To those BUYING in these difficult times....

rosspwilliams

Everything is going so slowly for met at the minute, and it's all getting very frustrating. We are ready to go, and everything is in place as far as we are concerned but my mortgage broker just isn't coming back to me with updates. I spoke to our solicitor last week and all they need from us is payment, but before I give them my deposit + fee money I want to make sure that everything else is ready, as I would rather it be in my bank account than theirs.

There is quite a few people in our chain which is making everything take an age, and the lack of info is making it worse.

Jackinbox99

azkaban420 wrote: »

Thanks Jack, problem is it's been up for a lot of money for a long time with hardly any drops (House next door sold for £250k a year ago but has a shared drive and smaller garden). We didn't want to increase our offer initially but on second viewing it is perfect for us. So they've offered to pay the ST but want around the £280k mark which is A LOT (up for £289k for a year)!

Sigh, I just hope they agree to meet halfway...decisions decisions...

Az

I had to make the same decision last September. We saw our perfect house, it was up for £180k, sellers had to move out by November into a new house so we thought they would be a bit flexible on the price for a no-chain-purchase. The house next door to them, which was nearly identical sold for £160k a few weeks before we viewed. We made various offers, starting at 170k and worked upwards. The sellers refused to lower the price a penny. Our last offer was £178k and they still refused to drop, so we walked away.

Then in November, the EA calls us asking if we were still interested as the seller would now consider £178k. But, by then we had found somewhere else - which whilst we managed to get it reduced slightly, the seller would still hardly budge on the price.

But, now im in the boat of trying to sell my old property, I am finding I am having people offer me £20k less than similar houses are currently selling for and refusing to increase their offers or even meet me half way. Seems the market has changed over the last 2 months from being a sellers market to being a buyers market. Or, maybe some sellers are just reluctant to lower their prices.

charles_b_2

Grimbal wrote: »

not to worry ! We're definitely putting this one on the back burner at the moment. It's highly likely that we'll be renting come March: if they come back to us in a timescale that allows us to tie up completion dates then all will be good.

However, we're not limiting our options. In fact, we're going to see a couple of new builds on Saturday that are lovely, but too expensive for us. We're hoping that the developer just wants to get off site asap and will let us buy for 80% of asking Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that !

Fingers crossed that your exchange goes through smoothly !

I would think you're in a great position to negotiate hard on a new build if you've sold and have no effective chain and can move in asap.

I remember buying my first property in 1995 a brand new flat, and the developer wanted £65. I offered £49.5k (more than 20% off) and they were happy to sell it to me. Back then it was also a Buyers market after the last recession.

azkaban420

Jackinbox99 wrote: »

I had to make the same decision last September. We saw our perfect house, it was up for £180k, sellers had to move out by November into a new house so we thought they would be a bit flexible on the price for a no-chain-purchase. The house next door to them, which was nearly identical sold for £160k a few weeks before we viewed. We made various offers, starting at 170k and worked upwards. The sellers refused to lower the price a penny. Our last offer was £178k and they still refused to drop, so we walked away.

Then in November, the EA calls us asking if we were still interested as the seller would now consider £178k. But, by then we had found somewhere else - which whilst we managed to get it reduced slightly, the seller would still hardly budge on the price.

But, now im in the boat of trying to sell my old property, I am finding I am having people offer me £20k less than similar houses are currently selling for and refusing to increase their offers or even meet me half way. Seems the market has changed over the last 2 months from being a sellers market to being a buyers market. Or, maybe some sellers are just reluctant to lower their prices.

I think this is it, some people will be willing to negotiate, and others won't. The wait is killing me, I just feel my life is on hold at the moment until I buy a house, and I hate feeling like this.

It's a case of either they drop to a price we can afford, or we walk away and carry on looking. In the meantime it's hard knowing the house will still be sat on the market not selling, when we could easily make a deal!

I really want this to be over with, as do so many others on this thread, and the selling thread, but I want the house I buy to be right, so that I don't have to go through this kind of heartache again!

Az

charles_b_2

It's tough out there. We have to move (3-bed Semi, 4 kids!) and need the space. We hadn't even planned to move until this year, but we saw the house that ticked quite a lot of boxes: 4 beds, detached, older (1930's), huge garden. It's certainly not perfect, it needs work: new roof, boiler, electrics but it was worth pursuing hard, so we did and put our house on the market to sell.

As a result, we couldn't really expect the biggest reduction- they'd priced it fairly according to current market. We had a price in mind that we were prepared to go to and in the course of 3 weeks(!) negotiated to under that price, but only just.

The problem for us was that there just aren't the stock of this type of house available in a reasonable area, and the ones that go up for sale sell in a matter of days/weeks, even in this market, as they are few and far between.

I still see that we made the right decision - we could wait to see if prices will fall considerably, but we need the space and frankly, I have seen no evidence to suggest that 4-bed detached houses are likely to fall significantly.

If anything, I expect the gap between these types of houses and semi's etc to widen slightly as the smaller housing stock will face a greater price drop as there is a significantly larger stock to choose from, which - in a buyers market - will mean price drops for these types of houses. Newbuild flats will suffer the most I think in terms of loss oftheir value.

azkaban420

charles_b wrote: »

It's tough out there. We have to move (3-bed Semi, 4 kids!) and need the space. We hadn't even planned to move until this year, but we saw the house that ticked quite a lot of boxes: 4 beds, detached, older (1930's), huge garden. It's certainly not perfect, it needs work: new roof, boiler, electrics but it was worth pursuing hard, so we did and put our house on the market to sell.

As a result, we couldn't really expect the biggest reduction- they'd priced it fairly according to current market. We had a price in mind that we were prepared to go to and in the course of 3 weeks(!) negotiated to under that price, but only just.

