almost the exact same thing happened to me
We made an offer on a house, had it accepted, went through all the hoops, had everyting in place and ..

got gazumped.

doh, by now, prices were moving away from us and we had to start looking at poorer poroperties. then, 3months later, as luck would have it, the gazumper fell through on the deal! hurrah, the sellers came back to us, and even though prices had gone up by quite a bit, agreed to let us have it at the original price, if we would just complete quickly. We did. And it was a bargain price in the first place!.

1 year later the house next door sold for TWICE waht we paid for ours, and it had a garden only half the size of ours. Result.

Prices still went up, and we got out at the very peak, at a good price too, moved into rented for 2 years as the prices plummeted, hurrah!

We managed to find a barn to convert in the country, again, the deal had just fallen through, and they accepted a low price, just to get it done quickly. the price we paid was only a little more than the proceeds from selling our first house. We used the all our spare money over the next two years to convert it, plus a bit of a mrtgage as we went along.

We now have a nice big detached barn conversion with 4 beds, and a few acres of land, with a mortgage less than our first semi! ..

Err, hang on, thats not exactly the same as your situation is it?
(flipper is going to die in a bizarre gardenning accident, Sat 27 Oct 2007, 14:07, Reply)