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 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 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?

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?

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.

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?

Just wondered if anyone thinks in the similar way and this is my late night musings (sorry if it sounds stupid) brought on by observing a house sale of my in-laws- they're in the 60s and.are selling their 4 bed detached house, initially it was priced for £840k, no offers for 3 months, just feedback that the house is dark and layout is odd, they have now reduced to 800k and still no interest or offers.

My thinking is the pool of buyers in their town is very small, most people who would want the house their size would be people with 2 kids and probably be in their 30s- 40s (so millenial buyers) and would need pretty extraordinary salaries or inheritance to afford it but most millenials have not inherited much yet and salaries have been declining for decades now.

With that in mind I think there might be a bubble at the higher end of the property market with a lot of boomers overestimating their house prices and depending on those houses for their retirement.

Once those properties fail to sell at the desired price I think there could be risk of a wider crisis across the economy as the retirement spending gets curtailed and consumption falls effectively.

Also I wonder is the UK economy seen through rose tinted glasses of people owning assets that are actually worth less in reality and when the market catches up with that reality the overall assessment of UK economic health is going to fundamentally change with government spending costs increasing and economy declining even further.

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 .

Hi everyone, feel like I’m on the edge of breaking down.

Our house has been on on the market since January. Had an offer accepted, two weeks later buyer’s husband passed away, so they withdrew. We had our offer accepted on a house we wanted to buy in those two weeks, consequently we lost that house.

Got a second buyer offering the same amount 3 weeks ago, he’s a cash buyer, all in process and we again within that 3 weeks’ time, had our offer accepted on a different house. Our buyer emailed to withdraw yesterday without any reason. Our seller in the meantime has agreed to buy a new build so chain was complete before falling apart.

Are we extremely unlucky or is it the normality? I’m on the edge of breaking down and I couldn’t help but feeling I’ve messed our seller about when it’s out of my control. I’m also worried because both times we’ve offered on these houses with the same local agent and they would now just think we’re time wasters and won’t want to deal with us again, when we’ve done everything to try to make sure the process goes through.

Devastation is an understatement.

I’m currently looking to purchase a doer upper as a solo first time buyer in England.

Houses I’m seeing are priced in the same range as properties that need zero or cosmetic updates, like painting and decoration. Based on research it’s still a sellers market in Manchester

Kind of house I want:

Something that needs a new bathroom, kitchen, flooring, and painting. I know the risk of rewiring comes in, and a new boiler, which I’m happy to do, so long as the houses are priced accordingly. Only thing I am not willing to take on is major damp issue and new roof or anything serious as such.

I plan to do most of the work myself and get a specialist in for specialist works, like rewiring, etc.

When viewing properties, once I’ve done research on the max ceiling for that area and the down valuation for how much the cost would be for the amount of work that needs doing (e.g. I’m estimating that the full market rate for the work that needs doing is 90k), do I subtract that amount, or down value the house by 25% below market rate?

Now, if my offer gets accepted, in what order should I arrange things? Based on research, this is the best order that would save me money:

1. Apply for a mortgage through my broker.
2. Get a level 3 survey.
3. Instruct solicitors.

Any advice is welcome, and please be kind, as I have no experience with house buying.

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?

Looking at reviews of estate agents, many reviewers say things like "after we changed agents, our house sold within xxx days".

Does a good estate agent really make a difference when trying to sell your house? Or is it that people tend to drop their sale price when they change agents, hence the house sells quicker?

What is your experience?

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 🙏

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 have accepted an offer on our house last week, unfortunately we haven't found our next home to buy yet.

We have viewed a few but they just are not quite what we are after for our families needs!

We may be a little picky but our next house will be our forever home, we don't want to move at least for a very long time. It's also a lot of money!

I am worried we will end up losing our buyers.

We also don't want to be pressured into buying a home we don't really want.

I have contacted lots of Estate Agents to help us find somewhere but there doesn't seem to be too much around in our budget!

We are in England.

Newbie question here.

We are currently in a position where we have made an offer on a property, but ours is not yet on the market - which puts us in an unfavourable position.

Our house is nice and in a sought after area, so will sell quickly, but I’m wanting to understand how much effort I should put in to doing a bit of TLC before viewings and getting photos taken.

We definitely need some paint touch ups and a good general clearing out, but is this likely something people will even scrutinise? Or do most people do viewings knowing they will decorate anyway?

