What's more stressful, buying or selling?

ging84

from my experience of buying once selling once and now buying again, buying has been a little more stressful for me, the mortgage application process is a big part of that. What really annoys me is that the decision in principle seems to hold no value except to demonstrate to the seller you are serious. If the mortgage companies were to approve an application subject to a satisfactory valuation / survey before taking the money for it, then it would take much of the stress out of it.

When i sold the length of time after accepting an offer and all the paper work being complete was the only real source of frustration for me. Everything else was taken care of by the estate agents and solicitors, i barely had to do anything. The buyers were always arranged to vist while i was not home, one time they did make a mistake and arrange a viewing while i was home but other than that it was ok.

I can imagine buying or selling in chain though would greatly increase the stress, and doing both in one go being right in the middle of a chain would really require a high stress threshold

moneyshoe

Buying- we sold our flat two years ago and had an asking price offer after the first viewing - they buyer completed in six weeks!

We have just spent around £3000 on surveys and legal fees only to discover that when we asked 4 months ago if the property had an agricultural tie and were told no the vendors were lying! For numerous reasons our sale has fallen through and vendors have been evicted and the house repossessed leaving us out of pocket and with nowhere to move to when I start my new job in October.

I much prefer selling - I can only console myself with the thought that we are much better off than our ex-vendors!

Dan-Dan

selling , if only because your on tenterhooks till exchange plus if you lose your buyer , you have had it on the house you were going to buy

swc

Selling and buying at the same time is the worst.

You have no control over anything really. As a control freak it is nearly tipping me over the edge! I work as a global project manager - currently managing a multi billion pound pharmaceutical trial across 8 EU and non-EU countries and that's a doddle compared to buying and selling a house :-/

homecleaner

For me i think its going to be the selling. Iv always thought of myself as being quite house proud, always clean and tidy, but once i decided im selling this place i had a good look around and realised how grubby some parts are, so im shattered cleaning the bits i havent touched in years and forking out a small fortune on having repairs done to make the place look more desirable to a buyer.

Seabee42

Doing a buy and sell at the moment.

I think the selling is generally less stressful because it is what kicks of the process by the time you are in a middle of the chain and things can go wrong all over your just generally more stressed.

Currently looking to buy the second house in our process as the first we walked away after the survey. So far our buyers have been patient (sort of).:D