Will anyone buy semi's these days?

pboae

Pauper_Princess wrote:

pboae - the kitchen is is a grotty state really - the worktop's stained, the hob looks like it was built when Adam was a lad, there's a patch in the corner where some new pipes were put in (before we bought it) and never tiled over... could go on!! Wish we could just stick on some new doors

You can tile over a worktop, it would take about 1/2 a day. But as has been said, if you price it low someone will see the potential. We bought a 3 bed semi (bit South of you, near Jct 35), for £137k a couple of years ago. It's an old stone built though, not modern. It had been on the market for ages, (it was empty for 2 or 3 years altogether, but part of that was due to probate). But we fell for it as soon as we saw the advert. It needs completely gutting, new bathroom, kitchen, double glazing has failed and most of the walls inside have been painted with pink gloss paint :-o

Most of the others we looked in the same area were 60/70's and they were going for around £120k, they were selling very fast, but the market does seem a lot quieter now.

Angela D seems to have a most peculiar view of the area.

"We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank..."

Angela_D_3

Dan29 wrote:

How ridiculous, and unhelpful. Why do you assume that only first time buyers would be looking at this house? Surely it's likely to be people moving from a flat or terraced house, who may well have seen their property rise in value by a similar percentage to Pauper Princess's.

No the current 2nd time buyers have paid a fortune for their terrace houses and are now stuck. The number of mums I know with one child, would love another but cannot move up the ladder, I personally know at least 7.
Once you're on the ladder and in your 2 bed flat, you're going nowhere, one lady's flat was valued at £20k less than she paid for it in 2004.

Pauper_Princess

Angela D, I was actually about to post in support of what you were just saying about first timers being stuck and not able to move up to second time.

Did I say in any of my previous posts that we'd done nothing to this house? We've had a garage built and installed central heating, double glazing, french doors and a patio actually.

Please don't bother posting if you can't add anything constructive.

Dan29

Angela_D wrote:

No the current 2nd time buyers have paid a fortune for their terrace houses and are now stuck.

What if they bought in 1995?

Angela_D wrote:

So where do you think this 2nd time buyer is going to magically appear from then ? I'm genuinely interested in why somebody should pay you £60k for having lived in your house for 5 years and by the sounds of it done absolutely nothing to improve it.

House prices have gone up in the last 5 years. Everywhere. Whether you are happy about that fact or not is irrelevant to this thread.

Dan29

Angela_D wrote:

Then surely they will snap up this semi in a minute, only they aren't forming an orderly que are they ?

Perhaps the queue will being forming when the house is put on the market.

cupid_s

Although angela d has a weird, and not extremely nice way of wording things I see where she's coming from. We paid 100k for our mid terrace 3 years ago. It was way overpriced! But so was everything we looked at. Everything is now overpriced, realistically an average property (as I imagine pauper princesses would be) i suppose should be costing about 3 times the average salary for an area. Which i imagine would be about 75k, then with a bit knocked off to allow for redecorating a bit.

But the point is that people need to buy houses (or at least feel they need to) and so I see no reason why someone wont buy this property, its surely no more overpriced than any other house, or if it is it's by a few grand not 60! I dont live too far from wakefield and all the 3 bed semis near me are going for 180-190k so I personally think in this market about 140 would be quite cheap.

Angela_D wrote:

Most first time buyers have no deposit, have no equity because the interest only payments are eating up every spare penny of their salary

I'm sorry but I think this is rubbish. I am 24 and a lot of my friends are getting to the stage of buying houses now so I know a lot of fairly recent first time buyers, including myself. All have a decent deposit. We had 30k, most of my friends have/had at least 10k. I also know NO-ONE who has taken out an interest-only mortgage, if you did there is no way you'd be given enough in mortgage to make these payments take every spare penny you had! If you were given such a large amount in mortgage that even the interest was costing you every spare penny then a couple earning 30k would have no problem getting enough on mortgage to buy the house in question.

For the record we are hoping to buy our second house in a couple of years. Our budget will be 240k so not all first time buyers are 'stuck'

Pauper_Princess

cupid_stunt - thank you for a common sense post

ALL houses are overpiced right now. All I was trying to establish with this thread was what kind of demand there was for semi's, overpriced or not.

If it comes to it we'll market it at £120,000 - same as the terraces - to make sure it sells. So long as we have enough money to get us to Oz and not starve in the first 3 months, I'll be happy

And I know I'm out of touch, but can you get a mortgage with no deposit? When we bought our first house 10 years ago you had to have at least 5%?

tomstickland

The main choice seems to be whether to tart it up to sell it. My feeling is that you should sell it as a "needs a bit of work" house, cheaper than the others. As you say, that way you should still have made enough money for your relocation.

Yes you can obtain 100% mortgages, and some even offer +100%.

cupid_s

I hope to get a semi for my next house. I think for first time buyers now they're generally out of the price range but I still think there's a good demand for them.

I would also not spend too much tarting the place up, go round and work out how much it would cost to update the kitchen, get a plasterer to skim over the artex etc and then knock some off the asking price to allow for the buyers to do this themselves and save you the hassle.

Good luck in australia!

Pauper_Princess

tomstickland - ah! Thank you for reminding me what I was trying to achieve

Yep, think the only way to make it stand out in this market is to put it up cheaper and needing work. I know people will fall over themselves for an old property to do up, but a 60s semi... not so sure. EA is coming on Monday so he can probably tell me more.

cupid_stunt - that's a very good suggestion, to work out how much it'd all cost. Better than plucking a figure from nowhere! Will get to work on kitchen and artexing prices etc

And thanks for the good wishes!!! I don't know whether we'll get to Oz but hopefully if we do get the visa, by that time we won't have a house hanging round our necks