Property crash

We got bad news this week. We lost the flat we were buying, the sale fell through. It's pretty disappointing and we're anxious because, despite all the talk about what a buyers' market it is, there are no properties for us out there right now and we have to just wait and hope that something else comes along before our mortgage offer expires. And as well as disappointment and concern, we are pretty annoyed with the seller for letting us down like this.

Thursday I got a call from the agent saying he has been chasing and chasing and not getting any answers from the seller, and that he suspects something fishy is going on that he is not telling him about. He promised he would get to the bottom of it but in the meanwhile maybe we should keep our options open and look at other places if we saw anything we liked. Friday he came back to me and told me basically the seller had gone with a private buyer who was buying for a higher price. He was absolutely furious. Here's the thing though. This private buyer (who was a family member or family friend, apparently) had been stringing them along for months and the flat finally went back on the open market as a result, which is when we saw it. The agent was saying they are being really stupid because if this guy was ready to buy the flat he wouldn't have messed around for so long, waited until there was another buyer and then come back ready to buy the place. It is most likely the buyer will continue to stall. And if the seller comes back to him when the sale doesn't happen he's going to tell him to stick his flat because he doesn't want to be messed around himself. I mean, I've never had a lot of love for estate agents but this guy has been really great, he's been so reliable, always been there to answer my stupid questions and showed us a whole bunch of places, and he has spent a lot of time chasing the seller when the sale wasn't progressing. So, he has promised to let us know as soon as he sees something suitable coming onto the market. At least by now he knows what we are looking for, but we have to just hope and pray something comes up.

But there's more. Yesterday we went to chat to another agency, who had showed us a flat just before we offered on the one we lost. The guy was explaining to us that they have literally no one beds available right now, they have all been sold in January. I then jumped in and explained our situation to him and he immediately changed his demeanour a little (not that he was unhelpful to start with, he just couldn't really help us and I got the feeling he'd had tons of walk-ins from people making kind of casual enquiries) and told us to take a seat and asked what happened. He was sympathetic, and I guess from his position it made him aware we are serious buyers. He asked what we had been buying and as soon as we mentioned the street, he immediately asked "Mr P's flat?", which stunned us. It transpires the seller who let us down also has a history of doing the same thing with this agency. The agent even got out a log book and showed us written entries from months ago on this flat. This was several months ago so it was listed at a much higher price and the guy had turned down offers much higher than we were paying. He finally took a good offer and then did the same thing to that buyer as he did to us. After that the agency wouldn't deal with him anymore. The agent we were talking to had dealt with him personally and didn't have a nice thing to say about him at all. This was really unexpected and we were pretty shocked. But this agent was great and so was the guy we had met before (who came in later into the meeting) and they also promised to look out for something suitable and let us know as soon as they know about it. (The first guy is actually a valuer so he sees everything first.) Fingers crossed.

Needless to say I'm feeling pretty battered and disillusioned about it all. Add to this some thoughts about re-locating (more later) and my head is FULL! One thing I do have to be pleased about is, none of this has caused me to eat my body weight. Yay!

This post is dangerously long already but to fill you in on the other stuff, J came home late from a work drinks the other night and out of nowhere asks me "How would you feel about living in Manhattan?" Huh??? So we talked about the possibility, and threw around a couple more possible destinations. I have always loved NYC and have always had it in the back of my mind that I might like to live there, and on thinking about it, it kind of makes practical sense because it is half way between both our families. Of course we would only do it when we both got jobs there and it's not the easiest time but we decided to do the research and keep it in mind. I did look on my corporation's careers site and there are jobs available for me at a company I really want to work for though, and when I saw that I got quite excited and it suddenly became a very real possibility. I plan to chat to my boss about it when he gets back from travelling next week, as I'd promised I'd always be open with him about it whenever we start thinking about a move (he has always known a move to the States might be on the cards), and I want to see what his network is like out there for finding work for me. I can't pretend losing the flat with no obvious alternatives isn't feeling a bit like an omen right now!

So you see, it's been quite an eventful week!