Aperture

Hi. I would walk, save your money, such sellers are toxic trouble down the line - survey costs are a nice tropical winter holiday, send them a postcard. Luckily, this is not the only house on the market, there will be another. This is where the HIPS pack (remember those - Seller pays into a survey etc into one easy package, until it was eviscerated to a thermal walkabout, was actually doing something sensible weeding out the toxic time wasting flakey sellers - don't let them cost you anymore than your time to date.

Hello back on HPC after many years.. finally bought earlier this year (to live in) after a long process (4 months) that should have been quicker (probate sale) when I went to collect the keys the senior partner at the estate agent told me that an institutional buyer had tried to gazump at 15% over the agreed but very luckily the seller stuck to his agreement with me after some wobbly thought- so it does happen. Had offered on the property on the first day and was the third to view property (and had later approached asking on vendors request), made an offer on the spot as had been attending auctions (throughout 2012) with little luck. After several auction attendances its appears institutional investors on the phone to london(?) (south west -wessex area here) that are willing to bid up asking prices when the auctions stall (and presumably can act and have the backing to occasionally buy if they accidentally win the auction). Also lost a buy-to-let repo to an institutional investor (and national player in reporting on the marke)t, when local bids had been 15-20k under asking, eventually investor weighed in at 10% over asking price..they seem to be setting a floor by bidding up when properties look cheap. If you think about it a small fighting fund to maintain the cheapest floor of entry level houses could support the whole house of cards, especially if you have already have a large regional or local area portfolio to protect,,,,,, mantaining that floor is crucial to propping up the whole portfolio asset value. If there is much of that going on behind the scenes it is only a fraction of the portfolio value required as new asset purchases to deflect the market?