After a long, frustrating and very bumpy rollercoaster ride, Castles finally got us over the line with our flat sale (we first tried in 2018 but had only one expression of interest and no offers after 5 months). Shoutouts to Sergio and Joe who had to deal with some very difficult customers some of whom turned out to be the worst kind of timewasters (what kind of a person makes a “firm” offer and then withdraws or goes missing after a week?) Sergio in particular worked very hard for several months to find a suitable buyer and had to put up with a lot of rubbish from some of them.
No fewer than 3 potential buyers came and went but incredibly the team at Palmers Green managed to find someone else within days of the last withdrawal who came in with an amazing offer, which was £16k more than we had almost resigned ourselves to accepting which would have been disastrous for us financially. And although our eventual buyers had a lot of questions and issues to be resolved, they never once tried to renegotiate their offer as they seemed to know that they’re getting a super, rarely available period property in a great area. The new branch manager Mahe had a lot to do with that as we received a very scathing report from the surveyor. ( Tip for buyers – don’t ever ask for a building survey as apart from his £1k fee, the guy will spend over 4 hours at your proposed purchase looking for every single fault or defect inside and out, and then either get most of it all wrong or give speculative advice on unlikely scenarios.) Moral of the story is don’t expect immediate results.
But we got there in the end – and everyone’s a winner!