The problem for us was that there just aren't the stock of this type of house available in a reasonable area, and the ones that go up for sale sell in a matter of days/weeks, even in this market, as they are few and far between.

I still see that we made the right decision - we could wait to see if prices will fall considerably, but we need the space and frankly, I have seen no evidence to suggest that 4-bed detached houses are likely to fall significantly.

If anything, I expect the gap between these types of houses and semi's etc to widen slightly as the smaller housing stock will face a greater price drop as there is a significantly larger stock to choose from, which - in a buyers market - will mean price drops for these types of houses. Newbuild flats will suffer the most I think in terms of loss oftheir value.

Thanks Charles, that's a good way of looking at it actually and I do tend to agree with you. We're also looking for a spacious 4 bed det (3 kids) and there aren't many properties out there that tick the boxes. If there were loads, I wouldn't be so upset. As for new-builds, I'm not overly keen on them, and went to see a few too back in November. The first phase is over in this particular build and as far as I'm aware, not a single one has shifted. I wanted a 4-bed det and they only had a show-home ready, the rest were semis etc.

Still, frustrations aside, it's nice to know there are other people out there like me who are in a similar position and can understand/appreciate where I'm coming from. I can't talk about it much to people outside of the forum as I mention the word 'house' and they fall asleep lol!

Az

charles_b_2

azkaban420 wrote: »

Thanks Charles, that's a good way of looking at it actually and I do tend to agree with you. We're also looking for a spacious 4 bed det (3 kids) and there aren't many properties out there that tick the boxes. If there were loads, I wouldn't be so upset. As for new-builds, I'm not overly keen on them, and went to see a few too back in November. The first phase is over in this particular build and as far as I'm aware, not a single one has shifted. I wanted a 4-bed det and they only had a show-home ready, the rest were semis etc.

Still, frustrations aside, it's nice to know there are other people out there like me who are in a similar position and can understand/appreciate where I'm coming from. I can't talk about it much to people outside of the forum as I mention the word 'house' and they fall asleep lol!

Az

I wouldn't touch a modern new-build with a barge-pole. You pay a premium for 1 thing only. NEWNESS!!!
The land space with the house is frankly paltry
The Quality of the build is poor
Walls are thin
Poor design / layour
Tiny Bedrooms

They look Lovely when you see the showhome, it's a shame that the gloss doesn't last and you start seeing where they cut corners
Not to mention overlooked by your neighbours, lack of parking and poor driveway layout. Not to mention no open fireplace for those soon to be more frequent cold winter evenings....

Good luck - you'll find somewhere, took us 2 years and we'd shelved it in 2010 until the wife spotted this house.

liam_h

emilia15 wrote: »

Are you able to get anything definite about how much longer a decision will take with regards to their mortgage? Just wondering if things could potentially happen soon with regards to their mortgage, and although chances are you won't have completed by the end of the month, whether your relative could allow you to stay in the house for a further month whilst things are sorted?

I think you're probably now at the stage where you need some definitive answer about the specifics of the mortgage problem, as I'm guessing your solicitor is doing all if the required searches, requests etc, and therefore costing you?

When I posted my last post I'd left a message with the agents about our concerns, current problems and a need to move forward. Of course they didn't get back to me, and after many calls today somebody finally spoke to me. It turns out the whole thing is a bigger mess than I had feared.

It turns out a survey hasn't been done (which accounts for the lack of mortgage) and that's because the owners of the property they are trying to buy won't allow entry until they have found somewhere to buy. Of course they haven't found anywhere yet.

I've told the agent we have to be out of this property by the end of the month. They're going to pass this onto the solicitors and advise a "break in the chain" is needed, which of course means our vendors move out as that's the only possible chain. I don't have much hope of this happening as they have a small child and need to buy a bigger place due to their work. It's that one thing that gives me little hope though, as they were desperate to sell due to the need for a bigger house.

Sadly though I fear I'm looking at houses this weekend. Again.

sonastin

Crikey - I haven't been on this thread for a while and loads has been happening!

Az- I really hope this one works out for you. Its been a long haul and if you can finally get a vendor to see sense then good luck to you.

Charles_b - I'm with you on the new builds - especially the "estate layout" type issues. What is it with all these curved streets that mean a) you're right on top of your neighbours and b) visitors have nowhere to park. And that's assuming the houses have enough parking for the residents! 1 parking space is rarely enough for a 4-bed house in my experience!


My purchase has now reached comical proportions of incompetence! The vendors asked how much I wanted to pay to buy it in the state its currently in (back at the end of November!). I told them ( may have tried it on a bit ) with justification of all of the unknowns of what might need doing and what they'll cost to put right if all of them materialise. One of the unknowns being whether or not the foundations for the garage are deep enough and the assumption being that the garage will need underpinning/knocking down & rebuilding if they're not. So the vendors send out a structural engineer to see if the garage needs underpinning. The council building control man has to tell the vendors "that's a very nice report but I still need to see the foundations" :cool:. The vendors then send out someone to dig holes front and back to check the foundations. The building inspector comes back with "the hole at the back shows the foundations aren't sufficient. The hole at the front hasn't been dug yet" :eek:

I'm now hoping that they'll realise that there is too much that needs to be done and they can't face the hassle any longer and they'll just let me buy it for the low price that I've offered. It would be nice if they came back and negotiated if they don't want to sell it at that price but they can't even do that!

And in the meantime I've been scouring the market but I just can't find anything else anywhere near as good as this place (even with all its problems ). I'm almost ready to pay anything that they ask - if they'll just bloomin' sell it to me!!! (ALMOST :rotfl:)

azkaban420

I hear you Sonastin - when you see a house that fits the bill, and there's not much else that compares, it's so hard to walk away!

Good luck to everyone in their quests to buy. Hope we have some good endings on this thread this year!

Az