To those BUYING in these difficult times....

JuniorSherlock

Orpheo wrote: »

Yes it is a stupid argument. I bought a 12.5 kilo bag of potatoes for £4. It will help feed my family for several weeks. Is that dead money?
My rent will shelter my family for a month. Is that dead money?

The 600pcm wouldn't be coming off your mortgage either, a large portion of it would be interest payments.

A £125K mortgage over 25 years at 3% (an optimistic interest rate for an entire term) would give a monthly repayment of £598. Of that £312 pcm would be interest to the bank. £93,600 (dead money!) interest to the bank over the term assuming the IR doesn't increase! £26,208 (dead money!) interest over your 7 years. Not to mention the annual cost of buildings and contents insurance, boiler repairs, maintenance, new kitchen, bathroom, windows, roof, decorating, carpets and so on. Of course house prices only ever go up, except when they go down. Take care though, at 6% (the long-term average) those interest payments will be £625 per month, £187,500 over the term, £52,500 over 7 years, that's a lot of dead money. And don't try the argument about paying landlords' mortgages, your mortgage interest is paying the mortgages and bonuses of many bankers.

Let us not forget, I don't intend to rent forever. I have a good deposit of 50% and I will buy when I think the time is right. Not as an "investment" but as shelter for my family, a home, just as my rented house is at the moment.

It all depends on who you are renting from. Our rented house suffers badly from condensation, when we complained we were told to keep the heating on and keep bedroom windows open - in winter! It's so bad that the black mould has got onto the kids mattresses. I move the furniture around as often as I can. If it was my house it would be sorted. Same with the leak underneath the bathroom sink and the dilapidated state of the shed.

No matter when you buy, you are going to need a mortgage and will be paying interest to the banks. You might not want to pay them any interest but neither do I want to pay for my landlord to jet off on surfing holidays whilst my kids suffer from damp rooms that we are paying for.

Some people don't mind renting. For us it's a necessity not a choice. We aren't getting any younger, our wages dictate that we aren't saving much either. I would much rather have the security of our own home, for the sake of our young kids too, than have to live in someone else's house for the rest of my life.

Private renting is notoriously insecure. The landlord could choose to sell at any time and there is no chance we can find another 3 bedroomed house for £600pcm. Or the rent could go up, putting a strain on our finances.

If we manage to get the house we have put an offer on (over a week ago now and still not heard! :mad:), our monthly payments would be £460pcm. We would never find a rental for that money, except perhaps in the depths of Yorkshire or Cumbria.

So whilst renting may be the right choice for you and whilst you can afford to wait for the right house to come along, some of us are not so lucky. We've been waiting for prices to drop for 7 years now, we can't afford to wait any longer. My kids are growing up fast, we have no pensions and so buying a home could be the only asset we have. Many others are in the same position. I would never recommend renting as a long term solution. Especially not for a family.

tim_n

riverboat2001 wrote: »

You must have had nerves of still waiting for it to be accepted without chasing it.
How long between your offer and getting it accepted?
I've offered (Thursday last week) 240k on a house up for 280k, it's really nice and i could see us living there for quite sometime! The 240k has been rejected, but not 100% certain that it was passed onto seller (it was a verbal offer)

We are thinking of calling EA on Friday to see if there has been any movement

Never made a written offer - but the estage agent we're using has a good reputation. I can't imagine in the current climate it wouldn't be passed on!

I put my first offer (220k about three weeks ago on a thursday) it was rejected after the weekend on the tuesday, but the house had been on the market for 7 months, no offers. We'd been looking for a house upto £270 which was roughly our budget and at that mostly semi detatched properties. We left it till friday with the offer open, then rang back and upped it by 5k. The estate agent rang back to tell us it was rejected a couple of days later but I told him our viewing schedule was full and we'd seen a couple of other better properties nearby, but the offer was still open as we'd prefer a detatched house, but had only been expecting to get a semi.

Because of the inital wait before getting back to us, I assumed the offers were being taken seriously. The guy had let slip he was eager to move, the house was too big and he'd found a perfect location. The estate agent went on to tell us that it was massively over evaluated and he felt it was worth closer to £250k

At the end of the week we got a kind offer from my grandparents of some additional money, so I used this as an excuse to go back to them and raise the offer to £227.5 and a day later we got a rejection, but if we fancied £230 that would be acceptable. I made it clear that we were only interested if it was taken off the market from all the other agents.

This has not yet been done - there's still one showing it on the books at rightmove.

tim_n

Liv1977 wrote: »

Hi everyone

FTB here and thought I'd share my experience with you all.

So, after 7 weeks and 20 viewings my offer on a property was accepted on 25th September. I offered 98% of the asking price as similar properties were going for much more.

