House buying woes

Back in March we finally found a house to buy in an area that we really like. Because of the current market there isn’t really a lot on but after a few months searching we found somewhere that was ideal. It had enough space, needed no immediate improvement, nice garden, good area and backed onto a park. The expansion potential is also very good.

We made an offer, had it accepted, got a mortgage and a solictor and waited for things to happen. Within a week the vendors had lost the property they had an offer on. This did not bode well but we figured it wouldn’t take them too long to find a new property. Three and a half months later we got back from holiday to find a letter from our solicitor, the chain was complete and things would start moving. Hurray!

I phoned the Estate Agents to get confirmation, yes they were buying an empty house with no chain, excellent. I then phoned the solicitor to ask what we needed to do and was told to just wait for the draft papers to come through. Three weeks later we’d not recieved anything, phone the solicitor again to ask what was up and she said she hadn’t heard from the vendor’s solicitor but would get in touch with them.

I figured I may as well phone the estate agents, our usual contact was on holiday so I spoke to another agent who said the vendors were still looking. “What? We were told they had an offer on a house”, this seemed to be news to this guy who said he’d contact the vendors and find out. Five minutes later he called back with the news that vendors no longer had an offer on the house as it required to much work to update so they’re looking again.

Well thanks a bunch for letting us know! It’s a shame you have no choice over estate agents when it comes to buying a house because with service like that I’d drop them and go elsewhere.

We’re now back where we were 4 months ago with an offer on a house who’s vendors have nowhere to go. It wouldn’t be so bad if the market was good enough for us to pull out and get another house but we keep looking and there is just nothing that matches what we’re looking for. When we first had the offer accepted we thought we might be in by now, at this rate it would be nice to be in by Christmas.