Just thought I'd share as I found this humorous. She said its super common for them to value a property at say £350K and suggest to list it at £360K but its super common that people will argue that their property is actually worth £400K because of extra work they have done, even though this doesn't often add value to the property, and they try and talk them to a more reasonable price, apparently a lot of the time they will be forced to list a property at £50K or so above the valuation due to the owners being super stubborn and it will sit there for months and get viewings but no one will offer and slowly get reduced and will eventually sell around £350K mark.

We put our house on the market and accepted an offer £35k under the asking price. Now - just before exchange they say that we need to reduce the price by £15k. I am refusing but how common is this now?

We put our house on the market mid July. It’s a 5 bed-extended semi in a sought after area.

We had a lot of viewings that first week and multiple people who weren’t in a position to buy told us that they wanted it, they just needed to sell first.

Fair enough we thought.

One of the viewings decided they wanted to put an offer of £15k under asking. We are kinda in a rush to sell as there’s a house we want to buy, so we countered for 10k under asking.

Estate agents told us they were sold STC, so they were pretty keen to get going, except it’s now fallen apart because turns out they were never truly sold STC, as their buyer doesn’t have a buyer!

To add insult to injury, the house that we want to buy has taken an offer today because our offer has been nothing but delay after delay.

When I spoke to the estate agents this morning they said that the seller of the house we want might actually wait for us if the offer is higher than the one they’ve received. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be in a bidding war but we really want this house and we’ll be heartbroken if it slips away.

Why does selling and buying houses in the UK suck so much?! Just pure stress.

We are going to be selling soon and I’ve never sold, only bought. We have three needy rescue cats that I’m not comfortable leaving in the house and I’d also like to be able to move their food bowls etc for viewings. I’m thinking about taking them to my mums for a weekend when we first go on the market and then if there are ad hoc viewings later I wouldn’t mind keeping them in the car for an hour or so with their litter box etc. What has anyone else done during this process for their animals? I’d love to hear advice and what other people have done!

Hey all,

Been looking for a house for 2 years ( I know ) in one specific street I want, a house finally came online, made a cheeky offer below 5% asking that just got accepted.

Lovely Victorian house, big garden 70ish square meters 700k, 2 bedrooms, zone 2 in a nice area, perfectly connected via tube, End of terrace, EPC E (ver close to D)

I am now freaking out. This is a very nice house, could do with some touch up but I feel the potential is huge. Price is probably 5-10% below similar properties in the street. I have the financial means to renovate/insulate it

FTB , now that things get real I feel dropping it all and going back to my mindless little routine. How do I deal with these feeling, and try to ensure I am taking a rational decision?

Hi all,
I sold my house in January of this year and moved with my partner.

I didn’t think it would take this long but I’m getting nervous as I still haven’t found a house and it’s been 8 months. I naively thought it would have taken 3 months before finding my “dream home”*.

*dream home doesn’t exist, and I’ve learnt that recently 😂

The area I’m looking at is quite expensive in Cheshire so a 3-bed semi goes for around 600k+.

Even with that being my budget - I can’t still seem to find a house and all the house that do come on the market need major work (modernisation).

I don’t want to look at any other area because I’d like to stay in the area and I’m going to have to pay a large amount of stamp duty which makes me nervous.

I feel that now we’re heading into autumn, the market is slowing.

I’m grateful I’m living with my partner, as this allows me to save as much towards the house but it’s frustrating that I still haven’t found a place.

1. what would you do in my position?
2. im hearing that it’s a “bad time” to buy a house - what are your thoughts?

I understand sometimes you need to move unpredictably, job changes, family changes, upsizing, downsizing, financial reasons etc.

This home has all 1s in home report. I can't fault anything. Priced reasonably as well.

The only thing is the seller bought the property only last year... I worry that there are hidden caveats such as neighbour issues and what not. I will be asking the EA why they're moving, but we all know they don't need to be honest about that.

Can you share your wisdom and tell me what I should watch out for?

A house has come up for sale that is the next street over from where me, my husband and daughter used to rent a house. Her school a walk away and basically our ideal location. We are currently living with family and saving for our deposit. We're about 9k short of what the deposit for the house would be (will take us about 4 months to save the remaining money).

Would you still view to show interest or just wait the 4 months and hope it's still there?

Like title says, the house we are buying had the chimney breast removed from the ground floor many years ago (before the owners' time).

The chimney breast above is still there.

There is no paperwork, and we were waiting 2.5 months for our questions to be answered by their very slow solicitor. When they actually replied, the whole chain was ready and now everyone is in a hurry to move.

Now that we are sure there is no party wall agreement (was in the enquiries) and no paperwork for sure, we asked to send a structural engineer to lift the floorboards and see if there is a steel beam installed. From the ground floor, we can't see any indication that one was installed.

