Currently buying/selling a house? How is it going? READ MOD NOTE POST #1

Just shows how broke the system is. Nobody earned extra 150k in the last year.

30k increase between phases has been standard since before 2000

There is great south park episode kinda covers this well

I'm moving into a new self build that we just finished which is the reason I'm selling.

sellers probably couldn’t find a place to buy.

We’re looking in South Dublin and unless your house is sale agreed or on the market, you can’t make an offer on a house

nothing, he was useless and disinterested.

It took 9 months of pulling teeth with lenders, solicitors, and builders but my partner and I finally collected the keys to our first home yesterday

That to me is reasonable thing to ask to be fixed. If there was no evidence of leaks at viewing then it is totally reasonable to expect that to be fixed. Thats the whole point of the survey. You are not asking for a new roof. Just the leaks to be fixed.

I just did this end of sep so it’s still fresh in my head.

We were moving out of large 4 bed house, to another large 4 bed house about 25 mins away.

It was so stressful I haven’t recovered yet. Honestly I’m still exhausted and I don’t ever want to move house again.

The way we did it was firstly , I found out what bank our vendors and purchasers and solicitors were with as same bank mean immediate transfer.

Secondly, my solicitor drew down our mortgage 2 weeks too early but that meant our funds were ready to go.

For same day closing, our purchasers solicitor sent the money the evening before closing.the next morning the money was received and then we sent our funds as a same day transfer (before 12pm) to our vendors solicitor.

the only hold up was our vendors solicitor not checking their bank account until 5pm.

Luckily our vendors estate agent stayed open till after 6 so we could get our keys.

Practicality wise, closing day looked like - getting the movers early morning 8am and leaving the house by 12. We sat in the car for 6 hours driving around and going to the park and cafe waiting for a phone call to say our keys are ready.

The movers were charging by the hour since 8am so we ended up directing them to put all of our stuff in storage as we didn’t know if we would get the keys. We needed two 20ft containers. And 2 large moving vans to do 2 trips. It cost a fortune.

We ended up getting the keys late that evening with no furniture. We slept on the floor with some blankets.

The next day the movers were busy with other jobs so we didn’t get our stuff till about 10pm at night.

My advice is to have backup plan for 1 night.

We didn’t have a backup plan as we have pets and no family to stay with.

HTH

not an expert but that looks like plaster crack due to leakage..I would not be too worried if house ticks all the boxes. But risk is it maybe more severe with damage all the way inside ur house. Worth getting someone look at it separately if allowed.

This might be a silly question and is partly related to something an earlier post said but anyway - does one typically get a surveyor in when buying a new build? Or is the snag alone deemed sufficient?

I know the BCAR requirements are fairly stringent but is that enough to not have to worry about getting a surveyor in?

To report back…

We were lucky that the vendors accepted our bid subject to our own sale, and we got our house up and sale agreed quickly over the summer. Closing date was fairly problematic.

We have 2 small kids, and tried to sell and buy (closing both) on the same day. There was slippage from both the vendor (not having certs ready) and the purchaser (not having mortgage drawn down and funds ready). The closing date moved by 3 days in the end.

When it moved from Monday to Tuesday, our original movers were no longer available. Our second movers said they could do Tuesday, but not Wednesday or Thursday. They packed up on Monday, arrived on Tuesday morning, loaded up the two big trucks (beds and everything) but by lunchtime it was clear that we couldn't close. The moving company were very clear that they had to unload the trucks that day.

We were very very lucky - the vendors had already moved out, and through the estate agent they allowed us access to the house we were buying, despite not having closed, but only to allow us unload our stuff and "store" it in that house until we actually closed the purchase. Legally, they didn't have to do this, and I still don't know what we would have done if they had said no.

Cut a long story short, we couldn't stay that night in the old house, since no beds etc, and we couldn't stay in the new house since we had not yet actually closed, so we stayed with relatives. Then on the following day we closed our old house sale, but didn't close our new house purchase, due to the funds not clearing in time, so we technically did not own any house, and again had a night with relatives. The following day we closed the purchase.

Our solicitor was great at keeping both purchasers and vendors onside, but the pinch point was the movers, who were inflexible (understandably so). We really had to embrace the uncertainty for a few days, packing up trucks not knowing if we would get keys that day or not, and sending the kids to school in the morning and not knowing where we would be staying that night. All in all, do-able but very stressful.

Posting this reply sitting on my couch in my partner and I's first home.

It was a very long and stressful process with planning permission rejection, being outbid more that I can even recall but we both couldn't be happier to have a place to call our own.

What are people paying for standard surveys for average-sized houses, including VAT?