When my now wife and I decided to live together we opted to live in my house for reasons of relative size. Mine is a 4 bedroom house and hers is a 1 bedroom place.

Originally we were going to rent hers out but after one foray into THAT frying pan and once that tenant-from-hell had gone we decided selling was the only answer.

So on the market her house went, back in October last year.

I know the market is still depressed and probably more than we are being told so we only had a few lookers.

Then at Christmas there was a cash buyer. Money burning a hole in their pocket and ready to move as there was no chain.

Everything starts clicking into place until a couple of days before exchange and completion - bingo - Mr Cash-Buyer pulls out.

Consequently all of our plans (new kitchen etc) vanish in a cloud of smoke.

Back on the market it goes and people come and go, make oo-ah noises but nothing until mid-March.

A first-time buyer; no chain; mort-gage already agreed .... away we go. (By the way mort-gage is spelled that way to keep the news shopper robot from inserting unwanted sales links into my blog!)

He wants to complete as soon as possible and my wife gives him a date of the first week in May. Reasons why are given and he accepts that. Mid-April he starts twitching that he's heard nothing from us. This is patently untrue as the estate agent has been speaking to him whilst trying to get his solicitor's details out of him.

This is eventually achieved and I have to say that they seem as bigger bunch of no-brainers as I've ever come across in the world of solicitors - and I've met a few (especially in the Westerham area !) At every step of the way they are re-querying things that have already been answered to their apparent satisfaction previously.

They are asking for documents they already have.

They are losing documents and asking for duplicates.

They are asking for documents that have never existed but which they are now saying are important even though my Wife's property never had one when it was built.

And so it goes on.

Not helped by the fact that the buyer apparently still hasn't made the deposit available despite my wife's solicitor making numerous requests for exchange and completion.

Now I have neglected to mention a moron of an estate agent who seems to be an average of a week behind the game.

She too keeps asking for documents that she's already had and re-questioning things previously answered.

She seems to have little if any interest in the fact that this is now dragging on with no end presently in sight. I suspect the reason is that they're on a fixed fee and basically don't give a twopenny damn how fast it goes through.

The copper bottomed finish to it is that this stupid oik actually suggested that to speed things that she should "Contact the buyer and tell him that my Wife has said if he doesn't complete in a week then she'll be cancelling the sale."

Hold hard cully !......

Since when does an estate agent think they have the right to make sweeping statements like that? Especially when my wife has told them that's not an option since if the buyer says "Yeah OK - cancel" my wife is totally banjaxxed and is back to square one.

As of today we're presently trying to find if this stupid b***h has actually made this statement to the buyer - we can't find out as she's "unavailable".

It strikes me that estate agents really are as useless as they're always painted. And since we're in a time where the property market is almost as stagnant as it can be, you'd think they'd try to bit a bit more helpful than making half assed suggestions likely to drive the buyer away.

It still (at the moment anyway) seems like this buyers genuine but I am no longer holding my breath and my Wife is really stressed since it is now a month since the sale should have happened and she's having to find yet another month's mort-gage (another unwanted link was here dammit!)payment on an empty house!

Perhaps this buyer isn't real. God forbid that situation.

Even worse perhaps he's like one who is apparently buying in the Westerham area.

It seems there's one guy who, at the moment has offers in on around 6 houses!

He has simply said that he will take which ever one can complete first and damn the other poor s*ds who don't know about this.

It seems that the law against this particular practice disappeared some while back. Presently he's doing all these deals through one estate agent - how many others are also dealing with him I don't know. But it means that at least one estate agent is effectively in collusion with this guy and his offensive practice.

We need the housing market sorted and tidied, that way it may well start to move while maintaining a reasonable through put at sensible prices.

I understand that sales can and do fall through and for legitimate reasons too. But playing one off against the other; not following through on deals after they've been agreed on both sides (and this includes gazzumping); and estate agents and solicitors seemingly treating buyers and sellers like some tappable piggy bank of available funds, all these facets of buying and selling property need addressing to make them far more legally guided and bound than at present.

The HIPS pack screwed the market renewal but now it seems that the estate agents and solicitors as well as unreliable buyers are making it their duty to follow suit.