Buying a house is one of the most stressful life events you can go through. Nothing seems certain, there are lots of unexpected costs, things can fall through and there’s little control over the entire process. It’s the most expensive asset you have, so it’s not surprising that the home-buying process is lengthy and one of the most stressful things you will do,
As I am going through the house-buying process myself at the moment, and my stress levels are through the roof, I’ve heard so many stories from others of how things have been stressful for them and the impact it can have on your mental health. I wanted to talk about why buying a house is so stressful to help those interested in buying a house soon understand the possible issues they may come across, so they can prepare themselves for a stressful situation.
Key Stress Factors in Home Buying
Selling Your House
If you have your own home to sell before you buy your next home, this adds an extra layer of stress compared to being a first-time buyer. First, you have to pick an estate agent (100% recommend local estate agents!), then put your house on the market. Then you spend the next few weeks trying to make your house look clean, tidy and clutter-free for viewings.
The stressful part is the emotional cycle of having hope that potential buyers will put an offer in, only for those hopes to be dashed when you get bad feedback saying that the viewers will not put an offer in.
Once you do get an offer, it’s often below the amount you want to accept so you have to negotiate which may take a few days. Once you accept an offer, you can finally sigh in relief and start finding a home to move to. Remember that this is only actually the first step.
Finding Your Dream Home
The next step is to find your dream home. Once you have sold your home and know what you can afford, you can start viewing properties.
Again, if you are selling your house, here is where there’s a bit more stress as there is some pressure to find your onward purchase quickly so your buyer doesn’t get fed up of waiting and pull out! Unless you are willing to go into rented or stay with family, you can’t sell your home to your buyer until you have found somewhere to buy. Then, those selling that home to you have to do the same. This continues on until the top house is chain-free – meaning nobody lives there or there isn’t another property to see (eg, the seller may be moving in with a partner, or into an old people’s home).
Or you may have seen your dream home on the market but have been unable to view or put an offer in as you haven’t sold your home yet,
Finding your home is a minefield. You may have features that are a must-have’s for you, but these may be out of your price range. It’s important to be realistic and unless you are willing to look in a wide range of areas, you may have to make some compromises. Once you have seen a house that looks ideal, there’s always the worry that someone else will come along and offer it before you get your shot!
Getting An Offer Accepted
Once you’ve seen the home you want to put an offer in on, you can put the offer in and wait for a response. If you’re unlucky like us, you may put an offer in on Good Friday and then have to wait until the following Tuesday due to the bank holiday to get an answer! Waiting to hear about your offer seems to take ages.
There are many things that you are up against here:
- They might want more money than you have offered
- They might have more viewings so want you to wait until they’ve taken place
- Someone may offer more than you
- Someone may be in a better position for you and a more desirable buyer – eg first time buyers who don’t have a property to sell or a cash buyer.
If your offer gets accepted, the next step is swapping solicitors’ details, having your finances checked and then finally the house can come off the market! Relief!
Financial planning and mortgage approval
After finding the right property comes the challenge of sorting out your finances and getting a mortgage approved. It’s not just about having enough money saved; it’s also grappling with loan eligibility, interest rate changes, and ensuring your credit score is in good shape. A good financial advisor will help you through this process. Do not try and do this alone!
Mortgage brokers can tell you what you can borrow and have access to the best rates. A lot are free because they get a commission from the bank you get a mortgage from. You should do this work at the start of the process, so that when you are looking at houses, you know they are within your budget.
Getting your mortgage approved feels stressful. One major block is the mortgage valuation and for some, this can be the biggest cause of stress. This is where the bank must value the property to ensure it’s worth what you are paying. This is because if you fail to make payments and the bank takes the house back, they need to be able to sell it without losing money. If the bank says the house is worth less than the price you have offered, you can either try a new mortgage company or ask the seller to reduce the price. If the seller won’t reduce the price, the only other option is to try and make up the difference in cash yourself – but this can be thousands. Sometimes this causes a property purchase to fall through.
