talk us out of going for viewings

North_Sea_Bubble

mr.broderick wrote: »

I find the bottom lasting 4 years absolutely bonkers, sorry.

What state do you define "the bottom" as ? Are we talking a +/- % of the lowest point on the average house price index ?

mr.broderick

North_Sea_Bubble wrote: »

What state do you define "the bottom" as ? Are we talking a +/- % of the lowest point on the average house price index ?

The point at which !!!!!! and carolt buy.

PasturesNew

Bunch of bl00dy lightweights!!
I sold my house to sit and wait, I'm years off buying. I went into this saying "a 5 year wait".

You're really all letting the side down you know.

Shame on you.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

Bunch of bl00dy lightweights!!
I sold my house to sit and wait, I'm years off buying. I went into this saying "a 5 year wait".

You're really all letting the side down you know.

Shame on you.

OH PN, don't be cross! I've been wanting to settle down for more than five years. I was chatting with a friend on saturday and we were saying isn't it amazing I'd been married three years in the summer and DH walked in and pointed out its 3 and a half years now :eek: that we've been married and therefore 6 years since we started playing musical homes. I'm getting fed up of feling life is on hold, and living between weekends to see DH and taking on less and less stuff here for myself to keep me busy because 'we'll be leaving soon' and then I'll have to drop the stuff I'm doing again ,and living in one room with furniture stacked up prcariously around me and clothes in suitcases and everything I seem to need 'in storage'. Priced out with unrelieble income before, never prepared to get into unralistic debt, its hard to wait.

Its like saying to a starving person, 'here's a sandwich you can eat now, but if you don't eat it and wait a few hours we'll give you a proper hot meal, if you're lucky maybe a pudding too . '

fc123

Hi guys........I have posted this all before...but will try to do a precis (tho' not my speciality) as, sometimes others experiences can help the decision process. As a sttrrranger, I couldn't possibly say yay or nay to LIR or Lynz buying now or in 3 yrs.....not my life and opinion is, well, just opinion.

I am 45, done the kids (well one with 4 yrs left to 18), hubby, homemaking etc. Own house/nest has always been my 'raison d'etre' to get up and pull the grindstone every day.


Because we have always been self employed (entrepreneurial type rather than freelance/contract type), I guess we are more used to risk, measured ganmbles based on our skills and the fear of getting things wrong.

In 1987, we were living in 'Nil BY Mouth' flat with baby and could obtain a mortgage for 60k. Nothing came close to our budget. In SE London prices started to fall in 1988.....and we just waited until prices hit our budget.
No RM or forums then so I think it's harder now but, sometimes, too much information can cloud the decision process.
I would have gone barking mad if we had waited until the bottom (1996)...plus no-one knows when that is....until after.

We purchased a detached Victorian cottage in an OK location (that I grew to like), was on @ 80k, then down to 69k...we offerred 60k. It reqd total overhaul that we did over 6 yrs. Had we waited until 1993, we could have purchesed a less derelict similar property or bigger, or better location.

But throughout the time we lived there (and struggled with high int rates) I never regretted the purchase. It became home, good for our son and wasn't in Nil By Mouth land.


We probably spent 20k on her over the 6 years in renovations and sold her for 60k in 1996 to trade up. If you look at that as a 'loss' in purely £££ and pence, then we 'lost' 20k...but we gained on the trade up. Had we waited to recoup the 20k, the gap on the trade up would have been higher.

We also gained in our quality of life , and one can't put a price tag on that. But if the ticket price for those 6 years was 20k....worth every penny.

IN fact, we worked out that we couldn't have afforded to trade up if the transaction had occurred in 2005 say.


I post this from the view that the price of the 'cheapness' of our life in the Council flat was the misery and awfullness of the place on every level.
We could have just had lots of hols in Florida etc to compensate (as other tenants did) but chose to pay the price to change our lifestyle.



So debating the cost and the risk is all valid, but the lifestyle costs are equally valid too. Lynz sounds pretty content to me, though if this house for starting a family, then your age etc gets taken into account.

With LIR I have a vague idea of OH work.....and the impact of Tescos law (coming in 2 yrs??? ) on the whole legal profession is an unknown (just from gossip from lawyer types I know)....so, there may be risk in terms of the level of salary he is used to earning.


Even a decade ago, someone in my position would have afforded a far more comfortable lifestyle than we can afford now which has come about from huge changes in my sector.....changes I had no control over, just ones I have to adapt and react to.


In the end, one can plan and plot and do sums and evaluations and budgets and list pros + cons...but, in the end, everything we do is a risk.......and, so, the main thing is to know how much risk one can bear without having a stroke through the stress.

