I'm in the middle of trying to move house but as some of you might know, housebuying in England is fraught with danger, risk, blackmail and deception. Here is my story so far
- Sold our house after 4 months on the market with very few people viewing it. The offer was from a cash buyer who said he could move very quickly
- Found our dream house and made an offer which was accepted
- Found out that the buyer of our house was a liar and didn't have the money at all.
- Watched as our dream house was put back on the market as we were no longer in a position to buy
- Switched estate agents and got a large number of people viewing.
- Put an advert on a local facebook group and managed to sell the house privately (which was amazing)
- Had another offer via an agent which we said no to as we had accepted the private sale.
- Had our offer re-accepted on our dream house so thought things were back on track
- Had a survey done on the dream house to find out that it was filled with damp, asbestos and had a roof that was falling down
- Pulled out of that purchase due to too many problems with it and found another lovely house.
- Offer was accepted on that new house but when a full purchasing chain check was done, it was found that the person at the bottom of the chain (our buyers, buyers, buyer) had just disappeared without a trace.
- Chain collapsed due to this and our buyer could no longer buy our house.
- Spoke to the estate agent about the other offer we had and they are still interested (thankfully)
So 6 months later we are at a point where we have literally just accepted an offer on our property and had one accepted on a new one. Thankfully both of these people have no chain, so we are hopeful that things will proceed and things might actually complete soon.
The system here sucks. You are totally reliant on estate agents and solicitors communicating with each other which in the modern age should be easy. However, they seem to make it as difficult as possible. I've heard of cases where a buyer and a seller have the same solicitor but they still insist on sending paper mail to each other, even though they sit opposite each other in the same solicitor's office. You have people not checking the legitimacy of buyers, sources of funds and then you have buyers and sellers changing the goalposts whenever they want. It seems to be basically a scam to line the pockets of agents and solicitors.
What's it like in your country when buying houses? I hear the US is quite good for it.
Yikes. I don't know that it is all that much different here. Real estate agents are still pretty much the normal operating procedure, and of course they take a cut of the eventual sale, although you do see some homes for sale directly by the owner. However in general the housing market is on a downturn and fewer and fewer people are buying at all - the US is becoming a renters country. Rich people buying 3rd houses account for a lot of the house sales here I think. What is happening instead is these huge godawful wood frame apartment buildings that are popping up everywhere around the country - they figured out a way around zoning laws that prevented large apartment complexes from being made out of wood, basically if they treat the wood with a flame retardant and put fire walls and sprinklers in they can make these five story structures that are a concrete 1st floor and 4 wood floors above, and they cram a million apartments into them, and they take up block after block after block where old houses are torn down and these monstrosities spring up. That is the new american dream apparently, to live like a sardine.
Maybe the most interesting development is zillow.com, which already took over the real estate rental market almost completely, is now moving into house buying. They have an algorithm that crunches all the data about a property and then offers a cash price for a house that is maybe a little lower than you could hope to get by listing through a real estate agent, but the cash is all there up front and you don't have to go through all the rigamarole that you are dealing with.
Good luck dude
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Here's a free vote, just for being you!! Have an amazing day!!
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GEEZ
sounds like a nightmare of a process, mallory's hooman! i am hoping that the bumpy parts are now behind you and that you will soon move into your new house :O
... i donno much about real estate market here in australia :3
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Hey Mark @markangeltrueman. I'm from Norfolk too. I moved abroad 14 years ago but visit family in Norwich and Thetford at Christmas for a few weeks most years. I just left a couple of weeks ago. Did you move into your new place ok?
Now back in Bulgaria where I bought some land with a house and barn in August last year. I viewed it on a Monday and by the Thursday of the same week it was done and dusted, legally mine (for £7000) :-) Now busy continuing to renovate the house and preparing to grow food.
Would you be interested in a coding project to "save the world" btw? If so check out my What if? post and reply below.
Peace and love
Atma
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