Completion story (all 24+ months)
As of the start of this month I am the happy owner of a ‘cosy’ 2 bed flat in SE London, but hoo boy this was a long journey, so I am sharing as a cautionary WTF.
Feb 2024: Met mortgage advisor, started process of selling shared ownership flat (owned 30%, wanted 100% but not in that property).
April 2024: Buyer on board, woop!
May 2024: offered on flat #1 (ex council 1 bed)
June-August 2024: Obtain mortgage, but almost no progress made, solicitor is useless, am stuck in a chain with flat #1 and the sale of my SO flat isn’t progressing with any speed either because I’m in an endless feedback loop between housing association and management company, seemingly unable to agree on who is responsible for what.
September 2024: my solicitor leaves the firm and the replacement is actually good at their job 👍🏻
December 2024: Pull out of flat #1 due to bad survey, discrepancy in the plans and also the agent’s sales team being incommunicado. Flat market stagnation means I am now considering a 2 bed instead.
February 2025: Sell SO flat to original buyer (who was an angel) after 10 agonising months. Move into a friend’s place ‘temporarily’. At this point have no onward purchase in place, but at least the deposit is liquid.
May 2025: Offer accepted on flat #2 (enormous 2 bed ex council maisonette)
June-August 2025: Try valiantly to buy flat #2 but it’s proving hard to mortgage.
Mortgage provider 1: unhappy with wording of lease re service charge, deed of variation is refused by council and mortgage company won’t accept indemnity as an alternative, so no option but to go elsewhere
Mortgage provider 2: fine with the lease, but as I wanted a 5 year fix they wanted to know how much scheduled works in 2029 are going to cost and this information is not available.
August 2025: Reluctantly pull out of flat #2 on the basis that if it’s this hard to buy I would struggle to sell it later. It’s also a 15 min walk from the station and I decide this will annoy me because I travel a lot.
September 2025: Do an additional ton of soul searching and decide to concentrate on share of freehold for a bit. See a lovely share of freehold maisonette further south but am outbid in best and final 🙄
October-November 2025: Occasional viewings but mostly gave up for a while.
December 2025: View and offer on flat #3, a 2 bed leasehold flat, 2 mins from zone 2 overground station. It’s in the nicest area so far and even though the property is quite a bit smaller I can actually imagine myself there, so decide to go for it. It has the highest service charge so far too, but also a residents committee and some evidence that the money is spent on making it nicer, so ultimately decide to take the risk.
May 2026: Finally complete on the purchase of flat #3 🎉
In the end I prioritised location over almost everything, and I feel happy about that. I ended up letting share of freehold slide for a number of reasons - partly that in the area I ultimately went for I’d need another 100k to get that, partly that living further out would be an unnecessary annoyance and expense at my current stage of career. This may be controversial but share of freehold seems way more unpredictable than leasehold? I’m holding out for pure freehold one day but for now, leasehold will be fine.
I’m intrigued to see how leasehold reform affects people like me - obviously there are background concerns that it might be harder to sell leasehold long term, but I’ll just have to hope someone else wants the location as much as I did…
ETA: the historical soul searching at various points which I did on this excellent sub will be in my post history! I read so much, and learned so much, thank you helpful people!