Valuation and home buyers survey arranged and completed last week. Could have been done much sooner if HSBC hadn't ballsed it up (long story!) Received land plan and F&F list from solicitor today. All as what I was expecting i.e they were going to take the washing machine and fridge-freezer BUT, they are also going to take the TV ariel! Utter poo! Been doing some research and it's going to cost me around £100-250 to get one installed!:mad:

Now just waiting for solicitor to carry out the seaches and enquires. In the meantime, I'm looking at furniture websites as I have nothing apart from a mirror and some pots and pans!

Liv

Tell them to leave the aerial up or the deal is off. Simples. That'll mean more waiting and additional stress of having to prepare the house for new visitors, getting it relisted etc.

It's a buyers market!

westlondonbuyer

It's very odd that they're taking the TV aerial - surely the biggest element of the cost is in paying someone to go up there, disconnect it and bring it back down again, not the cost of the aerial itself?

dizziblonde

Sure they haven't just forgotten to put it on the list? I don't believe our vendors will even visit the house again to be honest (they live hundreds of miles away) and they've not put the ariel on our F+F list, it's very comprehensive inside, but I just think the outside stuff on the roof forgot to cross their mind (they haven't even noted it's had a sky dish fitted in the past). It's no biggie to us if they do or don't mind you - so we're not going to have a "they've taken the lightbulbs and lawn" moment either way.

I'm currently having an irrational flap about the mortgage going back NEAR the underwriting department to have the revised final sale amount altered! (I know it's irrational, on the phone he's told us it's just him ticking another box and printing out a new copy of the documents but still!)

beccad

beccad wrote: »

I'll join all of you! My husband and I sold our flat at the start of August (offer accepted at the end of April) and we're currently living with his parents. We've seen quite a few properties over the last couple of months, but only a couple of taken our fancy. We've been finding that there's a lot of not-so-great properties on the market *sigh*.

We've currently got an offer on a property, but it's less than the vendors would like (10% under asking), but they're looking at properties to buy in the lower price bracket our offer affords them. They were supposed to be viewing last weekend, but had a family bereavement and had to cancel. We're hoping they're going to go this weekend instead, but we've not heard anything.

So the update to this is that the vendors FINALLY went to look at some properties this weekend and didn't see anything they liked. We're not prepared to up our offer anymore (about 9.3% under the asking price - I worked it out properly for those of you that might see the 10% above - and it doesn't look like the vendors are going to accept, so it's back to the drawing board for us. The agent told us that the market is doing quite well in the local area so they are apparently happy to sit it out.

Onwards and upwards - there's a property out there somewhere. Just the small matter of finding it!

JuniorSherlock

dizziblonde wrote: »

I'm currently having an irrational flap about the mortgage going back NEAR the underwriting department to have the revised final sale amount altered! (I know it's irrational, on the phone he's told us it's just him ticking another box and printing out a new copy of the documents but still!)

Never take your mortgage for granted. My brother got a mortgage agreed in principle for £50k. He had sold his house and was moving to another. His income was his army pension. He got the mortgage approved by the bank and so with that he put an offer on the house, paid for surveyors etc. The underwriters rejected his mortgage application stating that an army pension was not an income.

He went to appeal, said he'd been with the bank since he was 17, was a loyal customer etc. Eventually he got £40k, leaving him having to put the extra £10k onto his credit card :0

I'm worried now as it seems that the bank can say one thing but the underwriters are a law unto themselves.

sonastin

I hate the chinese whispers that are involved in the house-buying process.

The house I want to buy is a repossession. The vendors have agreed to have some work done to the property before I buy it. The building inspector gave a list of the work needed to the Estate Agent who passed it on to the vendor who passed it on to a builder. The builder gave the vendor a quote and the vendor told the estate agent who told me that the work would take 7-10 days. The vendors solicitor told my solicitor who told me that the work would take 2-3 weeks. The work that I discussed in person on site with the building inspector would take more like 4-6 weeks, but no one will tell me what work the builder is going to do.

The builder is supposed to be carrying out the work at the moment but in the week since they supposedly started, all I can see that has been done is the half-excavated drains are now 3/4 excavated. I contacted the estate agent to ask if there had been a hold up and if the builders had given a revised finishing date. The estate agent can't speak to the builder so she asked the vendor who told her that the builders had said 2 more weeks.

I suppose I could cut out the middlemen and go and speak to the builder directly but the property is 30 min from work and I only have a 40 min lunch break. I'd ask my boss for a longer break if I knew the builder was going to be there but at the moment there is no sign that they are there every day. I'd have to ask the EA to ask the vendor to ask the builder when they will next be at the property which begins the whole chinese whispers thing all over again :mad:

rant over

JuniorSherlock

No advice for that one, just huge sympathies!

Does anyone know how long an offer on a repossession can take? We put ours in a week ago today and have heard nothing. I've given up ringing the EA as they are always 'on the case' apparently. There has been no other interest in the house according to them.

The offer is below the asking price and I appreciate there is red tape involved but surely by now we should have an answer?

We are meant to be going on holiday on Saturday!

JuniorSherlock

And just who is redstararnie76 and why is he/she thanking everyone no matter what they say?