Is moving house really that stressful?!....

cubedean

Well my answer would be YES!

March
We decided to put our property on the market in March to enable a move to a better area for our family, the house sold within a couple of days for a little under the asking price which was fantastic. We had already found a house we wanted & after a battle had our offer accepted.

April
Fast forward 5 weeks down the line with the searches done & surveys done, our buyer decides he doesn't like a couple of things his survey throws up & pulls out without any negotiation. We receive a copy of the survey from our EA & low and behold the reasons are so small (some cracking above the kitchen window (which for people who know the houses is from when the original doors were removed & windows put in their place in the 1980s by the local authorities). We decided to have this rectified before any other potential buyers came around at cost of £100.

May
At which point the owner of the house we were buying decided to put her house back on the market & received an offer way over our offer (which we were unable/unwilling to match). The next day we had a viewing on our property of someone that my wife works with, they viewed & made an offer in excess of that from the previous buyer to which we accepted.
We had decided to review the first property we went to see & really liked it, offer placed & with a bit of tooing & frooing we manged to get it accepted.

July/August
over the next 9 weeks & plenty of exchanged emails for an agreeable completion date, exchange day arrived. I received a call from my solicitor around 11am explaining that he had decided to remove the house from sale (3 days before we were due to complete).

By this point we were beginning to panic, we explained to our buyer what had happend & they were willing to wait another 6 or so weeks, which was very generous of them (obviously they had sunk a fair chunk of cash into buying our property).

August
The EA that we were purchasing the above property from explained that they may have a house due to come onto the market, but they needed to speak to the vendor to confirm they were happy for us to view the house prior to going to market (which they were). With the house viewed & us happier with it than the previous two we put in our offer with the previso that it doesn't go to market, which was accepted & agreed.

October
Fast forward to Monday, exchange happend, completion set for the Friday.

Fantastic it is all going to happen!

Completion day (Yesterday)

The van was hired & the whole house was packed by 10am, the waiting game had begun. I got a call to say that the monies from our sale had been received & that our purchase monies had been sent at around 12pm. I got another call at 1pm saying that they had been given key release for our purchase, however they were still moving out & it would be another hour or so.

Foolishly we handed the keys to our previous property in & went to the pub for an hour, drove around to the property & got speaking to their removal guys who commented "we're nowhere near mate, hours yet", a few frantic calls & confirmation they would be done by 3.30pm. We finally managed to get the keys to the house at 5.30pm.

The above is written from our new house to which I sit in the lounge surrounded by all matter of what, I can't sleep because of the thought of wanting to move stuff into different places.

Although we have still come out of it all with some money to come back from the solicitors which is nice considering we hadn't expected anything.

The moral of the story, property sale & purchases are fraught with danger & will never ever go smoothly (for us at least).

Apologies if the above seems like a rant, it is not, just a tale of our 8 month experience in the sale & purchase, but what else better is there to do at 4am? :roll:

cornerblock

Pour yourself a glass of something and toast your new home. Your story puts me off wanting to move ever again! Good luck in the new place.

cubedean

Cornerblock wrote:

Pour yourself a glass of something and toast your new home. Your story puts me off wanting to move ever again! Good luck in the new place.

Even better than that, tell the wife that the amount due back from the solicitors is half what it is & purchase myself some nice retro look wheels for when the Gios is back from being refinished

crescent

I'm right in the middle of buying and selling at the moment. I think it is better in Scotland where you can actually have a legally binding contract in place long before you move - I'm hoping to complete my missives next week but won't be moving until March but the seller and buyer are legally obliged to complete. The only down side up here is the "offers over" system: basically, if you have an offer accepted you realise you have probably paid more than you needed to for it.
The whole process is still very stressful though, not to mention expensive. We made a tidy profit on our last house but everyone took their share of it before we saw any of it - lawyers, EAs, surveyors, stamp duty etc

team47b

Well done for eight months of hell!

You want to try doing the same but throw in changing countries and languages into the bargain :shock:

What are the wheels?

slowmart

As stupid as it sounds you will soon forget about all the pain now you're actually in.

RideOnTime

cubedean wrote:

I received a call from my solicitor around 11am explaining that he had decided to remove the house from sale (3 days before we were due to complete).

Why? The vendor had decided not to sell or the solicitor decided?

johnny25

Nice post!

The wife and I has similar problems a few years back and in the end built an extension to our existing house. Best thing we ever did.

Good luck with your new home!

DeVlaeminck

Sounds similar to our move here 12 years or so ago. First off our buyer pulls out late on - I borrowed the money to proceed anyway (half off bank half off family) but out solicitor decides to inform the estate agent of the house we are buying we can't now afford it (why I don't know) without telling us.

The seller then agrees a sale with someone else while all the time we assume everything is proceeding OK and when we find out it's not our solicitor/their estate agent refuses to tell the seller we can actually proceed and have the cash and did all along so we had to go round in person and explain what had happened - luckily they agreed to honour the original agreement.

Then having got a buyer for ours they ask for an unspecified discount 2 days before completion. If they'd said a grand or two I'd have gone for it but I thought whatever I say they'll probably triple it so I just told their solicitor it was going back on the market - luckily they phoned back to say they'd have it at the original price - just as well as didn't fancy paying 2 mortgages for long !

After all that on the day the solicitor is so fucking slow I have to drive round delivering documents for him to make sure things go through on the day they should.

metronome

Solicitors are an enigma, as is conveyancing.

crescent

The language they use is designed to confuse.