Oh dear, not much of a precis...but hope that helps a bit.

fc123

lostinrates wrote: »

OH PN, don't be cross! I've been wanting to settle down for more than five years. I was chatting with a friend on saturday and we were saying isn't it amazing I'd been married three years in the summer and DH walked in and pointed out its 3 and a half years now :eek: that we've been married and therefore 6 years since we started playing musical homes. I'm getting fed up of feling life is on hold, and living between weekends to see DH and taking on less and less stuff here for myself to keep me busy because 'we'll be leaving soon' and then I'll have to drop the stuff I'm doing again ,and living in one room with furniture stacked up prcariously around me and clothes in suitcases and everything I seem to need 'in storage'. Priced out with unrelieble income before, never prepared to get into unralistic debt, its hard to wait.

Its like saying to a starving person, 'here's a sandwich you can eat now, but if you don't eat it and wait a few hours we'll give you a proper hot meal, if you're lucky maybe a pudding too . '

Actually, reading this again, I do have some advice.

If this property is X 3 Salary....why not? If it is more, I would advise no.....far too many unknowns out there still (in the mysteriouis world of banking and government) that we have no control over, but that can impact our lives and incomes in one fell swoop.

We only ever bought on X 2.5.

I was in London today and am hearing about people who have had wicked salaries for years (city) and it's all about to go pop. Their lives are geared up to those salary levels....because that is what they have been worth for the past 2 decades....you get to mid 40's, you do a fantastic job for your employer, never been sacked or laid off....then.....whoosh, everything changes overnight.

This is the difficult one...assessing ones own prospects is the hardest thing....it's like saying to yourself ''ooops, I am suddenly rubbish and worthless''.

Cannon_Fodder

mr.broderick wrote: »

I find the bottom lasting 4 years absolutely bonkers, sorry.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/house-price-crash
"The Halifax House Price Index shows average prices peaked at £70,247, in May 1989, and then a long run of monthly losses and stagnation continued until it bottomed out, in July 1995, at £60,965. This produced a peak to trough loss of 13.2%."

Nationwide figures, illustrated graphically...http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/graphs-average-house-price.php


This time, the Internet may speed up knowledge that the recovery is underway and create a bandwagon, but we need to get through the credit crunch first...

lostinrates

fc123 wrote: »

So debating the cost and the risk is all valid, but the lifestyle costs are equally valid too.With LIR I have a vague idea of OH work.....and the impact of Tescos law (coming in 2 yrs??? ) on the whole legal profession is an unknown (just from gossip from lawyer types I know)....so, there may be risk in terms of the level of salary he is used to earning.
........

In the end, one can plan and plot and do sums and evaluations and budgets and list pros + cons...but, in the end, everything we do is a risk.......and, so, the main thing is to know how much risk one can bear without having a stroke through the stress.

Oh dear, not much of a precis...but hope that helps a bit.

I love your posts, never try and change them!. It does help.

re Tesco law, it is unlikely to have a direct impact on us, some feel that much like the income divide the breadth between high street and City law will increase and I think that likely, but think it already is so strongly there with solicitors that anything other is like trying to hold back the tide. W personally, on discussion, feel our 'medium term' is around 6-8 years. By then we'll have noticed if a baby came along, and we'll know if DH is likely to stay with his firm till retirement or need to move for career progression, and indeed, if we then leave UK, with his firm or another. DH's employers remain in a strong position, but there is increasing pressure to bring in work, to make sure that one is networking with intent, so much hard if you are working 18 hour days, so hard anyway. Housing and associated dreams would be a huge part of that decision, to stay to go..if we have held out for the dream, not caved now and it looked like we'll break even with that we'd stay if UK income was supportable. If we are not going to live the dream, which is so Anglo-centric, then chances are we can live the not-dream in better style elsewhere. But one can't float indecisively for ever, or I can't, and yet decision reaching is hard too.

fc123

Oh and I forgot PN.......... if you bought outright now and had hardly any savings, could you get JSA and a discount on council tax????
I know that's not your 'thing' BUT, from what I have read about your life, seems to me that a bit of a financial break is in order.

If you had a garden , you could grow your own too.

A bit of breathing space could enable you to pursue the job hunting further, even time to train in something else that would complement your existing skills.
Creative writing course? ;-)

Without prying, if your savings get erroded by higher living costs and your income from lower savings rates and less ad revenue from the downturn...well...could be another way of thinking about things? Only an idea tho'...not a judgement!

Cash buyers can push a good deal at the moment too.

fc123

lostinrates wrote: »

I love your posts, never try and change them!. It does help. Why Thankyou (said in the style of Scarlett o Hara.)


Housing and associated dreams would be a huge part of that decision..if we have held out for the dream, not caved now and it looked like we'll break even with that we'd stay if UK income was supportable. If we are not going to live the dream, which is so Anglo-centric, then chances are we can live the not-dream in better style elsewhere.

Aaagh, I'm feeling Tuscan villas..........impossible to decide!