was all within 4 weeks of house going on the market, very positive feedback house immaculate, lovely place to live etc but kitchen too small was again what most people were saying. I was pleased that people liked the house in terms of what we had done with it as when we moved in it was a dump and we have made it a really nice home but not really much we can do about the size of the kitchen though.


We then went a week without a viewing and we thought about reducing the price, we put ours up for sale at 149950 next door was up for 185 then eventually dropped to 165 and they got 160 for it, difference was size of kitchen as they have an extension on theirs which gives better layout and more space.
The one further down was on for 159950 and they got 152 for it.


Out of the blue I got a call to say a lady would like to come and look so she did, this was on a Friday and then got a call on the Monday that she would like to have a second viewing, she came measured up and she told me she really liked it and was downsizing as she was now on her own in a 4 bed detached house and is now semi retired so was looking for somewhere a bit more manageable.
The next day Tuesday morning got a call to say that she would like to make an offer - yay!!
She offered us 143k the estate agent asked if we would like her to go back and see if she could increase her offer but we said no we will accept the 143 as we don't particularly want to mess about, we were happy with the offer as it was. So that was it offer accepted within 5 weeks of having house up for sale!!


In the meantime we had been looking for a house to move to, we found one in a small village quite close to where we are currently living so still within commuting distance for work, family kids nursery etc put an offer in, first offer rejected but second offer accepted.
We then set about the formalities so we applied for our mortgage the same week, the valuation was then done the week after then all the legal stuff searches etc.
Survey/valuation on house we are buying fine no issues with searches etc and similarly so with the house we are selling.


We have therefore am very excited to say exchanged contracts today, and we are competing on Friday, I'm so pleased.


So, our house was up for sale for 5 weeks, then offer accepted and its been 8 weeks for the legal things to be done so 13 weeks in total from putting house up for sale.


I'm very shocked as to how fast it has all been, but similarly pleased that it hasn't been an eternity to get everything sorted out.
I am a bit of an admin freak and relish in anything like this that involves paperwork etc and I chased/contacted our solicitor at least once a week for an update, they were very good and kept on the ball with things so it does work if you pester for long enough!!


I just though by posting this it might give hope to people who are currently somewhere in the house buying/selling process that there is light at the end of the tunnel!!


That's about it now I'll try and come back and update once we have completed on Friday but now I've got to get back to packing up our house, not an easy task as we have been here nearly 9 years and now with 2 kids, husband and 2 cats in tow it's not an easy job.


Thanks for reading if you got this far,

Moonwitch x

BazzaDP

Thanks for the story and congrats on getting your sale and especially so quickly. Very encouraging and good advice for those feeling they will never sell.

However, I'll be honest with you, it's a little difficult to read as quite a lot of text there. Could you edit it down a bit and also add some double returns between paragraphs to space it out a little?

Finally, for a story that length it would be better to say in the title or the first sentence what it's about so people can decide if worth their whole reading. Something along the lines of "For those who are feeling like they will never manage to sell their house, I want to share how we managed it after being on the market for nearly a year with little interest." or something like that.

danielanthony

Thanks, good read

bebewoo

Well done moonwitch you are so very lucky I am sooo jealous my sale has stalled. I think I may follow your example and phone my solicitor every day.

SR1

Hi moonwich just wanted to say I'm in the same position as you, exchanged last Friday moving this Friday. Finding the thought of having to move all these boxes very daunting. We were lucky enough to find our buyer after only a coupl of days on the market but I have found the whole process extremely frustrating due to the lack of communication from other parties and generally slowness of their solicitors. Taken 16 weeks start to finish.