What part of buying your first home did you find most stressful?

[Deleted User]

Which part of the process of buying your first home did you find most stressful? Brownie points if you bought your first home with no chain! 

Swash

The change of completion dates. I was in the forces at the time, and had one specific date that completion had to be done by because I was being posted so wouldn't be available. 6 months later, after numerous date changes, guess when completion happened? The day after I was posted. Currently buying my next property and this time round feels even more stressful.

MFWannabe

No chain for us so think myself lucky for that 
I think the most stressful part was waiting for the mortgage offer 

AskAsk

no chain for me when i bought my first home.  everything went smoothly even though i knew didly squat about buying a property.
i bought a huge victorian house that needed complete gutting so it was really stressful doing the works as getting all the trades to click in with one another was a nightmare since i did not appoint one builder.

i was lucky that our friend knew people they could recommend to do the work but i had to find some tradesmen myself.  it was very expensive as i didn't know how much the renovations was going to cost when i bought the house and more problems keep appearing after i had bought it that i had not anticipated.  the renovations took a year to complete so the house was empty for the whole year while the works were done.

jackomdj

I bought from a friend, but the property was being rented to colleagues of his.  They were supposed to have moved out a week before, but the night before they were still there.  They were in the services and it was back in the day when they could get told off by a superior for it, fortunately they moved out overnight.  However when we went into the house they had let their cat wee and poo all over the place, plus damaged a lot of the furniture which I was going to store for the owner until he could come to collect it (he was a friend, in the services and based away when completion happened)

Jenjen

Buying our first home wasn't at all stressful compared to buying the one since and the one we're buying now. But that's probably because we were buying it fully furnished from our landlord (who was also a friend), and we already lived in it. 

jackieblack

My first purchase had no chain.
 I found the slowness of the conveyancing solicitor was the most stressful thing (and has also been the most stressful part of subsequent purchases, sales, remortgaging and transfer of equity)

AskAsk

jackomdj said:

I bought from a friend, but the property was being rented to colleagues of his.  They were supposed to have moved out a week before, but the night before they were still there.  They were in the services and it was back in the day when they could get told off by a superior for it, fortunately they moved out overnight.  However when we went into the house they had let their cat wee and poo all over the place, plus damaged a lot of the furniture which I was going to store for the owner until he could come to collect it (he was a friend, in the services and based away when completion happened)

my husband bought a flat where he went in after completion when he got the keys and was shocked to find people were still living there!  they said they didn't know the flat had been sold as they were tenants.  my husband called the estate agent to tell them there were still people living in the flat and the estate agent called the vendor, who said her brother had rented out the flat without her knowledge, yeah right.

my husband said to her that he will give her two weeks to get the tenants out and luckily after two weeks they were gone.  the estate agent said my husband could sue the vendor but that she wasn't all there so it may not be worth pursuing, so my husband left it.

AdrianC

T98 said:

Which part of the process of buying your first home did you find most stressful? Brownie points if you bought your first home with no chain! 

Pretty much no chain for us - we were buying off a couple moving into sheltered accommodation bought from a developer. It was ready to go, and waiting for them.

There were two main stresses, one of which had a secondary kicker - the mortgage lender decided that some key piece of paperwork had been sent on the wrong version of the form, and everything going on hold without them bothering to tell anybody... then deciding that a woodworm survey was needed on the separate timber garage (which was described as decrepit on the EA details and survey) on the day of completion... rounded up by the vendor's solicitor FINALLY getting the money through, then leaving the office without giving the OK to the EA to release the keys. He was eventually tracked down on the golf course at 4.30pm.

SenseandSensibility

FTB with no chain and buying a new build. Our process should have been simple and stress-free, but was made so by our remarkably slow and incompetent solicitors, who repeatedly made mistakes on our file, claimed things had progressed which hadn’t (they told us two weeks in that searches had been instructed, though we discovered four weeks later they hadn’t due to an unexplained error in the contract received from the developer). The entire process was made more stressful by the pressure the developer imposed on us (were told that if we didn’t exchange and complete by a certain date, the house would be placed back on the market). We eventually exchanged and completed on the same day (the last given deadline) despite emphasising to our conveyancer weeks before that we wanted it to be a two staged process. 
In conclusion, a nightmare process to acquire our forever home, but thankfully not one we are planning to undertake again any time for the next ten years!

diggingdude

Just doing it all by myself. I hear so many couples moaning about partner not pulling their weight. When you are on your own you do everything without someone to even emotionally support you