First time House buying

Mike12

First time buyer in need of a bit of advice.

Found a house I really like and being doing my research as advised on the website. A have one worry about the house and that is that when I look at past sale prices of properties in the area from last July they are far lower than the asking price. This said I have used the valuation tools on the property I'm looking at and they do value the property at the current asking price.

The difference between between the two is well over ten grand!
Basically should I be worried that I could be getting ripped off here or is this just the nature of the housing market?

Many thanks!

d0nkeyk0ng

Depends on the area. I've just bought my first house and that was hard. Properties were being snapped up left, right and centre. They'd be up for sale on Monday and sold by Friday. Offers were routinely coming in well over asking price by at least 10%.

I bought my house at asking price. I now it would have been £10k cheaper last year at least. But I've seen good looking properties in other areas that are on the market for ages.

Kynthia

Valuing a property is a bit of an art. You look at recent sale prices and see how those properties differ from this one (size, rooms, location, school catchment areas, public transport links, off road parking, etc), and you look at the market to see whether prices have gone up or down since those properties were actually on the market (properties were possibly on the market and had the price agreed 3/4 months before the date of sale). Then look at supply in the area and demand, as if there's loads of buyers and very little coming onto the market then people will be prepared to pay more, but if there's a load of new 2 bed flats being built then current 2 bed flats might drop in price due to increased supply of shiny new ones in tip top condition.

There's no point getting hung up on being "ripped off" if loads of others are prepared to pay and you are getting no-where. For example what percentage of the property price is £10k, as paying 3% more than you think it's worth is very different to 12%?

suki1964

I remember being a first time buyer looking at the same area and prices being up to £10 k different.

Yes there were a lot of properties overpriced. But you can't see that by looking on line


We speant weeks looking at near on identical houses in the same area before we found the house we are happy to part money for


The house was ex local council and had first been sold for £7k We bought at £68k just 15 years later