House Buying Nightmare

emmalouise1777

Hello all.. this is my first ever post on this (or any!) forum, so apologies in advance if I'm doing it wrong.


Apologies also for it's lengthy nature...


I've just come out of ten months of sheer house-buying hell, during which I read many related forums on here with much interest. Actually, I read them to the point of obsession, convincing myself that all the issues others encountered were going to happen to me - madness I know. But I'll tell you my experience and you might see why!


So, hop back to June 2012 and my parents (divorced) very, very kindly discussed and agreed to giving me whatever inheritance I would have got when they passed away now in order for me to get on the property ladder (it wouldn't have been possible any other way). Bit of background... I was 28 at that time, my partner 25 and my son 5. My partner and I both work for a University; him full time and me 18.5 hours a week. Tried as we might to save, a deposit would have taken forever so my parents saw the gifting of it to us as the only solution.


So onto Rightmove we go, in the search for our first home! All exciting and new. We knew location was the most important thing (after price!) as my son was about to start his first year at infant school in a very lovely area, so we wanted him to grow up there. The area is sought after for this such reason, and properties in our price bracket (absolute maximum £170k) are few and far between.


We found one we liked, arranged a viewing and fell in love. Put an offer in £3k less than the asking price (other houses in the road frequently sell for asking price) and it was accepted straight away! Happy days or so I thought... why did everyone tell me this would be so stressful - piece of cake!


Got in touch with my mortgage adviser that day and she got the ball rolling on the mortgage front. All seemed to be running smoothly, Homebuyers Guide arranged and solicitor in place. Survey came out at offer price, all great. It did pick up a few bits and pieces, but as both we and the vendor wanted a quick sale we let them go (first mistake; they thought I was a pushover). We're now in August, and bottom of the chain of three. Our vendor is buying a property via the same EA as us and that property is top of the chain. We're looking at a few months and we should be in!


[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Roll forward to the mundane wait for mortgage offer... frustrating but out of our control. Our mortgage adviser did all the work and chasing though, and I would thoroughly recommend one![/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Mortgage offer received, solicitor cracks on with the searches etc. Few quibbles over some building regs for a conservatory sorted and now we're in October and at our end, ready to go. We arrange a final viewing to ensure all is at was at the point of offer - all fine. Our vendors do the same on their purchase. We enjoy the weekend happy that we've made the right decision.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Monday morning - email from the EA. Our vendors have decided that as a result of their final viewing, they no longer wish to proceed with their purchase -WHAT THE EFFING HELL. We are literally days away from exchange and I am LIVID. Cue a sternly worded email to the EA regarding the vendors despicable conduct etc etc. Response is that they wish to keep us on board whilst they look for an alternative property (of course they do, I'm a FTB with a 25% deposit and a mortgage offer in place).[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Days of indecision follow and against my logical judgement, I stick with it. I figure I don't want to be moving over Christmas anyway.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Fast forward to January 2013... vendors find a house via a private seller and have an offer accepted (YAY!). We're all set from last time, so just waiting on them. We reiterate that we have until 5th March when our mortgage offer expires, so they need to get their skates on. Their purchase is currently rented, the owner gives the tenants notice and I'm informed that they will vacate on 28th Feb. We plan to exchange the day after once our vendors have made a final inspection.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Feb 25th, funds in place for exchange.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Feb 26th, tenants inform the landlord they will not leave and want to be evicted in order to be housed by the council (really, I did not know people like this actually existed).[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]We realise the dream is over, a court order will need to be issued and our mortgage offer will expire. Devastated to say the least.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Our vendors are desperate for their new house and stay on board and want us to do the same... a lot more indecisiveness follows and we agree to stay on board if they pay for our new mortgage application and survey. They (miraculously) agree, so we sit tight for the two weeks until the court order comes into play.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Court order date comes and goes - tenants do not leave. [/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Wit's end is an understatement.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Now it's with the baliffs to evict. Our vendors are naively optimistic whereas I am now the eternal pessimist and refuse to start the ball rolling on a new mortgage offer until the tenants are out (as I know this could be months) Dilemma - the vendors don't want to wait for this whole process to start again when they have the house they want sitting empty and could move in. I'm doing nothing without a guarantee of recompense at this stage. They eventually agree to sell to us even if their purchase falls through... a gesture of goodwill or desperation, you decide. We agree.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]May 2013 - mortgage offer, survey and searches complete (again). Vendors ask us for two weeks as they will then be ready to exchange and the chain can remain intact. My solicitor (who is amazing) tells them no way, exchange today as agreed or we walk.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Seven days later I collected the keys from the EA, who thanked me for my patience (patience I didn't know I possessed until this experience!)[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]So eleven months from the first viewing, we moved into our lovely new house. I can almost laugh at the hellish experience now but it was, without doubt the most stressful experience of my life (beating a premature baby and a divorce by a mile). It's the lack of control that I struggled with the most.[/FONT]
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Anyway, I'm glad we persevered as we're very happy in our new home, and if nothing else I have learnt A LOT about the house buying process in this country and how flawed it is.[/FONT]
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[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Sorry for the essay, but other people's threads and posts helped me, so I just wanted to share mine :j
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ruggedtoast

Good grief. Life story.

emmalouise1777

There's nothing like a negative comment on your first ever post to make you wonder why you bothered

kellyt86

Wow what a horrible situation you were in! Glad it's sorted now :beer:

Sounds like you have the patience of a saint!!

emmalouise1777

Thank you, kellyt86!

DRP

emmalouise1777 wrote: »

Thank you, kellyt86!

could you convey the information in a tweet sized summary?

my concentration isn't what it used to be...

richardw

Please write to those in government and opposition responsible for changing the law in England and Wales, so they can include something in their manifestos to avoid future nightmares like yours.

pops5588

Well for what it's worth emma I'm glad you shared your story!! You get a lot of nightmare scenarios on here and it seems that often the case is that for whatever reason people end up having to walk away from the sale or decide not to keep going. But it is nice to hear from someone who managed to keep going and to see that despite having to persevere for such a long time that you feel it was worth it and you are still happy in the house and it isn't tainted at all it would take a lot for me to walk away from our house so I feel more positive that even if things keep going wrong, if we hang on we can still be happy there. So thanks!

dimbo61

The COUNCIL call it gatekeeping !!!!
If you want to get to the top of the council list you have to be EVICTED from your private rental in order to get rehoused
The tenants were never going to leave after a valid s21 was served as the council would say they had made themselves homeless!!
By waiting for the baliffs to evict the council delays rehousing the tenants for a couple of months BUT the tenants run up court costs!!!

CluelessFTB_2

Wow! If only every buyer was like you - what an experience - I bet you never want to move again.

I am just about to put in my full application for a mortgage - GULP!!

grifferz

Wow. Really feel for you. I thought our buying experience was bad, but yours is much worse. Glad you got it sorted.

emmalouise1777 wrote: »

[FONT=tahoma, sans-serif]Feb 26th, tenants inform the landlord they will not leave and want to be evicted in order to be housed by the council (really, I did not know people like this actually existed).[/FONT]
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Don't be too hard on the tenants. Look at it from their point of view - they got given two months of notice and probably found that rental properties in the same area have become more expensive and they can't afford to move into one. They turn to the council who tell them they will need to be evicted in order to be eligible for housing.

A similar thing nearly happened to us - our landlord put the property on the market and when we looked around we found that comparable properties rented new for 20% more than what we were paying. That's a huge amount extra to have to find every month.

Fortunately it looks like we'll manage to be in our new home before we have to get out of here.. and the mortgage payments are only 60% of our old rent! :j
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