The longest most problematic and frustrating house move in history?

[Wayne370Z]

For no particular reason other than I`m bored and been sat around in a house half full of boxes for the past few months, I thought I`d kill some time and share the saga of our house sale/purchase ;

End of last May in a moment of weakness I succumbed and gave in and reluctantly agreed with the wife`s desire to put the house up for sale and look to move over to Lincolnshire. That`s where she is from and up until recently we couldn`t have moved because of my job but since retiring in 2013 I was struggling for another plausible excuse not to move.

Interest was slow but in October we accepted an offer and began viewing bungalows around Lincoln fitting as many as we could into weekends over there.

The first one we found and wanted we made several offers on but couldn`t go high enough to one they would accept.

The second one, after wanting just a bit more than our initial offer, wanted us to produce the usual documents of ID, mortgage offer, etc. before accepting our increased offer but then after travelling miles to do that accepted someone else`s offer the next day and then refused to consider out further higher offers.

So we went back to property number 1. I sold the motorbike and we increased our offer and they accepted it. Yayh!

Mortgage applied for at building society, fees paid for survey etc. Couple weeks later get a call they were now accepting a higher offer.

We`re now in November and spend another weekend of viewings over at Lincoln and we find another on which our offer is accepted.

Next day someone else offered more. We matched that and the seller promised no more offers would be considered.

Back to building society, more fees for survey etc, but things start to seem to be going well and we`re wondering will we move before/after Christmas and we start to pack up all the outside stuff, garage stuff, loft, etc..Get quotes from movers and provisionally pencil in dates.

Christmas comes and goes with no mention of a move. Then we get a phone call about how our purchasers lost their purchasers before Christmas. They have a new one already, though, so no real problem just slowed things up a bit and we`re now expecting a move maybe in February. Dates re penciled in with movers.

February comes with still no move in sight and we find out there is problems in finding the deeds for the one we are buying and then we get a call that our purchasers have lost their purchasers again and are now pulling out from buying ours.

So ours goes back on the market and we try to make it presentable again for viewings, boxed up stuff back in the loft, new bed to replace the one that went in the skip, tidy up all the stuff dumped in the small bedroom, etc. Movers cancelled all together.

This time it sells in less than 2 weeks as opposed to the 4-5 months before but we accept £2K less as we are still on for the one that we were buying so, thankfully, no more weekends spent house searching.

So again things seem to be progressing. The ones buying ours have relatives doing the conveyancing and are getting on with it quickly but nitpicking over everything. New dates penciled in with movers again.

We get well into March only to then find out that nothing has progressed on the one we`re buying as they still haven`t found the deeds. Dates put back again with movers and we`re worried now that they`ll be ready/wanting to move on ours with us being no where near ready on the one we`re buying.

It`s just about end of March before we hear that the deeds eventually get found and things can get done with regards to finally getting to move.

Mid April now and hopefully it will not be much longer, especially as it`s been so long already that the 6 months on the mortgage offer has less than 2 months left on it now, although, there`s still no mention on any estimated date yet and the movers are currently put back to mid May.

This will be the 4th house purchase for me (one with each wife and one on my own) but never have I had problems the likes of these before. They were all along the lines of, find a house, make offer, move into house few months later and needless to say I will never be doing it again (not even if there`s a wife number 4 and she wants to buy a house).

I just hope that when/if we eventually get there all the extra sunshine and country roads are worth it.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Wayne370Z

[nixy]

That has just made me think I am never going to move again....... As for the roads in Lincolnshire - speed cameras galore!

[Ekona]

I really wish the government would tighten up the purchase of houses. It should be that once the offer is made and accepted, BOOM that's it, no messing around.

 

Sorry to hear of your woes fella

[Wayne370Z]

That has just made me think I am never going to move again....... As for the roads in Lincolnshire - speed cameras galore!

Seems to be speed cameras everywhere now but I expect/hope it won`t be quite as bad as around Manchester.

