Although this should be titled “Incompetence!” because that’s what I’ve dealt with from start to finish…

In the UK there is a scheme known as Shared Ownership, designed to enable people to buy a house they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get a mortgage for. We purchased 60% of the house and subsequently paid rent on the remaining 40%. Sounds simple, right? In theory it is, it’s all absolutely fine until you go to sell the fucking thing then there are a whole bunch of so-called costs that NOBODY tells you about. Couple that with useless Estate Agents and utterly incompetent Solicitors and that was one helluva stressful transaction. So, strap yourselves in, here’s how it went…

After spending s number of nights sleeping downstairs and washing in the downstairs WC it became clear that unless we were to put in a stairlift that we needed to live in a single storey bungalow. So I contacted the Estate Agent that we purchased the house through and got it put on the market. BUT not before letting the HA know that we were selling up at which point they then disclosed that I would be required to pay a for a RICS Valuation (by a chartered surveyor) for the princely sum of £300 AND I’d have to pay for the professional photographs and floorplan creation for THEM to use (which I would have NO rights to so I could not have copies or use them in any way?!). The fucking cheek!! There would later be a further cost upon sale of £200 for a “Management Pack” they would supply to our Solicitors, the contents of which remain a mystery to me. So before I even began I was already £600 deep, soon to be £800… as if moving house wasn’t expensive enough!! Anyway, turns out choosing the original Estate Agent was a mistake, they turned out to be lazy procrastinators who simply listed the property and then sat on their sorry asses waiting to see if anyone called up interested. Multiple calls from me complaining resulted in them printing an ad in the local paper, which again only resulted in them sitting and waiting. I mean come on, what do you have to do to get someone to fucking DO something? Literally everyone wants paying for doing fuck all these days. Anyway, someone DID call only they were denied a viewing on the property because their house wasn’t yet sold, meaning they weren’t “proceedable” 🙄 Luckily those people WERE proactive and came for a little walk around the estate one Sunday afternoon and bumped into my husband who promptly invited them in. Their house went on the market the following week and sold promptly meaning they were now proceedable and so our house was “Sold”. That was on 22^nd July… 7 months after I originally put it on the market.

Finally, we were off the mark! We instruct a solicitor and hit the ground running. Only, it was never gonna be that simple. Turned out the solicitors we used (at the HA’s request/recommendation) when we bought it were absolute dogshit, as I remembered actually, I recalled it being a very stressful time, and they actually hadn’t completed the addition of our house to the Land Registry! I shit you not, when I spoke to them they were aware and there was a reason… there was a tiny 2ft wide section of fence joining our rear boundary fence to the back of our garage that was 30cm too far back. 30cm!! So in order to sell my house I had to first get the house added to the Land Registry and in order to do that I had to get the fence moved to the correct place. I contacted the builder of the house and after a week of fucking about they finally came and moved the stupidly small fence the stupidly small distance into the correct position. Sent evidence to the Solicitors who sent it to the LR who, TWO WEEKS later sent me the paperwork too show we were finally done. Thank the Lord!

Only, that wasn’t the end of it. Our house, like all the others on the estate, was subject to a Deed of Covenant stating that we would not damage the nearby railway, which the new owners had to agree to and sign. Easy you’d think. WRONG! Apparently nobody had a copy of this Deed so I had to dig one out via the HA. Then the Railway’s Solicitors had to approve it before it was sent to the new owners for signatory – even though they fucking wrote it in the first place!? The problem with that is that the Railway use a corporate law firm, after a week of them having the document for approval no one had heard anything so once again I had to put in the legwork. A quick Google search gave me the Senior Partners name and email address, I thought “what have I got to lose?” and sent him an email. It may have been slightly “beggy” but the people we had bought our bungalow from were starting to get twitchy so I had to do something. Low and behold I got a reply! AND the document was approved the following day. For a price.. £660!! Six hundred and sixty fucking quid to change the name on a piece of paper! No wonder corporate lawyers are so well off, what a fucking joke! Naturally our buyers were upset about it but they scraped together the money and that obstacle was finally out of the way.

At last we were ready to exchange, on the 6^thDecember. 11 looong months after putting the house on the market. We were in a chain and the bottom of  the chain were first time buyers, in no rush and clearly unaware that if you don’t badger your solicitor they’ll happily sit doing nothing so exchange day was just as fraught with the exchange not actually happening until 3.50pm– another 10 mins and that window would have been missed and it would have rolled over to the following Monday! Bungalow owner was getting herself in a flap and threatening to pull out if the exchange didn’t happen, actually messaging me in capital letters! Everything in me was riled up, I needed that bungalow more than anyone seemed to understand and this has been seriously stressful already so even though my first instinct was to react with a swift “go fuck yourself” I HAD to restrain myself and keep the peace if I were to have any hope of getting this done.

Completion day was no better, 13^th December and we were still waiting at 3pm. The husband was now in charge, I’d done my bit for the past 11 months so this was all him but I was still the one on the phone all day chasing round for this money to start moving. 3.30pm and the call finally came and the sale/purchase was complete.

Told you to strap yourselves in! Honestly, out of all the houses we have sold and bought in the last 13-14 years this one really tested me. I think you all know by now, I’m not a patient person but this one took the biscuit! Stress is reportedly the worst thing for MS and I think I’ve had a lifetime of it just in this one transaction and all because of the sheer incompetence of other “professionals” – not something I tolerate well at the best of times but it held such weight this time.

Next up, will be Bungalow Life… hang tight for that one 😘