Honestly, the property-buying system here really is completely ridiculous.

Because both the seller and buyer can back out at any stage before the final signing of papers, one ends up with horribly convoluted situations, where a whole chain (and the very word "chain" is enough to frighten home-buyers here) of buyers and sellers all have deals which are contingent on each other. So person A is selling to person B, who can only conclude the deal if their sale to person C goes through, and person C is turn dependent on selling to person D, who needs a huge bank loan ... And if one link in the chain fails - either a sale falls through, or someone doesn't like the results of their survey, or someone decides that their present house is quite nice after all - then all the rest of the sales fall apart.

Apparently in Scotland they have a saner system.

But if we moved there instead, we wouldn't be able to understand a word anyone said, which would cause its own set of difficulties.

House number one today : not a bad location, good "feel" to the house, meets almost all of our criteria - but the owners won't move till they find the perfect house. They've been looking for six months, apparently, with no luck so far. And the owner actually said to me that, who knew, maybe they'd never find the perfect house, and would just end up staying put. So there's probably no point in our getting excited about this particular house. What I want to know is, why bother putting your house on the market if you have no real intention of moving?

House number two - No chain, as the owners are emigrating to Canada. And not a bad location either. But ugly, ugly, ugly. Not ugly in a run-down kind of way, ugly in a solid boring charmless kind of way. Except for the kitchen/dining area, which was lovely. But, only one loo for the whole house, which rules it right out.

House number three: I am not surprised the owners want to sell, God knows I wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as I could.

House number four: nothing's been changed in this one for the past forty years. At least. It smells of old lady. Over-priced, especially considering the 40-year old boiler and the pink toilet. But the location's great.

I think I'm already getting a bit tired of this house-hunting thing.