House Selling, one of lifes little traumas!

[mick2me 3,033]

They say that Moving is one of the traumatic experiences in life.

Buying one house and selling another.

I tend to agree.

Upping sticks and moving is nearly as bad as some of lifes other dramas,

We just completed and handed the keys over for our old house.

Great feeling to have this completed, though our estate agent and solicitor have been very good.

What are your experiences of moving house?

[darkazana 1,736]

Our last experience was in March. Put the house on the market and had a buyer in a week. An elderly lady who we felt the house was too big for, and to be fair so did she. She brought a friend round who insisted it was perfect for her, so she put in an offer which we accepted. We then had a week to find another house before we came up to Scotland for the summer, as our buyer wanted to complete asap. Found a house that we really liked and our offer was accepted. So it was all systems go to get everything sorted.

We were on the verge of exchanging contracts when we had a call from our estate agents that the old dear had pulled out saying that we were taking too long to complete...this was 4 weeks after she had first viewed!! We think she had had second thoughts.

Still we have now decided to stay put, and I am pleased as I really like where we are, and are applying some TLC to our abode, but it was a shame for the people we were buying from, and they still haven't sold. Fortunately we didn't lose an awful lot, maybe a couple of hundred quid, but only just and it could have been an awful lot more, with no come back on the buyer.

Would have been a different story up here in Scotland where it would have been binding and the buyer would have been picking up our costs I believe.

[Pixie 162]

I'm with the council.

But moving house we was messed around a fair bit, being told a date for moving... Then the house wasn't 'ready' then another date, again not ready. In the end I gave up with packing half way through, wish I hadn't cos I got a call saying we could get the keys on Friday if we return them the Monday morning as usually you get your keys on the tuesday. So we decided to try and do it within the day because that's when we had the van - nightmare, I'm running around behind people ramming everything into boxes and bin liners.

Then the new house, the living room and back room were full of furniture and boxes. Took about 6 weeks to completely unpack and remove all the boxes from the room.

Well of lived here a year in beginning of Oct, I still havrnt redecorated the stairs/landing or our bedroom! Took us 6months to get carpet on the stairs.

I don't fancy going through the whole packing and unpacking boxes again or decorating all over again any time soon. Although we are thinking about putting money aside and saving for a % of a deposit and buying a place, but not entirely sure if were ready or cab afford a mortgage just yet.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

We still have a lot of stuff in boxes at the back of my workshop, hopefully we will be able to unpack them before Christmas...Been back there about 13 years now. Once I finish the Master bedroom and bathroom, we can get the boxes down here.

[Pixie 162]

Oooh you might find things you forgot you had! My partner found a couple of old suitcases and found clothes he accused me of throwing out, plus a couple of things he forgot he had. He was like a kid at Christmas!

[DAVIDW 1,705]

Nightmare , Its dam hard work , though its more than 20 years since we moved to our present one .

Distance wasn't a problem as it was only about half a mile from the previous house but someone in the chain wanted it to happen before Christmas of that year and so we ended up moving 13th December , which didn't please me , as we ran a busy shop at the time and that was our peak time .

On the day , we finally got all the boxes sorted into the right rooms and beds ready for the kids by about 9pm on a perishing night but couldn't figure out the heating system .

Worn out , we then let our Westie dog out into the back garden for his final pee of the day . After a few minutes he came trotting back in , looking pleased with himself but covered in an evil smelling green slime .....guess it was fox poo !

Try getting that off a white dog with cold water from a watering can outside, on a pitch black , freezing night and then trying to dry him before we could go to bed . Yuk .

Trouble is we now need to downsize but we have so much stuff , including stuff from a closed business that I have no idea how we will do it .

SWMBO spends all her time on Rightmove, looking at houses , a bit nearer to the grandkids but the thought of sorting all this cr*p out puts me off completely .

[Beefsteak 305]

I still have a box of unused wedding presents that have been in a corner of our bedroom for 13 years! They weren't needed in the old house and stayed in the box when we moved two years later, and have just sort of stayed there gathering dust. I know there's a set of table cloth and matching napkins and a wind up alarm clock in there as these came from friends of mine, but the rest is an absolute mystery.