[Husky]

I really wish the government would tighten up the purchase of houses. It should be that once the offer is made and accepted, BOOM that's it, no messing around.

 

Sorry to hear of your woes fella

 

Scotland has a better system, not perfect but far far better than England.

[Humpy]

Sorry to hear this and the current house we moved into was a saga and a damn right rigmarole. So know your pain

 

When we were looking we were renting and had cash waiting so we were just waiting for the right property to come up in our price range and we were in a strong postion if other people were putting offers in etc.

 

A house came up for tender and was meant to be month turn around for completion, we won the bidding war and thought excellent, a nice project house and a quick move in....... How wrong were we Turned out the people selling the house didn't actually have the rights to sell it. It was the mother who owned the house but she had gone into the nursing home with dementia and then the family had to get power of attorney..... Roll on to a year and a half ( yes you heard me correctly) things finally started rolling again but the sellers wanted another 10k as house prices had shot up. We had waited this long and was still a great buy we had to go along with the new price!

 

That is a brief outline of what happened anyway

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[350zedd]

Yes, be very careful when buying property, its a minefield out there....full of incompetent ''officials'' that haven't a clue.......

I bought a plot of land with planning permission... only to discover after I'd moved onto the site with caravans that

no, you aint got pp and dont bother re-applying because its in open countryside.

 

Also refused temporary permission for caravans as it wasn't deemed a legitimate building site.

 

WTF!!!! :angry:

 

I was paying a mortgage on the plot so couldn't afford to rent anywhere else to live.

Forced to live in caravans for 8 years while living under the threat of being evicted.

This was how long it took to be sorted out and the house eventually built!!

All with a wife and 4 children to consider

 

That is what you call a living NIGHTMARE!

[Tricky-Ricky]

I could probably beat that story, when it comes to moving house.......but I think ill wait until I am bored and can deal with the typer's cramp.

[sipar69]

I really wish the government would tighten up the purchase of houses. It should be that once the offer is made and accepted, BOOM that's it, no messing around.

 

 

Definitely. We're looking to move next year. I hate the idea of finding THE place, having an offer accepted and then losing it because someone else has come in and offered more.

[ioneabee]

Yes, be very careful when buying property, its a minefield out there....full of incompetent ''officials'' that haven't a clue.......

I bought a plot of land with planning permission... only to discover after I'd moved onto the site with caravans that

no, you aint got pp and dont bother re-applying because its in open countryside.

 

Also refused temporary permission for caravans as it wasn't deemed a legitimate building site.

 

WTF!!!! :angry:

 

I was paying a mortgage on the plot so couldn't afford to rent anywhere else to live.

Forced to live in caravans for 8 years while living under the threat of being evicted.

This was how long it took to be sorted out and the house eventually built!!

All with a wife and 4 children to consider

 

That is what you call a living NIGHTMARE!

Don't hold back now Steve.....tell it as it is

[marzman]

I thought my move last year was protracted... to get to within a week of the moving date only for it to be delayed by 3 months. We were fully packed, with just 2 knives, 2 forks and 2 plates left out etc, then couldnt be bothered unpacking so lived like that until we moved.

 

...But some of these stories are horrific!

[GMballistic]

At the time I thought the house myself & my fiancee bought took a long time to sort but judging by some of these "horror" stories as first time buyers I think we had it very, very lucky.

 

Viewed first house in early May, we liked the first house we saw so made an offer, offer not accepted, so up the offer by a few £K to what the seller wants, offer accepted, surveys done, fees paid, solicitors sort out contracts etc etc blah, blah, blah.

Moved in late September the same year (4 month turn around).

[350 Russ]

I bought my first place just before Xmas, I hated it and thought it was a bit shi**y (the move not my flat) but it only took about 2 months from offer accepted to moving in, reading some of those stories would put me off for life!!

[350zedd]

Yes, be very careful when buying property, its a minefield out there....full of incompetent ''officials'' that haven't a clue.......

