Our attempt at house buying and real estate scum

We were married 4th May 2009 at County Hall in London. This blog is to document our 1st year of marriage and the adventures that go with it!

Since we got back from our lovely 5 day honeymoon cruise around the Med, we have been trying to buy our first flat.

Everyone said 'it's a buyers market' and 'it's so cheap at the moment'. Enthused, we embarked on research and viewings galore. We leaped over the first hurdle - we were approved for a mortgage straight away. We were signed up to every real estate alert known to mankind. Everyday, 50+ emails of properties in our target area (essentially anywhere in zone 2 in London, less than 10 min walk to a tube) came through. We thought we were being pretty flexible - a big 1 bed or a 2 bed, for under 200k, preferably under 175k (the no stamp duty mark) and wide range of areas we were interested in. We met dozens of estate agents and listened to same 'sales talk' at the dozens of viewings we had. Our Saturdays and weeknights were consumed.

5 months later, 1 auction bid, 9 offers made and 5k in legal fees, we still do not have a home.

Out of the 9 offers:

• 3 were rejected for being too low
• 2 accepted but then we pulled out because the real estate didn't mention the block was to be demolished sometime in the near future (yes, its amazing this happened on 2 different flats)
• 1 accepted and was 2 days before completion before there was a massive leak and the ceiling fell in
• 1 accepted (after fierce bidding war in which we had to go 5k over asking price) and then it was revealed ( 3 days before completion) that the real estate agents had lied and told us the 18k owing on the property for block service work would be paid by the vendor. The vendor had no intention of paying.
• 1 accepted and then we pulled out due to emotional heartbreak (more on this later)
• 1 accepted and then gazumped (but only after the 1st day, so no real harm)

But... The real clincher in the whole journey happened this week.

The flat in Fulham that the Real Estate agents blatantly lied about the 18k owing was a reposession and our absolute favourite flat of them all. From the moment (3 days before completion) we found out about the lie, we fought every which way to try and convince the bank's solicitors that it wasn't worth 18k more just because the block had had its rood fixed. 3 weeks later, Darren sent one final heart-strings pulling email to them, giving them a deadline of Wednesday to get back to us.

On Friday, we received an email from our solicitor with the news that the bank's solicitors had agreed to take 14k off the price! Yippee! Huge celebrations - this meant we were only going to be 4k out of pocket - but in reality because the price dropped to 175 it meant we saved 1800 on stamp duty PLUS didn't lose the 2k in legals we had already spent on the property. It was an exciting day! We couldn't believe they'd actually responded to us! We spent the weekend living the dream again - looking at sofas and planning bathroom alterations.

Immediately on Friday we went to get our mortgage offer amended. Now all we had to do was wait for the offer to be in writing and then our solicitor could exchange immediately.

On Tuesday, our mortgage offer arrived in the post.

Our solicitor went to exchange. Only to be told there had been a higher offer.

After 4 weeks of to-and-froing with solicitors exclusively and the real estate agent not showing the property - they had 'accidently' shown someone who decided to make the offer just before we were about to exchange. Their offer was 180k. 5k over ours.

It went to final bids by 3pm. We went up to 180k, but couldn't go any higher. At 4.30pm we had lost. We were devastated. To have the lost the property one time was upsetting, but a second time was heartbreaking and seemed so unfair.

We still have no idea how it went from the bank's solicitors liaising with us directly and offering US 175k on Friday to someone else seeing the flat and making an offer (knowing about the 18k owing) and getting the property Tuesday when we were going to exchange. We are convinced that the person is connected to the real estate agents. There is something distinctly fishy and we suspect the estate agents.

So - its name and shame time. The real estate agents involved, who we are going to take legal action against for misrepresentation (and if there was a professional standard for agents, unprofessional and underhand behaviour) are Caroline and Brian from Barnard Marcus Fulham.

Quite frankly, they are scum. Scum of the earth.