Legal processes and paperwork
Now, the legal process is a major stress factor. It’s hard to understand the sheer amount of admin and important documents your conveyancer has to deal with when you are buying a new house.
Conveyancing solicitors get a lot of bad press as they generally have many cases at once and don’t always communicate well. Things can be slow and you spend a lot of time waiting for solicitors to pass information between each other.
To start with, you have to do the initial paperwork and then your seller will send a pack to their solicitor, who will then use this to draw up the draft contract. This then gets sent to your solicitor who will go through it and raise any enquiries based on this information. These enquiries must be solved for you to complete the purchase.
Your solicitor will also apply for searches, which look at things such as flood risk, planning permission and any issues and sewers. You’ll also get a copy of the title deeds to ensure the boundaries of the land are correct.
Multiple things can go wrong here.
- searches show something worrying
- land registry incorrect
- enquiries take a long time to resolve
Surveys
Getting a survey done is another thing that causes issues. It’s up to the buyer to pay for the survey. This is an inspection where someone looks at a property to see it has any major issues that will cost you money.
This can be another stumbling block there may be structural issues or things that are expensive to resolve. This can cause viewers to walk away, or try and renegotiate the price. The negotiation process is just another back-and-forth waiting game while you worry about the ther party pulling out. t
Coordination of timelines
Coordinating sale and purchase timelines can turn into a real headache. In England, the rush is on because the exchange and completion date can happen on the same day. This piles on the pressure for everyone involved as you could be due to moving, have packed, have paid removals but not actually got the offer under contract If someone pulls out last minute, then it’s all for nothing! The most ideal situation is to have exchanged contracts a week or two before the completion date.
The whole chain also has to agree on a moving day. If things are taking too long, people in the chain may put the pressure on to move things along, by threatening to pull out if they don’t see progress. On the flip side, someone may wish to delay the completion, causing tensions and fear of the sale failing.
Anyone can drop out before exchange
One of the key stressors is that anyone can pull out at any time, running the whole process. The seller may decide not to sell anymore, the buyer may decide they don’t love the house enough, or someone else in the chain may change their mind or have a change in circumstance and it impacts the whole chain. Then you lose any money you have spent on surveys or legal fees. It cost us over £3000 when our house fell through.
The impact it has on you.
The top causes of stress comes from the fact that it could fall through at any moment. It’s an uncomfortable feeling as it takes months for the process to complete, so you have weeks and weeks of it in the back of your mind that it may fall apart. Even if the process is a smooth one, there’s always that doubt in your mind. When we bought our new build, the process was much simpler as it didn’t rely on a chain, even though we faced unexpected delays, the house sale was never going to fall through
It’s an awful feeling not knowing where you will be living. It’s like being in limbo and it impacts the plans you make due to the amount of time it takes to complete the process. The home-buying journey is not simple! It might seem trivial, but not knowing what’s happening with our situation is impacting my son’s birthday – we can’t plan what we will do on his birthday and we don’t have space to get him the gifts we wanted to in this house. We haven’t made plans during the holidays as we expected to be moving, we’ve spent our free time doing house admin, organising, packing, sorting movers, sorting schools – it’s a lot of emotional energy and emotional investment. I’ve spent hours looking at pictures of the house and looking online planning for each room.
There’s not only the loss of money but the loss of time. You are left feeling unsettled and unable to move on with your life as any plans you want to make are met with ‘what if we’re moving then’. There are so many industry professionals involved, estate agents, mortgage advisors, surveyors, schools, movers, insurance brokers – you feel deeply entwined and completely devoted to the new house and the idea that he can fall apart at any moment is devesting, but very real.
So if you are buying a new property, I hope your homebuying process is more straightforward than ours. It’s a stressful event but hopefully, you will find your perfect property and it’ll all work out well in the end. It’s one of the most exciting experiences if your adult life but also stressful. Hope you get to completion day soon and can move into your new home.
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