I'm a poet, I just don't know it.

takethehighroad

I'm just looking at buying my first house, and it's an absolute mine field!

lesfirth

Anyone reading this who is about to start the process the best advice I can give is to use a solicitor who has been recommended and not a cheap one you have found on Google. A few hundred quid saved here is just not worth it.

It really is that stressful but the stress is directly related to the incompetence of the solicitors involved.

I have done the Google path!

MountainMonster

I've moved both within the country and internationally about 15 times in my life, and it has been 50/50 as to whether things go smooth. It really depends who you work with though!

Enjoy your new house, and the fun process of making it yours.

Giraffoto

lesfirth wrote:

the stress is directly related to the incompetence of the solicitors involved.

It's not like it's a difficult job - they serve as one of two go-betweens for any communication between buyer and seller, and do a bunch of "searches" that in reality consist only of asking someone else for the information. For which they charge a fortune and can't be bothered to do most of it anyway. When I was selling my house they didn't tell me anything about what was going on unless I phoned up and asked (and eventually the first one had a hissy fit and wouldn't speak to me at all - I then spoke exclusively to her deputy) and then rang me out of the blue and told me that the buyer wanted to complete in two days' time.

metronome

Giraffoto wrote:

When I was selling my house they didn't tell me anything about what was going on unless I phoned up and asked (and eventually the first one had a hissy fit and wouldn't speak to me at all

+1.

They only seem to work when you push them. I imagine a paper stack on a desk and it's only when you badger them that yours gets pulled out and placed on top. It will remain there until the next badgerer calls and so on until it reaches the forgotten lower region of the stack.

There must be solicitors on this board. Stop polishing your Dogmas and clear up the mystery

bigmat

metronome wrote:

Giraffoto wrote:

When I was selling my house they didn't tell me anything about what was going on unless I phoned up and asked (and eventually the first one had a hissy fit and wouldn't speak to me at all

+1.

They only seem to work when you push them. I imagine a paper stack on a desk and it's only when you badger them that yours gets pulled out and placed on top. It will remain there until the next badgerer calls and so on until it reaches the forgotten lower region of the stack.

There must be solicitors on this board. Stop polishing your Dogmas and clear up the mystery

I think you already know the answer - residential conveyancers will have a stack of papers a mile high. People here saying they get paid a fortune - seriously, what is a solicitor's fee on a residential conveyance? A few hundred quid if they're lucky? You aren't going to get a decent solicitor if you cut corners here (or, in fact, a solicitor at all, although there may be one in the office supervising the chaos). I've been lucky the last two times I have moved as I've had friends / professional contacts act for me. If you go bargain basement though, expect the worst. Pay peanuts...

As for the OP, his move sounds like a piece of p**s compared to my last move - 6 weeks in temporary accommodation with a 1 year old waiting to complete on our purchase. Just suck it up and hope it turns out OK in the end!

cubedean

BigMat wrote:

metronome wrote:

Giraffoto wrote:

When I was selling my house they didn't tell me anything about what was going on unless I phoned up and asked (and eventually the first one had a hissy fit and wouldn't speak to me at all

+1.

They only seem to work when you push them. I imagine a paper stack on a desk and it's only when you badger them that yours gets pulled out and placed on top. It will remain there until the next badgerer calls and so on until it reaches the forgotten lower region of the stack.

There must be solicitors on this board. Stop polishing your Dogmas and clear up the mystery

I think you already know the answer - residential conveyancers will have a stack of papers a mile high. People here saying they get paid a fortune - seriously, what is a solicitor's fee on a residential conveyance? A few hundred quid if they're lucky? You aren't going to get a decent solicitor if you cut corners here (or, in fact, a solicitor at all, although there may be one in the office supervising the chaos). I've been lucky the last two times I have moved as I've had friends / professional contacts act for me. If you go bargain basement though, expect the worst. Pay peanuts...

As for the OP, his move sounds like a piece of p**s compared to my last move - 6 weeks in temporary accommodation with a 1 year old waiting to complete on our purchase. Just suck it up and hope it turns out OK in the end!

6 Weeks in temporary accommodation, rather you than me! We nearly accepted temporary accommodation prior to exchange on our 2nd purchase. I'm very glad we didn't as we would have been shafted.

We're all settled in now & all is well!

SickAsAParrot

We were dead lucky i suppose,

We bought an empty house where the guy had moved all his stuff out and gone to sheltered accommodation, he let us have his spare key weeks before the completion date so we could get some of the rooms done up, and we started moving furniture the day before, so when the buyers of our house turned up at 11am we'd almost done.

Sure it could have gone awry at the last minute and that caused a bit of worry but it saved a lot of hassle.

markhewitt1978

It is stressful, thankfully I've only ever bought one house, moving out of my Mums so didn't have the chain issues.

Main thing I found was people like the mortgage company just not doing their job properly. A week would go by and you'd hear nothing, then call them to ask and they said "Oh we're waiting for xyz information from you", despite them saying they'd had everything. Well if you want some information at least have the decency to ask for it, don't just go quiet.

tlw1

Our last move involved last minute price negotiations, the people we were buying off putting a hold on the last minute because the person they were buying off died (bizarrely my mum and dads next door neighbour).

We ended up in temp accomodation in a flat at the wife's uncles for two weeks - it was fantastic, indoor pool and tennis court

MrSweary

We've been in our new place for about 5 months. As others have said the stress was mainly down to the respective solicitors being incompetent. Still, I only had to shout at ours twice.

Great to have a place of our own even if we bought at the top of the market