Our first house purchase fell through when, two weeks before completion, it came to light that internal walls in the basement had been removed to create a lovely large bedroom but with no planning permission or builders certification. We lost confidence in both the seller, and that the property was worth what we had offered for it. Rather than lose the sale of our existing home, we broke the chain, thus becoming homeless for, as it turned out, five weeks. The second attempted purchase came about when a bid, previously rejected, was (to our surprise) accepted, that property still being available six months on. This proceeded well until it turned out that the owner had allowed a neighbouring property to fence off a small square on ‘our’ land. We were not bothered by this, but the complication had to be run past our building society to check they were happy with the arrangement. This was somewhat stress inducing but our solicitor, (CG) pulled out all the stops to get it over the line as quickly as possible for which I will be eternally grateful.