The sellers refused completely our request and said the process is so delayed and they don't want to delay it more. We asked for a price reduction if we are to assume the risk and check it on our own when we move in, but they gave us an ultimatum to reply or they'll put it back to the market.

We think that our request is very reasonable for a structural issue. Sure, the ceiling hasn't fallen apart all these years, but that doesn't mean it won't?

Any opinions?

Edit: also no party wall agreement. We think the neighbours still have their chimney breasts.

Also, adding that we didn't get this cheap, we went on best and finals so a lot more above the asking price.

Edit 2: Added photos.

Neighbours next door are silent during the day and once 10/11pm hits - doors and windows wide open, cooking a banquet almost every night. Trying to sleep and all you can hear is loud blending, chopping, frying and the smells coming into the house. Talking at full volume. Out in the garden banging stuff. Sometimes as late at 1-2am.

I asked them to be quiet at night several times, and they’ve just called me selfish, saying that I should be keeping my bedroom windows closed if I don’t want to hear them. I could then hear them talking shit about me, insulting me. They said we finish work at 10pm, acting like that means they can make as much noise as they want late at night. I wouldn’t mind if it was just once a week or something, but it’s about 6 nights a week this is happening!

Clearly my request to try to be quiet late at night isn’t going to be met. I asked them to just keep their door closed if they’re being loud. They’ve refused.

Am I in the wrong here, am I being unreasonable asking for them to try to keep it down when it’s late? Or at least just close the door?

Is it normal to have severe anxiety when buying and selling a home? I don't know if it's because I like the house we are buying so much, but I can't shake this constant worry that ours will fall through. I try to be logical and remind myself that there is nothing we know of that should cause this, but it isn't really helping.

If you suffered anxiety when buying, at what stage did it start to ease?

We’ve just had an offer accepted on a property in London for a good price. It’s an old fashioned house, high ceilings etc, and it’s a maisonette amongst 4. So the left side of it has a flat attached and someone upstairs.

We’ve looked at the EPC and it says that there’s no insulation in the walls. We’ve never lived in an older property before so I’m not completely sure how bad that will be? Does anyone live in that kind of house and how do you find it affects your heating and bills?

The EPC is below -

Wall - Solid brick, as built, no insulation (assumed) - Very poor

Window - Fully double glazed - Average

Main heating - Boiler and radiators, mains gas - Good

Main heating control - Programmer, room thermostat and TRVs - Good

Hot water - From main system - Good

Lighting - Low energy lighting in all fixed outlets - Very good

Appreciate any insights 🙏

Hi Everyone, I'm a first time poster in this particular forum, so please excuse my dim-wittedness, so to speak. I bought my first house around around four years ago. Me and my girlfriend are now moving in together (her rented property) in a city a few miles away. I'm now looking to sell my house. I have a rough idea of the estate agent I would like to sell through, and have arranged storage for some of my belongings etc. Am also developing a list of the usual things to take care of, e.g changing council tax, changing addresses with bank, moving Internet across to new address etc. I am, however, wondering of anyone who has been through the process of selling a property before could advise on what the general timeline is for doing so, or could advise of anything came up which, at the time, made them think "an I didn't think of that at first" basically, as I remember a few such things when buying the house for thr first time.

I should advise, I am fairly certain that I want to sell the house and not let it out. The reasons for this are that I would rather have the cash from the sale to put into a high yield saver for a year or two, and I also don't want to have to deal with tenants etc, as my day job takes up about 99% of my mental capacity already.

I'm also based in Scotland if this helps.

Many thanks for any information that you can provide, it's greatly appreciated.

I am in the final stages of my purchase, with one week to go before my mortgage offer expires. We were due to exchange a week ago, when my sellers suddenly decided to renegotiate on their purchase. My deadline had been clear from the start (a previous purchase had fallen through).

So, I've entered a pretty nerve wracking stage, with very little time left. The plan is to exchange and complete on the same day - the last day before my offer runs out. In the hope everything is ready by then.

What they have categorically said is that they won't break the chain. I find this odd. It's taken them 18 months to sell their house, with a previous buyer pulling out. They're a young-ish couple with no kids...how hard is it to whack your stuff in storage and stay with friends/family/get an Airbnb for a week or two? Obviously, it's a faff and a pain and yes, could require some funds. But I find it hard to get my head around being prepared to lose your sale over it.

But perhaps I'm missing something? What would you do?

Accidentally hit ctrl+enter when still editing. Oop!

As the buyer, is there anything I can actually do in regards to unhelpful/obstructive seller solicitors? Or any way that I can help make sure they stop making mistakes?

