Back in the home land

Home and dry for 2013, Ronan O’Callaghan can put 2012 behind him. Here, he tells his story of selling a house, and buying another, in the dark years of the property market collapse.

‘Unfortunately, you bought a house at a time when engineers and solicitors were dealing with hundreds of house sales every month, and things weren’t just slipping through the cracks, they were being piled through them as quickly as possible — and the cracks were fairly big’.

If you Google ‘most stressful things in life?’, one of the top results will be ‘buying or selling a house’. I can attest to that — I have sold and bought houses in the past year .

I’ll start at the selling.

In 2002, I bought a three-bed house with a friend. Time moved on, and in early 2011 we put the house on the market.

A cycle began — viewings, price reviews and reductions, more viewings and, eventually, in August, 2011, we received an offer, after six months.

The offer was well below what we wanted; our esteemed estate agents thought an offer of any kind, given the economic climate, should have been accepted, and our rejection of the offer left them shaking their heads in amazement.

The offer was €50,000 less than the price requested by the same agents.

To the amazement of the agent, the same bidder came back with a more realistic offer a few days later — and we gladly accepted. Holding firm and opposing our estate agents’ views had resulted in a significant increase in price, which is irritating when you consider you hire these people to advise you and to get you the best price possible.

Like any sale, the first step was an engineer’s report and a drains test.

First off, we got a call saying there was a problem with the downstairs toilet and the drain out the back. We could get them fixed or we could take €1,000 off the house price.

We called out a plumber and it took him 15 minutes to fix both problems (we knew the plumber, and it cost us €20 and a box of Budweiser.)

A creaky floorboard needed replacing, and then the big shock: the roof of the house wasn’t certified.

In the Celtic Tiger era, slapping up houses and off-loading them quickly was profitable for builders, solicitors, engineers and just about everyone involved in the housing boom ... apart from the purchaser. Not only had our roof been uncertified, but the driveways and gardens we presumed we owned were not included in the house purchase, and the builder had kept them in a separate company ready to sell them to us at a later date.

These problems led to months of letters and phone calls between solicitors, engineers, builders, land registry offices and more solicitors. One independent engineer ‘hit the nail squarely on the head’ when he said to me “unfortunately, you bought a house at a time when engineers and solicitors were dealing with hundreds of house sales every month, and things weren’t just slipping through the cracks, they were being piled through them as quickly as possible — and the cracks were fairly big”.

The sale went right down to the wire. It took six months, from accepting an offer to closing the deal, and, in the end, felt like we were in a Hollywood movie.

The sale hinged on us getting a contract signed by the original developer, transferring the drive and gardens to our names and nobody knew where he was … we had two hours to find him.

Hallelujah! We found him and the sale went through.

Suddenly, the shoe was on the other foot. I was looking to buy a house. It was a role reversal — my partner and I were now the ones looking to knock the prices down. I had been belligerent enough to stand my ground when I was selling, but now I wanted a bargain.

I wanted one of these dream homes that sell for 40% less than the asking price.

In the next five months, we bid on three houses; the first one we had wanted from the off, but we couldn’t agree a price for it. The second drove us to distraction; we really wanted it, and when the sellers told us what would buy it, we agreed and made the offer. Unbelievably, they then withdrew the house from the market — much to the astonishment of their estate agent, who had been trying to sell it for three years.

It was a case of third time lucky, and during the summer we bought our new home. It still wasn’t straight-forward, as the banks made us jump through hoop after hoop and we found ourselves being the ones asking for the creaky floorboards to be examined and replaced.

But, we eventually got there.

If I could say one thing to anyone thinking of buying or selling in 2013, then it would probably be this — you’re going to need a bit of time, a bit of luck and a hell of a lot of patience.