I may just go have a looksee in a minute !

[poohbear 1,360]

House moving is no problem whatsoever...until the word 'Solicitor' enters the equation.You know who I mean...those people who slow the whole process down to make it look as if they're earning their rip off fees. Luckily they don't moonlight as car mechanics,otherwise changing a set of plugs would take a fortnight.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

There's a lot of stuff I'm missing, but have to be in one of the boxes.

[Beefsteak 305]

The actual move didn't really cause much of a problem as we didn't have a lot ! Just two trips in my 7.5 tonne truck with the father in law and I doing the donkey work. He says to this day that if ever we move again he'll pay for it !

The problem we had was with selling the old house, which was a housing association job. I'm convinced that if you're a good regular payer they don't want you to go, and do their damndest to discourage buyers. It was on the market for just over a year, in that time we had three folks put in an offer only for "Harbour Housing" to mess them about so much that they pulled out.

We finally sold it after we'd bought and moved to the new place. "Harbour Housing" finally getting the message that we weren't going to stay there! And the funny thing was, that it was sold within a month! 'Quele Suprise'

[Cliff Ton 10,568]

I'm amazed no-one has (so far) mentioned Estate Agents on this subject. Some are ok, but some are useless. I've encountered both over the years via a number of house moves.

The usual question is 'what do they do to earn their money'. From experience I can say that the good ones earn it by sorting out the mess left by the useless ones.

I know we don't often do a name-and-shame on this site, but when I put a place on the market using estate agents FHP, it sold despite them, not because of them. And when I wrote a letter of complaint, I didn't even get a standard automatic letter as a reply.

Congratulations to Bonfields in West Bridgford who sorted out the mess which FHP caused.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Estate agents over here work on commission, costs nothing to list a house. When the house sells, the agent gets a commission from 2-10% which is agreed upon on the listing contract.

Lawyers aren't usually involved in property sales in the US, we have title companies who do the property searches. Part of their charges are for "Title Insurance", that covers you the buyer if the Title Company screws up.

So you list your house for $100,000, you agree to a commission, lets say 10%, so the real estate agency gets $10,000, the buyer has closing costs, which vary. The $10,000 covers advertising, overheads, ie the costs of showing the property, paper work etc...

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

I should also mention, a closing can be done within a few days here once the contracts are signed and the Title Company clears title.

[StephenFord 866]

We've got ours on the market at the moment - moving the rural Shropshire, hopefully around January. We've also got stuff that hasn't been unpacked since we moved 10 years ago - and that was a traumatic experience. We came into temporary accommodation down here, with sale of the house in Lincolnshire about a week away from completion (we thought). Then our buyers rang (very apologetically) to say that a crack in the rendering seemed to have opened up since the previous time they had been there. We dashed up in a panic, and sure enough it had - a hairline crack was a good 3/4 of an inch wide. Arrrrggggh ! Insurance company took a look and said, "Ground shrinkage...will need strain gauges for a few months...then decide what to do." FORTUNATELY the buyers had fallen in love with house. (I would have walked away in their situation). They asked if they could rent it from us until the remedial work was done. That funded our temporary accommodation and they completed 11 months later, and we bought the present house a couple of months after that. Even then, we only just made it. The previous owner of our house was suffering from Alzheimers, and we were buying from his son in law, who had power of attorney. The owner himself died 10 days after we had completed. If he had died a fortnight earlier, I assume the power of attorney would have lapsed, causing further delays as the house would have had to be disposed of as part of his estate. We're hoping this time won't be so fraught!

[MELTONSTILTON 452]

My wife and I have never brought a house, when we got married we were living in a rented flat, and then moved into her grandmothers house, because when she died, my wife inherited it.

But moving was a nightmare, we washed out a horsebox and used that as the removal van, because a group of friends and family said they would help us move.

