House buying Rollercoaster

I think it is fair to say that most everyone these days agrees that our system for buying and selling houses is fatally flawed and, frankly, pretty rubbish! Nowhere else in the world has the insane system where you wait months after agreeing a deal to be legally bound into the contract, and where inevitable unmoral tactics are so very common.

Recently, I have been on the receiving end of the flaws in the system. My mum recently saw and fell in love in love with a beautiful new house in a cute little village near where I grew up. So she decided to put her house on the market and try and buy it. Put it on the market she did and a couple of weeks later she had a couple round who brought their little girl back the same day as they first saw the house for a second viewing. An offer followed - low, but we negotiated. A couple of days later we were settled on a deal everyone seemed happy with. The couple were in rented accomodation so the sale seemed pretty safe. We paid a reservation fee on the new house and my mum began planning where she would put furniture, pictures, crockery etc.!

A week later we got a call from the estate agents. The couple had changed their mind about the house after deciding they wanted to do too much work to it. Disaster. My mum was obviously very disappointed. After gearing herself up to move she was suddenly faced with having to readjust to most likely having to stay put. Of course this is a common thing in our house buying system - some might say even inevitable in the current economical situations - everyone is unwilling to commit to large purchases.

Today I got a call saying that the couple had had a further change of heart and would like to reinstate their original offer. I must admit that my reaction to this was to laugh - surely it takes an unbelievable lack of careful thought to see a house, decide you want it, put in an offer, then think it through and decide you don't want to buy the house, then think that through and decide you do want the house. Surely somewhere someone should have told them to think first and offer later.

Of course the dilemma now is simple. If my mum wants the new house she must trust people who have already let her down not to do so again, and accept their offer. However, she won't be safe for several weeks and in the meantime will have to shell out 1000s in surveys, solicitors fee etc. The risk is that these people were playing a game all along - pulling us into the purchase before pulling out in the hope that we would drop the price. They could, of course, get right the way to the day of exchange and then drop the price they will pay by 10,000, or more.

All in all, it is a tricky business this house buying lark. After all this I think I have learnt my lesson - never get emotionally involved in a house until you have the keys in your hand. Being  me of course this is difficult to do - I would never consider buying a house I wasn't emotionally attached to as it wouldn't be the house for me if I didn't love it. So basically - the property system sucks. But then I knew that already. But what I didn't know before was that a stream at the bottom of the garden is amazingly sweet and peaceful.....!