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What a funny old week!
If you didn’t see it in an earlier blog, I’d written about how Lee and I have decided to house hunt. As we’re due to get married on 31st July (!!!!), we’d always said we would househunt soon afterwards. However, as lockdown has given us copious amounts of time to spare, we decided to at least get the wheels in motion with regards to getting a mortgage in principle and having a look at the houses that are out there.
Well, cut to a week later, we’ve put an offer in on a house that we love!
“Wonderful!” I hear you cry! Yes, we were excited too, despite the fact that it was all happening very quickly and rather close to the wedding.
Now, I should set the scene a little too… There were two properties available (next door to each other): one was refurbed and the other was still in its original condition. We viewed both on Sunday. The vendor owned both houses so he was able to show us both.
We saw the refurbed house first which was the one we liked most. It was lovely and perfect for our family home. We then saw the other property but the vendor even asked us if we wanted to go back to the first house as he could tell we weren’t as keen. So, we looked around the property again. If we were playing poker, we’d have been conned out of all of our money – the vendor could tell we were excited and swiftly informed us that we needed to put an offer in ASAP as there was one coming first thing on Tuesday for the house next door. We were a little bemused by this – surely, having two separate offers on two separate houses meant that both of his houses would be sold… and, therefore… more money?
Right??
Wrong!! He picked up on our confusion and proceeded to tell us that, depending on which house sold first, he would take the other off the market.
Right, well, this was a game-changer and we didn’t want to lose the house. So, we raced to put an offer in the following day, even though it was a bank holiday and knew the estate agents would be closed. Emailing our offer was our only hope but we loved the house so much. We even supplied our ‘rents with PPE and took them along on Monday for a cheeky look around with the vendor. The vendor was even messaging us during the day to see if we would definitely be putting an offer in.
However, whilst we were viewing the property for the second time (sorry if I’m muddling but that’s exactly how it played out and exactly how we felt!) and the vendor seemed to almost change his tone and attitude with us. All of a sudden, he started telling us about another property (yes, a third!) that he was refurbishing on another road but on the same estate. His words were, “it’s exactly the same as this house… it’s a mirror image… except there is no conservatory… it’s £15k cheaper than this one so you might want that one”. Now, to be honest, the conservatory isn’t a dealbreaker as we’ve never been particularly bothered about having one but it was a nice Brucey Bonus that the house we loved had one.
Anyway, we came away from the house feeling more determined to put in a strong offer the following day. Even our parents were impressed with the house too so it seemed like an all-round winner.
So… Tuesday! After a day of chasing them, we spoke to the estate agents and had our first two offers rejected (naturally! It happens and we know this!) but he asked if we would go up to a certain value and we accepted. The estate agent informed us that she would speak to the vendor the following morning as it was the end of the day and she was going home.
We didn’t know what to do. We wanted to celebrate but had a niggling feeling that something just was not right.
And it wasn’t!!
Wednesday… after more of chasing the estate agent, she finally called us back with information from the vendor. We were waiting for her to say “the vendor is happy that you’ve agreed a price so let’s get the ball rolling”. Instead, she said, “I’ve spoken to the vendor and I’m a bit confused… he’s said that he has accepted your offer but he actually wants the house for himself. He has a third property that he is refurbishing and that should be going on the market in about three weeks. He doesn’t want to live in that house though – he wants the house that you want. So, if his other house doesn’t sell, he will sell this one to you and he will begrudgingly live in the third property. If it does sell, you don’t get the house.”
*stunned silence*
So, basically, the vendor wants to keep us dangling in case things don’t work out in his favour. In the meantime, we’re expected to hope that his other house doesn’t sell.
Have you heard of anything more bizarre when it comes to buying/selling property? Even the estate agent was baffled by it all. We don’t even know if this is a case of being gazumped!! (Best word ever, by the way!)
Hopefully, we will have a better experience from now on but what a way to kickstart house hunting! Now that we’ve calmed down a bit and wrapped our heads around what has happened, we’re back to feeling excited about looking for potential properties.
However, I think I need a large glass of wine right now…
Loula Bella xoxo
NB. Our house is not the one in the featured image! We live in the UK and are not millionaires! ?