Buying a property is considered one of the most stressful events in one’s life. I am told it is up there with organising your own wedding, an experience I am yet to undertake. However, the buying of property is one I have experienced before, yet I was extremely misguided in thinking previous experience would make me better prepared for the stresses associated with the whole process. On this particular occasion, it was a real roller coaster ride.

My objective was to buy a house with a garden, one with plenty of room for my family and all our belongings. Our flat had become extremely cramped and we had started to put more and more stuff in storage.The first step towards this objective was to sell my flat, a two bedroomed modern flat in a desirable location. It was a great flat and one we were begrudgingly saying goodbye to.

Alongside the sale of my flat, we had also found a house to purchase. This would be the first house in this roller coaster process. It needed some work, but it was a step in the right direction.

The date for exchange on both properties was pencilled in the diary. This is where the first setback arose. A few weeks before exchange, the boiler burst in the loft of the house we were planning to buy. The defect that resulted in the boiler bursting was one highlighted as a non-iminent point in our survey, so we considered this a lucky escape. The damage to the property was significant to the extent that local authorities cut off the electric and water mains. The seller was unwilling to negotiate on the agreed price of the property and there was a lot of uncertainty around any solution. We were left with no choice, but to pull the plug on the property purchase.

At this juncture, we had a difficult decision to make. To stay in the flat we were selling until another suitable property lands on the market, risking the collapse of the sale. The alternate option was to continue with the sale and find a temporary home until another suitable home came on the market. Eager to continue with the sale of our flat, we decided to take the more challenging option. This gave us nine days to find a temporary home before the initial date that was pencilled for exchange. We managed to find a rental property and moved in within a couple of days, however the solicitors were still going back and forth on the sale of the flat stating there were items outstanding. It was another three months before these outstanding items were outlined, and another six months before we were set to exchange, at which point the buyer tried to gazunder. Gazundering is a term used to describe when a buyer decides last minute to drop their offer. We stood our ground and eventually completed. A process that on average takes three months from accepting an offer to completion had taken 362 days. It was a massive relief on completion not to have to worry about paying for two properties, but this was a result of my own decisioning in large. Any expert will advise you not to commit to anything until the exchange is complete.

You may be thinking the roller coaster ride stops there, but imagine you are on a roller coaster that you absolutely hate. It has been around once and it is coming into the station. At the point when the restraints should relax, they do not, and you are sent around one more time. That is exactly what happened.

After nine months in the rental property, we identified a great property that we felt had a lot of potential. We had submitted a number of questions to the seller, and the process seemed to be moving along smoothly. However, there had been no updates for a couple of months. All of a sudden, a mass of documentation arrived in one go and our questions remained outstanding. The documentation arrived on a Tuesday and three days later we were threatened that the sale would be cancelled unless we exchanged the following week. The seller had removed the tenants and had a date in her head that had never been communicated to us until this point. Not content that our questions remained outstanding, we pushed back and were met with a barrage of abuse. The seller made it extremely difficult for surveys to be carried out. Eventually we took a gamble and completed the purchase. This proved to be a costly gamble as the final survey completed after completion was for the electrics. The property required a full rewire. Whilst this was costly, we had plans to totally redecorate the property, and it meant we could move switches and lights around to our desires. We did eventually move into the property and to date we have been extremely happy with the move.

As you can see, there were a lot of ups and downs, and whilst I may not be in a rush to go through this process again, I am confident that will not be the case. If I could rewind time and give myself three key learnings going into this process, they would be:

1. Do not commit anything until the exchange has been completed, but be prepared to move quickly once it is.
2. Do not entertain gazumping or gazundering.
3. Do not complete anything until you are fully satisfied.

That is it from me on buying a house with a garden. It is without doubt one of the most stressful experiences I have been through. I would love to hear from people on how they have coped through the house buying process, and also if there are any other extremely stressful life events I need to prepare for in future.