Be Excellent To Each Other

This is truth.

Watch for trees too close to gable ends, too.

Ah, the memories...

I hope no one minds me reusing an old thread.

Lockdown was announced the evening before I was going to phone the estate agent to organise a second viewing on a property I've been mulling over for a couple of weeks Activities related to the sale and purchase of homes is still allowed but we were shown around by the agent at the first viewing and told the reason it's an agent and not the sellers was because the sellers are shielding. I phoned the agent yesterday anyway to ask if we could have a second viewing and they said the sellers had asked once lockdown and shielding was reintroduced that only buyers ready to proceed immediately (i.e. with their home sold) be accepted for viewings but they might feel differently about us since it's a second viewing. Regardless of if we get a second viewing or not, I might have a dilemma.
Do I put an offer in if we like it, conditional on our property being sold and then list our property during lockdown?
Or do I put in a note of interest and list our property?
Or put in a note of interest and take no further action?
Or not do anything until lockdown is over?

Are notes of interest a thing in England? I know that the whole house buying process is a bit more stressful down there.

I don't want the sellers to feel uncomfortable or anxious if they are in the shielding category so I'm not going to push for a viewing if they're reluctant so I'll see what they say. I asked if they'd found somewhere yet because they hadn't when we had our first viewing and the agent said they're still looking so I would hope that means they're not in a rush since surely they can't be doing much house hunting if they're shielding and not carrying out viewings? Apparently they want to move to Aberdeen as well which is a couple of hours away so that makes it even more unlikely they find a property to buy during lockdown, unless they base it on a video tour which I know was happening back in March lockdown.

You're in a better position for buying a house in Scotland than in England (cant get Gazzumped up there... I think).

We took a gamble on a house we liked by putting in an offer before we'd had a solid sale on our accepted. Luckily it all worked out for us.

Yes once an offer has been accepted here, it's very rare for the sale to fall through and if it does, it's usually on the buyers end (such as not being able to sort out a mortgage). Our house is a desirable property in this area so I've no doubts it will sell quickly, but I'm not sure how wise it is to list it at the start of a lockdown of indefinite duration. Can't believe I might have to leave my full fibre to the property broadband behind Anyone have any idea when new builds started laying fibre to the property as standard? The house we're looking at is about fifteen years old.

A friend of mine moved into a new house about two or three years ago. They bought it off the plans so it was brand spanking new.

It didn't and still doesn't have fibre to the property.

Our house was built in 2016 and we got FTTP this summer but the fibre lines were laid when the house was built, the hold up was getting fibre to the cabinet.

My house was built in 1750 and only got FTTP in October!

Sellers have come back to say they're not comfortable doing a viewing unless the buyer is in a position to make an offer. I understand them not wanting viewers in if they're shielding but I'm frustrated that they're making an exception for buyers who've sold already since they present the same risk and the sellers haven't found a property to move to yet. It would make more sense if they just suspended viewings until it was safer

Anyway, I'm not too upset and have decided just to wait and not do anything for now. I really don't want to list my house at the start of lockdown, that just seems foolish. I'll wait and see if anything new comes to the market which I doubt will happen until things start going back to normal and then we need to decide if we take the risk and list our house without knowing if anything suitable for us is going to crop up.

The thing I'm most disappointed about is the house that kick started this all. It was absolutely perfect and we'd have bought it in a heartbeat but we hadn't been seriously considering moving at that point and by the time we'd got our house valued, got a mortgage agreement in principle and spoken to the estate agent to explore listing our house, that house had sold in less than a week If we don't preemptively list our house then that could happen again but we've been looking at every house in our area that's been listed in the last three years and there's only been two or three we'd seriously consider

It took us ages to move, partially because we got ahead of ourselves a few times (ie we saw something we liked before we'd got our finances lined up) and also because it was tricky to find somewhere that we both liked, and was a clear improvement on the previous place, and was affordable.

Eventually something worked out and I was able to 'retcon' it as us biding our time for the right place rather than us being disorganised and/or indecisive.

I suppose what I was going to try to say was something cheesy like 'there will be other houses that come along' but perhaps it's more a case of a sympathetic 'yeah we had a lot of back and forth too, missed out on a few good-uns... it happens'

That’s how I’m trying to frame it. If it’s house sells before we can view it again then we just wait and see what else comes up and hope that there’s another wee flurry of properties coming to the market after lockdown and coming into summer. We’ll still need to decide if we list anyway and hope something comes up. And it will be harder for me to compromise on the garden in the summer - ours is south facing and a total sun trap.

Now Christmas is out of the way people generally start thinking about Holidays, Home Improvement and Moving House so you should see a spike in new listings. Well, that's when there's not a Pandemic usually but I'll bet you'll still see an increase.

