Selling stress - is this what it is meant to be like?

moneysavinghero

fishfingerbutties said:

I think the the sell and rent thing would be more common if rental periods weren't so long for people selling/buying. I'm actually surprised there hasn't been a niche in the market for people buying and selling houses who want a shorter rental, where rental terms are 3 months instead of 6 minimum. I know you can get shorter term airbnb / holiday cottages, but they tend to be extremely expensive in comparison.

A month or two to find the right house, then 3 months wait for completion (longer if chains involved), then the final month can allow you to move into your new house slowly and stress free rather than all rushed into one day. So 6 months is about right. 3 months unlikely to be long enough.

CheckDigit

I finally managed to sell my flat and buy a new house. It took over 13 months with lots of wasted money and extreme stress. Unfortunately, most of the people I speak to have had similar experiences.

badger09

Mickey666 said:

I think the stress is mainly due to not being in total control and at the mercy of other people’s behaviour, which as is abundantly clear from the posts on here, is often pretty bad and inconsiderate.

One way to reduce the stress is not trying to buy and sell at the same time, though I know that’s not always possible.  Another thing that has worked well for me is to establish contact with buyer/seller and deal with them directly if possible.  In my experience this makes people less likely to ‘misbehave’ if they can’t hide behind the estate agent. When I bought my third house, I first offered below asking and it was refused and the seller explained that he really needed the asking price.  The following day, we met again, I offered the asking price, he agreed and we shook hands and the sale proceeded ok.  I was subsequently told by the estate agent that he later refused a higher offer from someone else who had delayed their offer while investigating planning potential.  Would the seller have honoured my offer if we hadn’t met and shook hands and dealt only through the EA?  Who knows, but I like to think it made a difference.

Completely agree about not being in control of the process, together with wondering if everyone is doing what they should, when they should!

I too have established a rapport with both our vendors (the wife) and purchasers (the husband), to the extent that vendor & I have promised to share a bottle of bubbly when it all goes through and the purchaser came to help start the 'pool wintering process' so he'd know what to do next year . I know it counts for nothing, from a legal perspective, but am convinced that people are less likely to 'misbehave' once that sort of relationship has been established.

FWIW, we accepted an offer £4k below another 'best & final' offer, because we felt the purchasers were more trustworthy, and really wanted to live in the house, rather than redevelop it and probably sell on at a huge profit.  

Bigbobby

Yes I can relate.  I am in the process of moving for the third time to be closer to work.  My house is on the market but there is nothing i can do from my side with making an offer on another house until I have an offer accepted on my house.  In the meantime though have got a "mortgage in principle" which is not legally binding but it sets out how much my lender is willing to lend me.  This means once I have found a buyer for mine and I make an offer on a house I like it shows that I am a serious buyer and I am buying what I can afford.  This reflects good with the seller and the state agent on the property I am making the offer on.  Perhaps with future offers you could ask whether the potential buyer has a mortgage in principle?

DairyQueen

It's rarely smooth. I have lost count of the number of house moves over the last four decades but we have learned from experience to expect problems.

This time we were in the enviable position of having two homes and needing to sell only one in order to purchase - and we are cash buyers. Property went on the market third week of June and was under offer 3 weeks later. Buyer had nowhere to sell - already sold and in rented. He had mortgage offer in principle plus finances vetted by EA.

We waited until under offer until we began viewing. It took us two months to find a house to buy.  We had our offer accepted Friday before last on the day we were due to exchange on the sale. Last Monday we found out that our buyer had failed his mortgagor's affordability test. Seems the goalposts have moved in the last coupe of months.

He had pulled the stops out and, with the help of a broker, had found a new mortgagor before advising us of the problem. We are now waiting for another mortgagor's survey. This will take at least another 6 weeks, plus another couple of weeks for mortgagor's admin, before we can exchange. Highly likely that our purchase - planned to happen months after the sale exchanges - will catch-up with the sale. If the sale collapses now then we will have lost the peak selling season and our purchase.

The only way through it is through it.

Davesnave

We sold in the last recession. It took 16 months and we had 4 potential buyers in that time. The house was in a desirable area and up-together, but we still ended up with 16% less for it than the price agreed in the first failed sale due to the collapse of Northern Rock.

We went into rented and completed  9 months later, so the whole process took 23 months.

On the up-side, we bought well from a motivated  seller, so the hit we took balanced out later on. We found the hard-to-locate property we wanted, and in my view 2 years is not an especially long time to wait for something so important.  Yes, it was stressful, but people have different stress triggers and I found caring for someone with dementia much worse.

[Deleted User]

Comms69 said:

ameliarate said:

Comms69 said:

comeandgo said:

It is normal, it's got something to do with the awful system that England has and the only way it will change is if people complain to MPs and get things changed but nobody does.  It's not only buyers who can walk away, you as a seller can withdraw your property from the market right up until exchange.

System is much better than elsewhere

Is it? Such as? 

I cant think of anywhere better. 

Get to exchange, bam lower the price by an extra 2-3% - perfect.

Have you ever bought or sold a property because it doesn’t sound like it? 

[Deleted User]

Davesnave said:

We sold in the last recession. It took 16 months and we had 4 potential buyers in that time. The house was in a desirable area and up-together, but we still ended up with 16% less for it than the price agreed in the first failed sale due to the collapse of Northern Rock.

We went into rented and completed  9 months later, so the whole process took 23 months.

On the up-side, we bought well from a motivated  seller, so the hit we took balanced out later on. We found the hard-to-locate property we wanted, and in my view 2 years is not an especially long time to wait for something so important.  Yes, it was stressful, but people have different stress triggers and I found caring for someone with dementia much worse.

Yup, a long process is the nature of buying and selling for most. 

Something i'm seeing, a great deal, on this forum is the younger or less experienced buyer/seller thinking that the process takes under 4 months.
In the grand scheme of things i'd say 4 months minimum is to be anticipated. 

[Deleted User]

Lover_of_Lycra said:

Comms69 said:

ameliarate said:

Comms69 said:

comeandgo said:

It is normal, it's got something to do with the awful system that England has and the only way it will change is if people complain to MPs and get things changed but nobody does.  It's not only buyers who can walk away, you as a seller can withdraw your property from the market right up until exchange.

System is much better than elsewhere

Is it? Such as? 

I cant think of anywhere better. 

Get to exchange, bam lower the price by an extra 2-3% - perfect.

Have you ever bought or sold a property because it doesn’t sound like it? 

It sounds unlikely !
That type of conduct will see the vendor refusing to sell to them, how arrogant and not the way to do business 😣 
The Estate Agent will flag this buyer as undesirable amongst the local Agents and he/she will be treated accordingly !

Benzine

I think most people end up with a nightmare moving story. It's almost like a rite of passage!