I bought a plot of land with planning permission... only to discover after I'd moved onto the site with caravans that

no, you aint got pp and dont bother re-applying because its in open countryside.

 

Also refused temporary permission for caravans as it wasn't deemed a legitimate building site.

 

WTF!!!! :angry:

 

I was paying a mortgage on the plot so couldn't afford to rent anywhere else to live.

Forced to live in caravans for 8 years while living under the threat of being evicted.

This was how long it took to be sorted out and the house eventually built!!

All with a wife and 4 children to consider

 

That is what you call a living NIGHTMARE!

Don't hold back now Steve.....tell it as it is

Believe me, I was showing a fair bit of restraint actually, considering the stress and anguish we suffered, through no fault of our own!

[Angrybiker]

In Scotland once you've accepted an offer you can't accept any other, which sounds good but when we were selling our house last year we had 6 offers *obviously we accepted the highest. The girl then proceeded to miss every deadline we set to get paperwork signed. By this point the other prospective buyers have moved on so we were stuck with her. Didn't get tied up until 3 days b4 we were due to move in2 our new house.

 

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[Wayne370Z]

We got to move, at last, on the 27th May just a couple of weeks before the mortgage offer expired and are now residents of a small village just outside Lincoln..

All the waiting and worry and stress and living in a house half full of boxes are fading into distant memories and already got a refund from the insurance company as it`s a much cheaper post code area..

The DVLA, though, managed to change my "change of address" to a "change of owner" and added a former keeper to the V5 and cancelled the excise licence and direct debit.. and I think the wife`s right stitched me up with the promise of good weather if I moved, so far it`s been no better, or even worse, than rainy Manchester..

[350zedd]

Congratulations...hope you have many happy years there in your new des res

[MrLee]

I moved on March 30th. Sold mine, put offers in on 3 (lost out on all of them) and found the one I finally bought. Sale to completion was 10 weeks in total. Very stressful and very rushed due to the stamp duty law change!

[rabbitstew]

When I last moved, I knew there was no way I could possibly load all my stuff, motorbikes, cars etc. in one go. I had a 3 bedroom house full of stuff plus a triple garage/workshop full. I would have to either hire an industrial unit or something and move them into there first, or just buy my next house first, move my stuff over the course of several week before selling my original house. Option 2 had the advantage that I could then turn my old house into a nice looking show house & stage it nicely without having lots of clutter. So, thats what I ended up doing. It also meant there would be no chains involved from my side. However, it did mean somehow finding enough money for a deposit on the new house and being able to afford 2 mortgages for a few months.

 

Even then, the process wasnt smooth. We found a house we wanted, put an offer in which was accepted. I get mortgage all arranged and pay for surveys etc. I stuck my house on the market and accepted an offer on my house in the October. All going great. Then we are told the owner of the house we are buying has accepted a higher offer. I counter offer but cant match the other offer so thats that. We view another dozen houses and find somewhere else, put offer in which is accepted. Then the mortgage company starts kicking off about me having 2 mortgages - even though the joint monthly repayments were well within their "allowance". Apparently they just didnt like people having 2 mortgages. So I then had to get a financial adviser in to find me a bank who would. Then the buyer of my house changes his mind and backs out. Fortunately the house I was buying went through fine within 4 weeks which was quick. Having both houses meant I could renovate and decorate the new one whilst living in my other house and slowly move my stuff in bit by bit. I completely redecorated my old house, added new floorng & carpets throughout and it looked awesome. However, at the time the housing market started to drop (and it was also over Christmas when people dont like moving) so in the end it took 6 months before my old house sold. So I had 6 months of 2 mortgages, plus all the costs of renovating house 2 up, and the costs of getting house 1 looking mint. Then when my old house finally sold it annoyingly it went for 40k less than the one next door (which needed completely refurbishing) a couple of years earlier.

 

Now 5 years later the wife is on about moving again........ aaaarrrggghhhh!!!!!!

