Am I the only first time buyer at the moment?

SuperChap

I'm almost near completion on my first home but am getting the jitters!

OH and I are buying a 2 bed house with garden in the London suburbs for £250k (which is what houses in the street were selling for about 2 years ago). We made the offer at the start of Oct but are worried the house will have dropped in value by the time we complete in late Dec.

We are really against gazundering but although we have a good deposit the LTV is still 86% and we're trying to stop this getting higher if poss (I know easier said than done).

Do folk think we should go with our morals and pay the higher price, we would find it really hard to reduce the offer - wimps i know - or bite the bullet and risk the seller cancelling the sale?

How do you really tell how much a house is actually worth nowadays??? :rolleyes:

SC

beingjdc

How does £250k compare to what houses in that street were selling for 18 months ago. If they weren't selling for well over £300k, I'd not only gazunder, I'd run for the hills!

SuperChap

sales were around £275k 18 months ago, £290k a year ago and back to £275 in the summer, does that help?

rammster

your own home is never an asset , its a liability. what will this house let at is the question you need to ask. The core value of your house is the rent it will attract, tomorrow if you were urgently asked to move. If its an asset it will break even with your mortgage interest only payments or even give back a 50-100 pounds (I doubt it at this price range though). if its gonna take away 250 pounds + then I would think twice. Mathematics aside how do you feel about gazundering, if you do it and then regret it then its no good. If last year was a bad time then this year must be a better time. :-)

hethmar

Have you exchanged contracts yet? If you have, you cant gazunder. If you havent you could say that the place will have lost say 6% of it valued price since October and offer that?

Running_Horse

If you did it to me I would tell you to get lost, regardless of the market.

Go ahead if you are prepared to lose the house and all expenses so far.

If you are worried about the falling market you should have realised that before timewasting bidding, and accept you are not adult enough for the ups and downs of being a property owner.

hethmar

Be fair, the OP said they were very reluctant to do this but are concerned about the falling prices as anyone would be at the moment.

hethmar

Is the house empty at the moment? Is it a place that you really dont want to lose?

Running_Horse

hethmar wrote: »

Be fair, the OP said they were very reluctant to do this but are concerned about the falling prices as anyone would be at the moment.

So why bid? House prices have been falling for a long time now.

hethmar

FTB's arent that savvy about the property market RH. The excitement of a first house tends to blind reason

PasturesNew

I sold my house 18 months ago, I was expecting the buyer to gazunder (I thought it was over-priced bearing in mind the stamp duty threshold it passed and the house price crash I believed was coming), so at that point in time I'd have gladly taken a further 5% hit just to have my money banked.

Every house, seller, buyer, expectations, income, choices, situation are different.

On the other hand, if I were buying and WANTED that particular house I'd not gazunder. When I bought my house I paid full asking price and said to the owners that I wanted to buy it at full asking price when I did my first (and only) viewing.

You pays your money, you makes your choice.

The real question is: how prepared are you to stand by your choice, no matter how tough it gets? Can you afford to pay for your choice even if all the sh1te hits the fan? What are your options if you lose your job and still need to pay for the house? These are questions I knew the answer to before I even went to view it.