‘I can’t sleep at night, my mum is on the sofa and I’m thinking of leaving the UK’
Mortgage rates are high, house prices are rising again and saving for a deposit has become increasingly difficult. So what is the process of buying and selling a home really like in 2025? Over this year, we’ve been finding out with a buyer and a seller. Today, buyer Minreet Kaur tells Money live reporter Jess Sharp about a change of tactics, while seller Denise Palmer Davies drops a bombshell.
The mission
With a £650,000 budget, Minreet is looking for a three or four-bedroom property that suits all her family’s needs. Her mum suffers from incurable blood cancer, her dad needs space for his garden tools and a prayer room is on the list for all of them to use.
She is looking in Windsor, Egham or Burnham, but she’s discovering anything in her price range isn’t much bigger than where she is now in Hayes, Middlesex.
‘The houses don’t look like the photos’
After home hunting for more than six months, Minreet is doing up to six viewings a week in hope of finding somewhere suitable.
“The houses don’t all look like they do in the photos. It’s such a lot of work, it’s like a full-time job and it’s the most stressful thing,” she says.
“Prices are so expensive for even the smallest houses in and around Greater London.
“The worst house viewing was a four-bed detached house in Windsor. It looked really nice in the photos but in person it wasn’t very clean… it looked nothing like the photos online. It was much smaller and very deceiving.”
‘It would be better for us to move abroad’
The search has become so dire, Minreet says she is starting to think it would be better if her family moved abroad.
“We would have a better quality of life,” she says. “The rich get it all and working class people like myself are struggling. It’s not fair.”
Having previously ruled out new build homes, she has started considering them and has increased her search radius to Buckinghamshire and Reading, even though it would be harder for her parents to live there.
She is also looking at the option of buying a smaller property that has the potential to be extended.
“My heart isn’t in it. The biggest challenge is finding a house that feels like a home and putting in offers and having to go back and forth and other people are putting in higher offers,” she says.
‘There’s black mould in our house and my mum is sleeping on the sofa’
The stress has been taking a toll on Minreet, and she has been suffering from anxiety and migraines.
“I can’t sleep at night and am constantly looking on Rightmove, Zoopla, On The Market and even asking friends. I am desperate to move and it’s making me feel a lot of pressure,” she says.
“I get very down and tearful because my mum sleeps on the sofa and our current house is getting older day by day. I also keep getting a tickly cough and I think it’s because of the black mould in our house.
“I just pray a miracle happens and we can find something before end of the year. I am hopeful and have faith but really what I need is some support and these house prices to be more realistic.”
The mission
Denise was on a mission to sell her £1.5m home in Esher, Surrey, to buy her dream home in the village.
The house she wanted was quickly snapped up, unfortunately, and she was left searching for somewhere new.
Determined to stay in the village to be close to family, she set her sights on another property on the market that was already under offer…
“As luck would have it, by offering just a little more, our offer was accepted. At the same time, we received an offer on our own house, which we gladly accepted. Our buyer and estate agent assured us that the timeframe for completion would be around six to eight weeks,” she says.
Happy days?
‘We were excited – and then we had devastating news’
After months of waiting, the process was finally moving. Denise and her family were “excited”, but then she received the “devastating” news that her buyer’s buyer had pulled out and the chain was broken.
“We had no choice but to inform our estate agent and the trust selling the property that there would be a delay until our buyer could find a replacement.
“Thankfully, after reducing their price, our buyer found another buyer within two weeks, but the whole chain had been pushed back significantly,” she says.
‘We lost out again – and ended back at square one’
While two weeks doesn’t sound like a long time, it was long enough for the seller of Denise’s (next) dream home to grow impatient.
The person whose offer Denise had beaten got back in touch, this time with an offer that was chain-free.
Even though it was lower, the seller was eager to finalise a sale and accepted.
“We lost out again, and we had to tell our buyer that we no longer had a property to move to,” Denise says.
She gave them the option of waiting or increasing their offer to contribute towards the cost of her family moving into rented accommodation while they continued their hunt.
But after a month, her buyers grew restless, pulled out of the deal and found another property.
“We’re back to square one,” Denise says.
‘We took our property off the market’
After months of false starts, Denise decided it was best to take a beat and pulled her property from the market.
“With so few properties on the market, and our wish to stay in our lovely village, nothing suitable came up,” she says.
“After much thought, we’ve decided to take our property off the market and relaunch early next year. It’s been one disappointment after another but perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be this time.”
