Warning: House-buying rant ahead...

I really hope that my blog won't be single-issue for much longer. I can't take much more of this house-buying stuff...I just want to blog about something (anything) else, BUT right now, I've gotta vent...

The guy we're buying our new flat from is a major league asshole, and that's about the most polite thing I can think of to call him. He's a complete and utter shyster. Just thinking about him and the way he's behaved is making me seeth and go red in the face. As you know, we sold our house last Thursday, at which point I immediately informed the real estate agent dealing with the flat, who immediately left a message for the Asshole Vendor (AV). Despite the estate agent constantly calling and leaving messages for AV over the next 5 days, he didn't call back until yesterday morning. At which point he informed the estate agent that HE HAD ACCEPTED ANOTHER PERSON'S OFFER TO BUY THE FLAT. Excuse me?! Okay, yes, the way our weird property law works in the UK, you can turn down an offer that you had originally accepted, and then accept another offer. This is quite rare, but occasionally happens when a buyer is slow to proceed and a much higher offer is made. But even in such a situation, it's virtually unheard of for another offer to be accepted before the original one is turned down. Plus, we weren't delaying at all. We want to push things along, and after all, it wasn't us that didn't return calls for days. And, what's worse, the other offer that was accepted was lower than ours.

So, why did AV prefer to sell to these other people instead? Well, actually he didn't. He didn't care whether we bought it or they did. He just had this great idea (yeah, he must be a real smartie) that he could string along a couple of buyers and see who actually got through the whole process first. He clearly didn't give a damn that we didn't know about the other buyers, nor they us. Nor did he care that we were all spending a lot of money on surveys, legal fees etc. He's just a bad ass businessman who doesn't care about people trying to buy a home. Even the lawyers and real estate agents were horrified by this guy's behaviour. And, me, well I was just freaking out big time...shaking, crying, the works!

Fortunately, LLH went into lawyer mode and held it together brilliantly. He managed to negotiate a new arrangement for us which is as watertight as it can be. But we are having to pay £1000 more for the property, and it galls me that AV (who absolutely doesn't deserve it) is going to get his grubby litttle paws on even more of our money. Plus, I feel awful for the other people who lost the flat. None of this was their fault, we've just all been treated really badly. It makes me so mad. If we didn't love the place so much, we absolutely would have walked away yesterday, but we just couldn't. We're hooked.

I hope it's plain sailing from here on in, but I'm not holding my breath... :)

Okay, better stop thumping so hard on the keyboard...