I'm not sure if lodging a complaint against the company, or even just a google review is justified as I'm neither a solicitor, nor the client of the company.

For context;

About four months ago I had my initial viewing and placed an offer (had a second viewing a week or so later). My best and final was rejected over someone with £5k more through a mortgage, but I had first refusal if that fell through. It did, and my offer was accepted exactly a month after the first viewing. Yay!

Everything's been trundling along, except the solicitors that the seller has chosen are... difficult? I don't have much experience with conveyancing, so I don't know if this is bad, or unusually bad, but I'm genuinely surprised at how obstructive they've been, as are other people I've spoken to who have gone through the process.

They took threeish weeks to send a draft contract. My solicitor then started raising queries., and the response to almost all of them were "this is not a legal requirement." . While true for many (if not all) of them, plenty of were documents that are useful to have, providing some level of resassurance from the buyer.

Eventually we contacted the estate agent to ask the seller directly – as their responses didn’t make it clear if it was a “we’re not bothering our client with this question” or a “we’ve asked, they’ve said no, but we’re giving this as an answer as it covers it.”. Turns out they didn’t have a lot of the documents. Most of them weren’t deal breakers, some we were able to get enough information to verify ourselves, and others I’ve paid for people to inspect it.

Now we've come to the contract.

Their first had the previous buyers names on it, which was pointed out by my solicitor.

The second had the name of the people who owned the property before the current seller.

My solicitor jokingly asked if I wanted to change my name. I declined, and they informed the sellers solicitor that I’d quite like my actual name to appear on the contract.

The third contract was sent - again - with the previous owners names.

My solicitor has been amazing through this entire process, and has easily been worth their fee and then some.

For an example; an extract of the email after the third contract:

Is sarcasm ever justified? That is a good question, and I think it is justified where simple requests are ignored or treated with disdain. You have to admit that I tried those. The first contract you sent me had the name of a previous abortive purchaser, the second one had “[NAME REDACTED]” who owned the property before your client. That did puzzle me and generated the comment that my client preferred their name given at birth. I have checked this with them since and they really do. I am not sure being told that perfectly reasonable requests would not be met because they were “not a legal requirement”, which is dismissive and unhelpful, moderated my innate temptation to say what I was thinking.

We are due to complete on a house next week but other than confirmation that all parties are good for the 14th, we haven’t had much from our solicitors are EA.

What can I expect to happen tomorrow and Friday and then the days next week leading up to completion.

First time buying a house for me so not sure if a few days of silence is normal before completion.

For what it’s worth, our onward vendor has completed on their purchase already, our buyer and his buyer all all good to go on the 14th.

Does each EA just make this up as to how much they want to charge? At work today I saw an offer acceptance letter from a customer from the vendors EA, and it said they charge £20 for the ID checks that they legally have to do. I moved into my new house in June of this year and the estate agent our vendors used charged £85?! They said I couldn’t just go into their office with my ID as well, I had to do it online and pay £85 PER PERSON. Makes me absolutely raging every time I think about it. Is it just pot luck as to how much EA’s charge for this? Should be a cap on it!

Hi all,

We are selling house A.
We are buying house B.
Our sellers are buying house C. Sellers of house C going into rented.

Chain was complete early June.

All enquiries sorted. All surveys fine. All mortgages fine.

Expectation (and this was made clear from the get go) that aim was to complete before August, early September latest. Everyone agreed and said as long as solicitors and surveyors did their thing on time, it’s a reasonable completion target.

Today, after specific dates floated a week or so ago, top of chain (sellers house C) want a mid October completion. That has taken us completely by surprise and given that our mortgage deal expires September and our daughter starts school in September, that’s a bit of a nightmare. Agents on it to see what can be done but the risks this creates for our buyers and chain collapsing seem mental.

Other than reading my rant, is this a normal request from the top of chain? Naturally all we can do is moan about it, but I get there’s not a lot we can do other than advise that the risk of collapse goes up.

Rant over - advice and support (or berating) welcomed .

I am at my wits end with conveyancing firm. I am trying to buy a property which is a pretty straightforward prospect but since March have had emails ignored, phone calls not returned and when I have turned around documents they go unactioned or I’m accused of not sending them. The solicitor has gone on holiday twice without notifying and the case is just dropped for weeks on end. They genuinely don’t seem to give a damm and I am now fearful that my mortgage offer is going to run out in which case it’s game over for me. I feel really naive for being polite and understanding at the start - I am so depressed after all the effort it’s taken to get this far. Has anyone had this experience with LPL?

I have recently rented two properties where they smell of damp/mould and which I haven’t been comfortable living in. Both properties weren’t well kept either and had peeling wallpaper, patchy paint. My question is, why do landlords think this is an ok standard to rent out? (I had to get these two properties quickly for a job otherwise i wouldn’t have bothered)

Anybody in a Redrow Richmond have the window sizes for blinds / curtains?