[Tricky-Ricky]

Deep breath... my saga started with taking two years to sell a flat in the south coast, took that long because it had a not overly long self repairing lease, which for those that don't know is used more on commercial property, and put your average buyer off big time, but is however not such a big deal in practice, but I laterally had to do a lot of research and convince the eventual buyer that its wasn't a problem.

 

We spent about a year looking for a property that we could afford in the south east, but eventually gave up because due to rising prices at the time, we could not afford the type property and situation that we wanted, so as we have a friend who lives in Norfolk, we thought we would shift our attention to the Lincolnshire and Norfolk areas,

 

Took a three day trip and looked at about 25 properties, at the end of this the wife had a meltdown and said I'm not moving, a month goes by while she calms down and rethinks it, and we start looking again in Norfolk, a property comes up that had first caught the wife eye a while before, but was taken off the market, anyway we book to look at another 10 houses the favourite included, which just happened to be the last view on the list.

As it turned out the wife loved it and I was quite impressed, so on the journey back we decided to make an offer, first one rejected but took the second, and that's where it all started..........

 

The people who we where buying from where a little strange, but seemed pleasant and initially helpful, and where happy to answer various questions from the wife regarding certain measurements for curtains etc., then the other parties wife suddenly got all odd and accused the wife of harassing here and declined any further help....WTF people are strange, she was not hassled in any way!

 

Anyway after a mammoth drawn out packing session with approx. 135 boxes filled... we did have a large Victorian two bed flat with a spare room as a workshop, we also where going to move some of out garden and the Koi from the pond, so it was a bit mental, luckily the wife has a big family who where happy to help us with a trip up the week before the move to dig a pond and erect a shed.

 

However before this could all go ahead we had a call from the local solicitor that we had decided to use for convenience, saying that we couldn't proceed because the property had a covenant on it saying the that we had to have resided in Norfolk for a year before we could go ahead.............well there was no way we where going to give in without a fight, so I spent some hours researching this covenant and after a a through dig and a few phone calls to local council and land registry, I discovered that the said covenant was no longer in force, so after doing a far better job of the convaeyanceing that the useless solicitor had done I corrected her, and we still ended up paying her bill, couldn't be bothered fighting that as well, but if it wasn't for my diligents we wouldn't have moved!

 

Needless to say I think we will be staying here for a while. Saga over!

Edited June 21, 2016 by Tricky-Ricky

[veilside z]

Glad you finally got it sorted. Unsure of how they couldn't locate the deeds, but as a call to the land registry confirms the owner the property sit on. Should there be any interest on it I.E Building Society Loan/ Mortgage , this is registered against it :)

[350zedd]

I discovered that the said covenant was no longer in force, so after doing a far better job of the convaeyanceing that the useless solicitor had done I corrected her, and we still ended up paying her bill, couldn't be bothered fighting that as well, but if it wasn't for my diligents we wouldn't have moved!

 

Needless to say I think we will be staying here for a while. Saga over!

 

Two words that compliment each other perfectly......"useless" and "solicitor"

[rabbitstew]

Glad you finally got it sorted. Unsure of how they couldn't locate the deeds, but as a call to the land registry confirms the owner the property sit on. Should there be any interest on it I.E Building Society Loan/ Mortgage , this is registered against it :)

 

One problem I had when I bought my last house is that any house which hasnt changed hands before a certain year, the land registry struggles to locate the deeds. They are all on computers these days, but my old house hadnt changed hands since 1969 when it was first built and so I too had a big struggle with that side of things. Fortunately all the properties which surround my boundaries had changed hands, so land registry knew what the borders of my plot was, but even so, when we obtained the original building plans & maps there was a difference in about 8 inches between the boundry the land registry expected and what our plans showed. This caused great problems as it would meant sending people out with tape measures etc. etc. so in the end I said that I couldnt care less over such a small difference, just go with what you have already.