We've been pretty fortunate in our house buying and selling. The 'worst' problem we had was the estate agent telling us a potential buyer was rock solid and ready to go. Two weeks later the 'rock solid' buyer pulled out without explanation at which point the same estate agent said he always thought the potential purchaser was a time waster. Not long after that we changed agent.
Unfortunately our niece is having a very different experience. Sale of their house was agreed, mortgage for buyer in place (allegedly checked by agent) and exchange date set. Niece accepted a new job in the town they planned to move to and she actually moved up to stay with her Mum and started the new job. Her husband stayed in their old house. Literally 24 hours before the exchange the purchaser said they couldn't get a mortgage and pulled out. That was early November 2021 and the market then went flat. New offer received in March 2022 at £15k lower than the asking price. Suspicion that the agent had informed the prospective purchase of their situation. Refused the offer. June 2022 new offer of asking price accepted and completed in August 2022. Now living with her mother and started looking for new property just as Truss and Kwazimodo screwed the economy. They now can't afford the type of property they were looking at 12 months ago!
We once viewed a house owned by a weird reclusive sect. You can't b e reclusive if you want to sell a house but you can be weird. No furniture to speak of. A bookshelf of religious looking books and white walls. A blank canvas. I got the impression that they had children - God help them😐
We once viewed a house owned by a couple of dental technicians. The cellar was full of false teeth; they were boiling up some noxious smelling stuff, apparently endlessly, on the stove, and the walls were running with condensation. Just odd.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
The house had nothing but a sofa downstairs, upstairs there two bedrooms each with a king sized bed and a mirrored ceiling, and a bathroom with a tube of toothpaste, two toothbrushes and a loo with a low level cistern which was totally covered, top and sides, with Artex … 😳😶
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
One house we viewed was entirely lit by low red lighting and the ceilings had been artificially lowered. The garden was full of romantic secluded bowers. When we went upstairs we were told we couldn't view two of the bedrooms because the "girls were sleeping". We decided against fearing we might get too many uninvited callers....
My neighbour put his house up for sale, the buyers being two people each with a house to sell and they were moving in together for the first time. It turns out that the man was a Walter Mitty - excuse after excuse why he couldn’t sign including, and it was a total lie, his brother being very badly injured in a car crash. Eventually he pulled out of the deal saying he had patched things up with his wife.
Bob thought little more of it until there was a ring on the doorbell on what was to be completion date and he found on his doorstep the “other” woman who had sold her property and was looking to move in there and then. She had no idea the house was no longer for sale or the relationship was over.
Another story for those with knowledge of famous footballers of the 1970s. A work colleague went to view a 4 bedroomed detached house and the chap opened the door and announced with a flourish “Hi. I’m Frank Worthington”. It meant nothing. “Oh, hello. I’m Margaret Thomas,” she replied.
Imagine today an England centre forward living in a quite modest house on a housing estate.
Not odd @Liriodendron - r*ddy terrifying! Along with some of the other posts here. I've been pretty lucky with viewings, although when we were looking to buy a house [just before first daughter was born] we looked at one round here [terraced with a communal parking area to the rear] and the guy was full of his own importance about how he'd done this, that and the other to the property. We both reckoned his DIY skills had reduced the value a fair bit. He kept going on about how he had room to park 6 cars. I had to bite my tongue at that comment We hadn't wanted to view it, but the estate agent kept banging on about it being ideal, so we thought - ok. They tried that tactic with another house too, so needless to say - we didn't use that estate agent when selling! Similar to your niece's situation @KT53 - when selling the last house, the woman who put in an offer and kept assuring us that it would all be done and dusted by Christmas etc, then kept making excuses, turned out to be a real piece of work and a liar. She and her partner hadn't owned their own property long enough to sell it and be in a position to make an offer. [There's a loophole regarding sale of one property/buying another etc] It all came out eventually, and as it was a difficult situation for me to be in [I wasn't living in the property for reasons I won't go into here] we had to take her eventual, legal offer many months later - losing a whack in the process. It caused problems for me buying this house too, but fortunately it all worked out. I found out some other stuff about her by chance when the builder who quoted for my extension informed me of some of her other dodgy dealings, because he knew her.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
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Yes, we noticed it but the gas board couldn't find anything.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Bob thought little more of it until there was a ring on the doorbell on what was to be completion date and he found on his doorstep the “other” woman who had sold her property and was looking to move in there and then. She had no idea the house was no longer for sale or the relationship was over.
Another story for those with knowledge of famous footballers of the 1970s. A work colleague went to view a 4 bedroomed detached house and the chap opened the door and announced with a flourish “Hi. I’m Frank Worthington”. It meant nothing. “Oh, hello. I’m Margaret Thomas,” she replied.
Imagine today an England centre forward living in a quite modest house on a housing estate.
I've been pretty lucky with viewings, although when we were looking to buy a house [just before first daughter was born] we looked at one round here [terraced with a communal parking area to the rear] and the guy was full of his own importance about how he'd done this, that and the other to the property. We both reckoned his DIY skills had reduced the value a fair bit. He kept going on about how he had room to park 6 cars. I had to bite my tongue at that comment
We hadn't wanted to view it, but the estate agent kept banging on about it being ideal, so we thought - ok. They tried that tactic with another house too, so needless to say - we didn't use that estate agent when selling!
Similar to your niece's situation @KT53 - when selling the last house, the woman who put in an offer and kept assuring us that it would all be done and dusted by Christmas etc, then kept making excuses, turned out to be a real piece of work and a liar. She and her partner hadn't owned their own property long enough to sell it and be in a position to make an offer. [There's a loophole regarding sale of one property/buying another etc] It all came out eventually, and as it was a difficult situation for me to be in [I wasn't living in the property for reasons I won't go into here] we had to take her eventual, legal offer many months later - losing a whack in the process. It caused problems for me buying this house too, but fortunately it all worked out. I found out some other stuff about her by chance when the builder who quoted for my extension informed me of some of her other dodgy dealings, because he knew her.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...