Advice on buying a new build apartment!

T-faz

sarahg1969 wrote: »

My son is the same age and is currently buying his first property.

He has looked at apartments, new houses and older houses.

The new apartments he looked at were the most expensive and the smallest. They also had high management fees and a large number of other properties on the estate have been on the market for a long time.

The new houses he looked at were similar, but with lower estate management fees. Again, he felt there could be problems on resale.

The prices of both of the above have dropped significantly over the last 18 months or so, and all of the second-hand ones are up for much less than their new cost, and are already beginning to look tatty.

The properties are all small, with paper-thin walls and the most basic of fittings.

He's also looked at older houses, some of which have needed some work.

For the same price as a small 1-bed flat, he is currently buying a 2-bed terraced (which could be converted to 3 beds if required) in a quiet street, with lounge, dining room, kitchen and outside space. Once he's bought it and done some work on it, it should be worth up to £15k more than the purchase price. It's a good, sturdy property, with tons of space, plenty of storage, loads of sockets, a substantial central heating system (whereas the new builds were all electric), and should sell very easily when the time comes ( a number of the other similar properties he looked at were snapped up within a couple of weeks).

Thanks for your input.

If you don't mind, could you please tell me which city your son lives in?

I have thought of buying a cheaper house which might require some work and spend my weekends repairing it.

geoffky

The days of making money worth having in 5 yrs is over for a long time..some people do not understand what is going on and what has to happen in our economy..its not nice and will be very very painful for all and your last problem will be house prices... have a look at the figures..

public sector net debt at the end of March 2012 was £2181.0 billion (140.8 per cent of GDP). This compares with £2250.2 billion (150.4 per cent of GDP) as at the end of March 2011