My house moving industry friend says he's never been busier and he's doing lots of Scotland-England and vice versa.

Can he move my house to Scotland please.

Just buy my one

Just swap with sdg.

Mods, you can close this thread now.

Part of my problem is I’m being really fussy but I love my current house much

We live in a wee fishing village so there are lots of lovely little houses on narrow streets that are entirely impractical and unsuitable for us and we don’t want to move outside walking/staggering distance to my in laws so even the next town or village over is too far - I’d rather stay here and wait until something came up here.

I’ll report back when I find something. Being able to drop houses into this area would be perfect, just found a great five bed outside Dundee!

If you like your current house could you just do work on it like an extension or loft conversion instead?

Sorry if I'm missing something, but if you think your house would sell quickly, could you not list it and then be in the position that the sellers want you to be in quite quickly?

I’ve looked at options for extensions and loft conversions but by the time we’d got the footprint we wanted we’d have spent as much as moving and we’d have lost too much of the garden, and that’s assuming a loft conversion solved the bedroom and home office situation.



I don’t really want to list it at the start of lockdown in case it moves slower than it would otherwise. I’m happy to wait and if miss out on this house then so be it - they’ve still not bought anywhere so I don’t want to be rushing things through and then have to wait months anyway. It took me a few weeks to warm to the idea of the house that available right now so I’m happy to sit back and see what happens then list when lockdown is over.

Fair enough. Sounds like you've made your decision then.

I don’t know if I have or not

Should I wait to see if the right property comes up, like the one we missed? At the top end of our budget but in walk in condition with all the bedrooms, home office, and large social space we want plus a fabulous garden and separate studio space.

Or, do we buy something like the one we’ve seen that has a great upstairs with four bedrooms and a home office and a big living room but not the big kitchen we’d want so we’d be planning to extend at some point and it’s a north facing garden that’s not much bigger than what we have now. It does have a garden room though which could potentially be a studio space.

Sounds like the garden is a biggie, understandably so with the two little ones. The first one sounds great. Don't think the second one is the right fit as although you could do work to make it your own you can't shift the garden and ideally you don't want to be making it smaller by having to extend on it. You'll know when its the right one.

I think you’re probably right.

Like in the Apple thread?

I got her a graphics tablet by the way. She loves it!

Resurrecting this thread to complain about the house selling process.

a.) Six weeks! We've been waiting on the buyer's solicitors for six weeks! I can only assume they've accidentally hired a law firm from the 1890's and everything is being hand-written and then delivered by men on horseback.

b.) I don't think it's unreasonable, Estate Agents, when looking at rental listings, to expect things like "at least one picture of every room in the house" and "the pictures that do exist to be in focus".

I have gone through the process of buying a house three times. And in each one every company involved in the process was awful.

I think we spent a two week period in one of them, where we calling about 10 different people twice a day, just trying to get an answer from someone, and each time it would be "Oh you need to call this person at that company"

I can only assume It must be even worse now as you now have to get the survey thing done.

I don't envy anyone who is going through that process at all.

Having gone through this in the last five years the thing that was annoying to me was how much chasing had to be done on the phone when everything was sent and signed electronically. We didn’t meet anyone in person for the whole process, apart from a viewing, because it was mid-pandemic.

And we were first time buyers, so can only imagine how much worse it is to be mid-chain.

We had a pretty smooth process because I bought a new home direct from the developers, and didn't sell my old one at the time.
The solicitors had dealt with most of the other houses on the same street, so were very efficient (and probably did one set of searches then charged 20 Customers for the same thing) and it was really stress free.

If you can decouple sale and purchase, and go for a new build I'd highly recommend it.

We looked at a few new builds when we were buying but man alive most came with a garden you wouldn’t even get wet in if it were raining. We had to look for an older property to find a good garden size around this way.

The problem with new builds is that they'll cram in three bedrooms rather than have two normal sized ones. Also, modern contractors are terrible and have very little pride in their work.

We're about as chain free as we can get - selling to First Time Buyers and not buying ourselves. If they said "Oh, it'll be another 3 weeks" I'd be fine, but there's just this deathly silence, which makes me think something's gone wrong.

Yup, new builds seems to have small, and often very oddly shaped, gardens.

Usually with the barest amount of soil and turf on top of 12 feet of rubble

And Badgers.

A friend of mine moved into a new build and has had nothing but problems with Badgers since they moved in.

We've got plenty of room inside the house (especially when thinking of what we paid at the time), but there's no chance of getting a garden anywhere near the size of Mimi & Russell's. That gives me definite garden envy every time I see it.

To be fair you did decide to build a whole other building in your garden…