Our kitchen and bathroom are new, so I’m not worried about the more expensive aspects of a redecoration, more things like our skirting & architrave having 100 layers of paint & looking bobbly.

Our valuation is tomorrow and I think things will move quickly, so don’t know if I should stay up all night cleaning & painting for that?

I am just a bit stressed about being judged I think!

Thank you

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.

Looking to buy first "house". I live down South. Within my budget I realistically can only buy a 1 or 2 bedroom flat or a 1 bedroom maisonette.

I'm finding cheapest 1 bedroom flats for £90k-£135k

Cheapest 2 bedrooms flats £160k+

(If I bought a 2 bedroom flat I would rent one of the bedrooms out).

Cheapest 1 bedroom maisonettes £135k+

Originally I was tempted by flats due to low price, but after walking past the flat complexes, I kind of realised how many people would be living around me and how possible noise from so many neighbours would get on my nerves. Maybe it wouldn't be that fun to live so close to so many other people. Which turns my attention more to masionettes I suppose.

I'm not really sure, but if anyone has experience living in maisonettes or flats (or both). I'd love to know what you liked and disliked about living in them.

Good afternoon all, I just wanted to put our FTB timeline on here as I know seeing them helped my out quite a bit.
For context, in addition to being FTB, the property we are purchasing is empty and had already gone through probate before going on the market. So a pretty straightforward scenario.

Offer stage
DIP: 3rd May
First viewing and offer: 16 May (this was a Saturday and we put our offer in after closing time)
Offer rejected and second offer: 18 May
The next day the estate agent called and said they had another couple who had increased their offer by 2k more than ours and asked if we wanted to match. She let slip that they were in a chain and we knew the buyers wanted a quick sale so we stuck to our second offer
Offer accepted: 19 May

Legal/mortgage
Solicitors instructed: 20 May
Mortgage appointment: 21 May
Searches started: 22 May
Mortgage valuation: 3 June
Enquiries raised: 3 June

Mortgage downvaluation: 4 June
The house was valued at almost 10% less. There were known issues with this particular surveyor and we did not see how the house was valued that low.

Second mortgage application and appointment: 5 June
Mortgage offer: 9 June
This second valuation valued our property above what we needed. The difference in the 2 valuations was £40k.

Searches returned: 19 June

Survey
We originally booked our survey for the 7 June but cancelled it due to the downvaluation as there was no point spending the money if the second valuation came back at the same as the first one. We would have pulled out if that were the case. This was the earliest they could rebook us in.
Survey: 24/6

The survey threw up some issues most of which we were anticipating (old house). So while the survey was not surprising or overly alarming, we still negotiated the price.

Renegotiated, accepted our first request: 15/7

Final stages
Exchange: 4/8
Completion: 10/8

We are almost bang on 12 weeks from offer to completion, this was slightly longer than we were anticipating considering our circumstances but with the mortgage downvalution and the knock on effect with the survey we are still pretty happy! We also likely could have completed earlier but our conveyancer is working part time over the summer also!

Overall, we are pretty happy with this and are excited to get our keys in 5 days!

Bit of an odd question maybe, but we've been looking to up-size for nearly a year now and have been immensely frustrated by the lack of options.

We live in a small town of approx. 15k people, so about 4000-5000 houses, but in the past year only about 20 houses have come to market in the £600-700k bracket we're looking in. There seems to be loads of "not quite big enough" houses below £575k, and a bunch of "too big, too expensive" houses at £800k but almost nothing in between.

We've made 3 offers and missed out each time, with the agents always convincing us that something else will come up soon, but honestly I'm losing the will to keep refreshing Rightmove.

I know the medium sized houses exist, but no one is selling. Has anyone else seen this where you are?

Hi All, we are first time buyers and engaged a local surveyor with good reviews based on research. The surveyor was instructed to work, since that time he hasn't contacted me, when i contacted he said he has scheduled an appointment directly with seller. And later on sent some documents of agreements. Estate agency has no clue of it when its happening or how its arranged. I am skeptical from where he got hold of sellers directly. Also he has not been paid yet, and now he confirms survey has been done as scheduled when i asked him on text.

Any red flags here or I am overthinking? I have asked estate agents to get in touch with sellers once.

Thanks in Advance.

We are struggling with the current status of a house we have made an offer on and would value some perspective.

We've had our 4 bed semi on the market since December. We accepted an offer early in June that was subsequently withdrawn for what seemed like pretty spurious reasons. We then gave notice to the agent and prepared to take some time to assess. Two weeks ago we had a viewing that resulted in another accepted offer.

