How long did it take you to find your house?

Chocolatefund

I'm at the stage now where I've started the house hunting...eek! I'm a singleton looking at the typical two up, two town starter terrace houses in my search area, and it seems they are selling pretty fast.

Just out of curiosity, I'd like to hear how long it took others in a similar position to find a house?

Weeks? Months? What, if any, compromises did you have to make?

Would love to hear some peoples experiences

elverson

2 months from making our offer to exchange, in London.

We ended up going with the first place we viewed (although we did view several others at the same time). It helped that the seller wanted a fairly quick sale and so didn't keep waiting for higher offers to come in. Our solicitors were also very on the ball.

The main compromise is not having a garden, but we have a short commute and the place itself is decent so can't complain.

Davesnave

It took about 6 months. I'd already narrowed my search to two roads that sometimes had property in my price range, so it was just a matter of waiting till one came up on the correct side, because there's usually a wrong and a right side to most roads.

While I waited, lots of other property came along, but there was always something wrong with the location or the house itself, so I didn't view any of them internally. They were a good reference point, but no more.

When the right house came up, I had to offer more than asking price in a sealed-bid scenario with 2 others. This meant I had less money than I'd imagined to undertake improvements in the short term, but in the longer term it made little difference. That was the compromise: no central heating, double glazing or fitted kitchen etc.

All this happened in 1977. Not much changes!

Get your first house right and it will help a lot when you're ready for your second.

Sianybaby82

I was looking for two years - January 2014 I started. In that time not much came on the market hitting my one essential criteria which was three double bedrooms within my price range.

I did start the process of buying a house (March 2014) but it did have structural issues and the survey raised that it required more work than I could afford.

In May 2015 we put in an offer on the house I eventually purchased. Whilst we were in the process of buying it unbeknown to me the house was repossessed from the Vendor who disappeared. The house then came back up for sale in November under the repossession company at £5k more than had been agreed with the vendor. I offered less for the property and it was initially turned down so I left the offer on the table and it was accepted on 18th December with a 28 day exchange clause. We exchanged on 21st January and completed on 25th January at 1k less than we had originally agreed to purchase.

The house we purchased is about 10 years old, 4 bedroom detached with a garage, conservatory and an office and it was a great price (same style house sold for 40k more in 2014). We compromised on garden space but it's not to much of an issue.

always_sunny

less than a month and still looking! I was hoping that it would take not that long :P

My learned advice is, go and have a look at many flats/houses you can so that you can compare conditions and prices. Now I can understand the previous properties weren't too bad after all!

chris_m

I started looking on Rightmove about 2 years ago, to get a feel for what sort of properties, prices and locations were around within a larger area.
Last Easter I decided that my financial plans were satisfactory so decided to retire at the end of September, then started narrowing down the locations and types of property.
From around August onwards I started looking seriously (still on Rightmove) and headed to the area at the start of November armed with my shortlist for the, by then narrowed down, area. When I got there, a couple had already gone but another two had come onto the market.
I looked at six, the bookings being coincidentally in reverse order to my order of preference - decided that my No.1 choice was still the No.1 and put in an offer which was accepted.
Should be exchanging on Monday (since it didn't happen yesterday) and completing sometime in the week commencing Monday week.

Then comes the fun of moving all my stuff, before tarting my flat up for selling

penguingirl

It took us about 3 hours- we waited until we had an offer on our house and the following Saturday we viewed everything in the area we wanted in our price range! Picked the best. But I am being flippant, we'd been scoping out the area for over a year, looked a lot on rightmove so had a sense of the market and knew that properties didn't hang around so we'd have to act quick. When we FTBs we probably took 3-4 months to find a property and changed the area we looked at and budget, whereas this time around we were much clearer about what we were after (and that was mainly based on location)

MFWannabe

It took about a month to find a house; bought first one we saw. Compromise I suppose was that it needed completely redecorating and a new kitchen at some point in the future. Also had an old boiler.
But it was the house we wanted in the area we wanted so all worth it.
Depends on your criteria; do you have a certain you want to live in?
Do you want a house that you don't have to do work to? Or do you not mind?

HappyMJ

Took me years to find the "right" house in the "right" location.

I was looking for a modern (i.e double glazing and gas central heating) 3 bedroom house with a garage in a quiet street (i.e little passing traffic) and that's what I bought.

I am looking now and am looking for a modern 4 bedroom house with en-suite and bathroom and at least off street parking with a large enough space in the garden for a secure shed which is within reasonable walking distance of friends and family.

ellie27

It took us 3 weeks to accept an offer on the sale of our own house. In that time we viewed around 6 houses and decided (settled?) on one of them, we didnt love the house we were considering buying but it did tick many boxes.

Thankfully the sale of our house fell through a few weeks later so we pulled out too.

Then we were back to house hunting and a house that was originally 'sold' came back on the market and we swooped in and bought it!! Been in it 6 months and it really is as close as we could get to our 'dream house'

We are so glad we didnt settle on the 'it will do for now' house!!

seven-day-weekend

We had just decided not to move when we saw the bungalow we now live in. We had been house-hunting for about a month prior to this, so knew which areas we wanted and what we could get for our budget. We looked online at many, through the windows of two empty ones, and physically viewed one other.

We could not get what we wanted, where we wanted, within our budget so decided to stay where we were, but only about a week later, saw as we were driving past a bungalow that looked promising. We thought it would be over budget, but when we enquired it was within budget . So we were able to get a bungalow with a large garden in our favourite location, below budget, because it needed a load doing to it.


We are very happy living in it.