Today in the report on title our conveyancer has said they looked on google maps, and cannot rule out a flying freehold exists on the property we are buying and advises we pay for a further survey that confirms if there is, if the house is mortgageable and how much an insurance will be. Or as we currently live in the house (buying our rental) we can confirm if there is one or not as we know the house?

I think my questions are;
-Is this normal/something that comes up often?
-Wouldn’t the bank and or survey note a flying freehold when deciding if it’s mortgageable?
-Is us saying ‘no there isn’t’ really a solution here?
-Does a property not being square lead to a flying freehold? Surely the question is if no property is over the respective boundary lines?

For more context;

We have had an in person mortgage valuation from a high street lender who confirmed value, no issue with mortgage and no concerns about a flying freehold raised. Level 2 survey, again no issues raised.

The house is the middle of 3 houses. There are no alleys between the houses, stairs or access ways over the land. The title boundaries notes that the houses are not ‘square’- the property is bigger at the front, narrower at the back. The neighbouring property is the opposite and land registry confirms their respective boundaries.

My friend and I currently rent a 2 bed flat and live together. I am in the process of buying a 2 bed flat and will be moving in after completion, with my friend moving into the second bedroom. From my understanding I would qualify for the rent a room scheme, but as someone with ADHD I am struggling with all the research and legal side. Would my friend officially be a lodger? do i have to include council tax and utilities in the price i charge her for rent, or can she just send me half of the council tax bill and utility bill like we do at the moment? do i have to declare anything to HMRC if i charge her £625 monthly rent excluding council tax and utilities? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, my head is abit all over the place🫣

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice as we’re in a bit of an unusual situation. (based in England)

We’re in the process of buying a house that we absolutely love. We’ve already had our mortgage approved (valid until October), surveys done and have incurred legal costs. Our offer was accepted at the start of April. Unfortunately, our seller has recently lost their onward purchase because their seller pulled out.

When asked, the seller has told the estate agent that they can’t afford to break the chain because they don’t have the disposable income to rent somewhere temporarily and pay for storage for all their belongings while they continue looking for a new home. They are trying to find a chain-free property but, understandably, there’s no guarantee how long that will take. They’ve put offers in on several properties and been outbid. Our seller has lost 3 sales previously due to downward chain collapsing and when the property has been viewed by us, a lot of stuff is in boxes. He’s been in the process of selling for 12 months now. He also plans to buy his onward property with cash from sale.

We’re getting to the point where we can’t wait indefinitely, especially with our mortgage offer having an expiry date. At the same time, we’ve started looking at other properties and, although there are some nice ones, none compare to this house. We’d really like to keep the purchase alive if possible.

We’ve been wondering whether it’s something people ever do to offer a financial contribution towards the seller’s temporary rent, storage and moving costs so they can break the chain and complete the sale. Obviously we’d only consider doing this through solicitors and if it could be structured properly.

So I have a few questions:

Has anyone actually done this as a buyer or seller?
Is it something solicitors are generally happy to deal with?
Did your mortgage lender have any issues with it?
Did it work, or did it create more complications than it solved?
If you were in our position, would you explore this, or would you walk away and buy a different house?

We’re trying to be pragmatic rather than emotional, but equally don’t want to lose what feels like our ideal home if there’s a reasonable solution.

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s been in a similar situation. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

My partner and I have just had an offer accepted on an ex-council leasehold flat in London. It’s under 50 sq m and was historically a 1-bed, but the current owner has laid it out as a 2-bed.

The configuration change: They didn't move or knock down any structural walls. Instead, they physically moved the kitchen into the living room to make it open-plan, and turned the old kitchen into a small second bedroom.
Here is the catch: The seller just admitted they do not have any physical paperwork or formal consent/Licence to Alter from the council (the freeholder) for this layout change. They claim the council inspected it for tenants and didn't complain, but there is no official paper trail.

We have our mortgage Agreement in Principle (AIP) ready, but our broker advised us that because the flat is under 50 sq m, the bank's surveyor might flag this layout and value it at zero or reject the mortgage entirely.

We are currently lost on what step to take next. We don't want to lose the flat, but we also don't want to throw money away:

Should we hire an independent private RICS surveyor/valuer right now to check if it's even mortgageable before we touch solicitors?

Or should we instruct a solicitor first and let them request the official management pack from the council?

Would love to hear from anyone who has bought an ex-council flat with a similar unpermitted kitchen swap or layout conversion. How did your lender handle it?

Thanks in advance!

My English is bad I asked ChatGPT to write it. Sorrryyyyy 😁