Was hoping I wouldn't have to post in here but alas buying a property is a nightmare.
Long story but will try to shorten it as much as possible.
My mum and I each lived in separate flats, both very nice but about a year ago was mentioning to my mum i'd love a place with a garden to get a dog but funds didn't really allow (live in a top floor flat at the moment but the family house had 5 acres and grew up with several dogs but sold when my dad died). She's in her 60's and the block she lived in had a fairly old age group of which she was on the block's committee (new block and she had a fantastic top floor flat also) and she wasn't liking the politics. She is also having health issues and finding it difficult and suggested we both sell up and get a place together if we could find somewhere where we could have dual dwelling with a garden. I wasn't keen at first as i'm in my early 30's and although single don't want to limit myself my sharing a place with my mum after living on my own for so long. We came to the conclusion that if we could find a place that would allow us to live truly separately albeit not too far (grandma lives in a care home as in her 90's! and mum visits her most days so she didn't want to be too far - completely understandable) then we would do it. Mum put her place on the market first as her flat was a bit of a niche market i.e very top end and as I live in Hastings which doesn't have very high property prices, hers would be in a weird area where people could buy a nice 2 bed house for the price of her flat - we would borrow the rough value of my flat from relatives to pay back once we had found a place, bought it and then sell mine. We did this before we had found a place. Fast forward and my mum has a buyer who is willing to pay almost asking and everyone is advising us not to let the sale fall through as it had been on the market for 6 months. I agree.
We find a place that would be good (not perfect - very small garden) but separate living. Get to a certain point with that and turns out has massive issues, its new but has a septic tank which was bodged on install and would cost 20k + to fix, seller won't budge on price (at the top of our budget) and advised we should 'part ways'. Ok.
Continue searching and mum has to proceed with her sale or lose the buyer so she moves in with me in March. We find another place, fairly good location, decent sized garden but needs a complete refurb. Offer accepted but after getting some builders up to value the work required there are some underlying problems which will put us over budget and eat into all our savings. We pull out as would just be too much worry if other stuff was uncovered.
Move on another 2 months, mum is thinking she should just buy another flat and leave everything else as is. But! A new build comes on the market, we go see it and it is literally everything we wanted, 3 floors, bottom floor with separate entrance for me that has a big lounge, big bathroom and utility room easily converted into bedroom and then top 2 floors for my mum, but easily accessible if she needs help. Good sized garden but there's an extra piece of land behind it that the developer was refused permission to build on, we offer £5k over asking for the property plus the extra land and the offer is accepted. At this stage we are complete cash buyers as mum's proceeds plus borrowed means its just sitting in the bank. Properties need another 6 weeks to be finished but all good. Fantastic. Seller wants a quick sale, so quick they want to exchange within a week of the offer being agreed, we advise we still need to do searches etc but will exchange ASAP after. Whilst waiting for the searches we try to get everything else sorted but notice an odd trend of unanswered or incomplete questions, lack of plans etc we keep at it, searches come back, all good but we're still waiting for everything needed. We have a good solicitor who pointed out a few things that we wouldn't have noticed that definitely come across as strange (like the deposit after exchange will go to a very unusual place and may not be recoverable if the seller pulls out, unlikely but just plain weird). After speaking with the solicitor and the only neighbours to have moved in to the new builds turns out the woman who is the developer hasn't paid the builders in 2 months and they've walked and had to call it quits and the woman is very eccentric and doesn't seem very 'with it'. Also appears this is her first development and she really has no idea what she is doing. Construction has been going on for 3 years! and so appears in that time she never got paperwork in order ready to sell. Multiple requests to her solicitors and the estate agent trying to contact her has led to silence since 6th July. She does want to sell to us apparently but has ignored all communication from the estate agent who is also selling the other new properties she has. And to today, almost a month later, everything completely stalled, we did get some paperwork from her solicitor on the 29th after the estate agent emphasised to them that we may pull out but it was all useless and not what we asked for. Looking into her a bit more it seems as if she basically runs a lettings company (with terrible reviews) and may have a lot of financial issues, one of the key questions that our solicitor asked that was sent and ignored was around 'once the sale is complete please confirm there will be no debts on the property' which is very worrying. We would pull out except that we have been looking for about 8 months, viewed 50+ properties and this one is absolutely perfect for our unique requirements. Just to add insult to injury the documents received on the 29th while being completely useless for legal reasons did highlight that fact that the property we want to buy, number 1 is actually registered as number 4 with the council, and the only current people moved in are at what we and they think is number 4! When they ordered bins from the council they were delivered to our number 1. Complete amateur hour from this woman.
The estate agent to their credit has been brilliant, constant updates but we are at the point now where the next step is to write the estate agents an email basically saying if there are financial problems let us have it at a lower price and we will finish it ourselves or we will start reducing our price per week as my mum has all her stuff in storage costing around £75 per week plus our solicitor has warned that the continued chasing of info from their solicitors will result in extra (understandable) charges if it goes on much longer. The estate agent will then forward this to the seller who has refused to contact even them in a month. If the property wasn't perfect we would pull out but it is. I already have a buyer for mine (someone in the same block is ready to go, mortgage approved for just under market value but without the hassle of estate agent fees and advertising etc) so perfect.
I can't get my head around why this woman will not take our money! And its 5 months since my mum moved into my 2 bed flat and although we're fine its far from ideal!
Sorry for the wall of text but needed to vent, is very depressing. Asking my mum to just buy another flat would feel awful as since she has been here its been clear she does need some help and as long as I have my independence i've gotten over the taboo of 'moving back in with my mum in my 30's'.