On the big day all where there eager to go, and the van was full of diesel, well it was like a mad house, when they started, tables going one way, chairs another, the sofa went down a flight of stairs on its own, along with a grandfather clock, a box of glasses with fragile glass wrote on it was crushed, along with a box of food and some cartons and bottles of drink, so when we got to our new home, all the cartons of fruit juice were flat and the juice had ran into several boxes of clothing, sheets and table cloths, we even found some boxes and bags missing, because, someone thought they were rubbish and had took them to the tip, so we had to go there, to get them back again.

I have said to my wife next time we move it will be a removal company, and not with friends and family.................

[LizzieM 9,540]

It was August 2001. We'd been in our previous house for 12 years and as our sons had moved out we got the agent round to value the place and said we'd put it on the market the following May when the garden looked at its best. A week later the agent rang to say that he had a family wanting to view our house, they were renting for 6 months so we had plenty of time to work out where we would move to if they were interested. They came long, loved it and offered the asking price, saying that they would like a quick exchange but 6 month completion. That suited us and we agreed.

Two weeks later 9/11 happened. Our buyer had just started his new job as the top man of BAA, he was a worried man, very worried! The weeks dragged on and he finally came round to tell us that they didn't want our house after all. We weren't too bothered and took it off the market til the following May, as originally planned anyway. It then took us 2 years to sell the property and when we did get a buyer he wanted to move in 6 weeks later! Well it was a big house with lots of outbuildings full of stuff accumulated over the years of a growing family. We had 2 skips in the driveway and a bonfire going for a week. The biggest panic was finding a place to move to in such a short time and as well as having to pack everything we were up here in Notts (2 hr journey each way) viewing about 8 properties a day. It all worked out well in the end and we've had 9 happy years back in Notts.

[mick2me 3,033]

Estate Agents.

Nottingham Property Services (Nottingham Building Society) have dealt with my last two sales. They have been excellent.

Frank Innes Nottingham... NEVER touch with a bargepole!

We took our first house off sale with them after it being on sale for months, gave it to the Nottingham, who not only sold it for us within a few weeks but had several buyers outbidding each other to buy it.

[banjo48 928]

When we emigrated we had had our house on the market for 3 months with no joy, so after a discussion with the agent and my mum and brother it was decided we would leave the house up for sale and mum would pop in 2 or 3 times a week to keep it tidy etc.

Luckily no mortgage as I had paid it off earlier.

A few weeks later we had a phone call to say there had been a gale and the garden wall had blown over ! luckily we had decided to keep basic insurance on it, but due to being empty at the time the claim was minimal.

My brother was a brickie so put the wall back up for us free of charge, just the cost of the new bricks, sand and cement.

A few months later we had an offer but that fell through due to the buying chain.

Anyway a year later we were still awaiting the sale and we were basically unsettled in oz, well my wife was ! so we decided to take a holiday on the West coast to Perth, we had been living in Melbourne in a rental.

Before the holiday we had almost decided to give it all away and return to the uk back to our house, but while we were in Perth, which my wife loved, (she hated Melbourne) we heard we had sold the house ! and it was a quick sale.

It was almost as if fate had intervened, so we packed all our stuff again and moved from one side of oz to the other, over 4000 klms !

[denshaw 2,880]

The estate agents are coming round today to take photo's, time to move on. Been in this house for 31 years.

[Fynger 841]

A lot of work....now to find everything again.

[DAVIDW 1,705]

Denshaw , downsizing ?

Be interested as to how you get on . We need to downsize but have so much stuff I don't know how we will ever do it !

[Fynger 841]

we downsized with a lot of stuff.

[Limey 242]

We downsized - last February and there is still stuff we cannot find, and unopened boxes. We had to buy a barn to store the stuff we don't have room for! So much for downsizing - I now own more land that ever before in my life - COMBINED!

[denshaw 2,880]

When you sell a house in England you now need an EPC energy performance certificate, the estate agent recommended a company who were charging £114, looked on tinternet £39.

[mick2me 3,033]

Mine was about 70 quid!