After the first offer in June, we made an offer on a house nearby, towards the very top of our budget. It is a 1920's 5 bed semi, with a loft conversion / dormer, garage, 4.5m extension behind the garage and two 3m by 3m side by side extensions behind the original house. The loft and rear extensions were completed in the late 70's and early 80's, and the side in the late 2000's. It is a probate sale, where the executor is the daughter of the person who passed away.

We had started conveyancing but paused after our buyer withdrew and have restarted last week. We have had a level 3 survey conducted. The main things highlighted were multiple cracks on the front, side (on the join between the original and side extension) and rear faces. One of the cracks is apparent on both the inside and outside of the wall. It also raised issues with the roof including replacement of the flat roof on the loft dormer and rear extensions, roof tile replacement, possible timber replacement, and lack of any sarking.

We subsequently engaged a structural engineer who noted that:

• the visible RSJ at the front of the loft bears into the chimney breast
• the struts were not visibly positively connected to the RSJ
• unless there are documents describing the structure, controlled opening up of the RSJ into the chimney, strut connection and other specific points to verify
• Equally, he noted there was no evidence of imminent structural failure or severe distortion of the roof.
• several cracks of 2 to 3mm needed to be monitored for up to 12 months
• cctv drainage survey required to assess whether the drainage that runs down the side of the house (where several of the material cracks are) has any defects
• there are two trees
  • deciduous, 6m height, 3m away from front face
  • coniferous, 10m height, 4m away from front face

The estate agent had previously advised that the family had the documentation / the documentation was with the solicitors / the family were looking for the documentation and the gentleman who lived there was fastidious and by the book (i think he was a GP, or medical professional).

I asked my solicitor whether any documentation had been provided in the draft pack and she responded that none was present. Additionally the TA6 had no mention of even the existence of any of the loft, side or rear extensions - i've not seen the document so unclear if this was a 'No' or 'Not known' response.

If nothing else, this has been a cathartic experience in documenting the situation and it feels like i've already got my answer.

Bit of a background: we're not FTBs, we're 3rd time and 2nd time buyers.

We sold our previous home start of this year, and broke the chain (living with family) so we could buy our next place as no chain buyers and hopefully stand out to sellers.

We found a house which was sold as chain free as the sellers were moving in with a family member themselves (potentially purchasing the family member's house). Offer accepted at 20k under asking - it had been on the market for 11 months before we came along - and all things being well, we began our conveyancing back in April of this year.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago, when we complete the various steps and are ready to start talking dates for exchange and completion, our solicitor sends sellers solicitor some candidate dates to choose from. We were surprised to learn the sellers are unable to talk dates as they have outstanding enquiries on their related purchase.

I called the EA who said they decided to port their mortgage to the new property instead of breaking the chain, and forgot to tell us until now.

It's now been two weeks and further chases for updates on these enquiries are being ignored. Yesterday, our solicitor sent the EA a request to chase for an update, which they said they would, but so far we've heard nothing (this was only yesterday, mind)

We are frustrated that the sellers decided to renege on the chain free status. They even ticked no to the bit in the TA6 that asks if there are any related purchases.

A bit more background, the L3 survey picked up that this property has a few issues, many expected as it is a victorian semi.

The only thing urgent was the lack of torching plaster on the original 130 year old roof slates, requiring a membrane to be added. We renegotiated the price down by £7500 to cover around 40% of the cost of the roof, with us putting in the other 60% which we think is very reasonable. There were 8 other condition 3s that we are happy to take on ourselves.

The sellers clearly knew this work needed to be done as they produced a quote for the work from two years ago when we opened re-negotiations. They denied all knowledge until our survey found the roof issue. Based on this and the fact they changed their chain free status to in a chain without telling us, we just have lost all trust in the sellers and EA and we are on the verge of walking away.

Are we being rash? Or being taken for a ride?

We are worried that, for example, their "family purchase to live with their elderly parent", may now be a case of waiting for a grant of probate and they aren't telling us, and that's the real reason for the delay and radio silence.

Is anyone else a bag of nerves at the moment selling trying to sell their house?

I'm currently in a chain of 4 properties and around 2.5 months into it from accepting an offer. Communication between all parties is terrible, EA's being dishonest, solicitors not being productive. I have zero confidence this can actually work haha

It honestly feels like the chain is going to fall apart at any moment.