Brexit - pulling out of purchase

usefulmale

At the end of the day, you are taking a 25 year gamble.

Even if the referendum never existed, could you guarantee you would never lose your job in the next 25 years? Could you guarantee that the economy and house prices specifically will never crash in the next 25 years? Could you guarantee that interest rates would never hit double figures again in the next 25 years?

brodawel

Well perhaps I'm a bit irresponsible when it comes to money but I can't help thinking that OP would be better to go ahead while he is in a position to get a mortgage. If he loses or changes his job it might not be as easy to qualify for the loan and he might need a much bigger deposit and the terms of the mortgage might not be as good as the one he's got now.

xpi

We are in the same situation. In our case I am thinking to tell the vendor to wait at least 1 to 3 months (they are not in the chain). If it will still be a dangerous uncertainty around I'd propose a lower price 10% or what would happen to the market till that time. Then I'd just be ready to pull out in case of probable refusal.
But we have our circumstances - we are not UK citizens and come here for a well paid job (and our companies have HQ in EU/US). We can go away if everything starts to fall apart. In this case we are more like investors right now, as we don't know how long are we here.

marksoton

xpi wrote: »

We are in the same situation. In our case I am thinking to tell the vendor to wait at least 1 to 3 months (they are not in the chain). If it will still be a dangerous uncertainty around I'd propose a lower price 10% or what would happen to the market till that time. Then I'd just be ready to pull out in case of probable refusal.
But we have our circumstances - we are not UK citizens and come here for a well paid job (and our companies have HQ in EU/US). We can go away if everything starts to fall apart. In this case we are more like investors right now, as we don't know how long are we here.

:rotfl:

So you want them to wait around for 3 months, then offer them less. Then do one....

:rotfl:

This has post of the year nailed on.

BallboBiggins

I wish this were hyperbole. Sadly as leftie academics we're pretty screwed - not much call for our kind of work in the UK's manufacturing renaissance!

In terms of other posts - thanks all. Very helpful.

We've got an 80k deposit, about 40% and mortgage is 2.5%, so saving £200 a month on current rent. Issue is more whether we want to stay in the UK at all now and if we do if we will have to chase jobs across the country - if we do we'll probably need to move by Oct 2019 so we're ready for the next REF. With academic work we can't just 'get on our bikes', sorry Norm.

That said we're sick of being mucked about by useless landlords and even losing half our deposit is probably worth the risk to avoid them TBH. I'm more worried that we'll lose all of our deposit. Is a 40% drop likely? I appreciate this might sound ridiculous to you guys, especially if 25% seems like hyperbole, but isn't that what happened in N. Ireland in 2008?

All crystal ball gazing I know.

xpi

So you want them to wait around for 3 months, then offer them less. Then do one....

That of course supposes that they are free to find another buyer in the meanwhile.
What can you propose? As non-UK citizens we of course don't want to pay form our pocket the "party" that UK citizens organized.

marksoton

xpi wrote: »

That of course supposes that they are free to find another buyer in the meanwhile.
What can you propose? As non-UK citizens we of course don't want to pay form our pocket the "party" that UK citizens organized.

So don't. Simple.

ultrak3wl

Many younger people have only ever seen house prices go up and look at you as if you're crazy when you say they can also go down! Twice in my lifetime I have seen price crashes, negative equity, all of it. It's not just the price reductions it's the lack of liquidity - it's brutal when you're desperate to sell and nobody comes to view.

After the surprise Brexit vote my guess is that we're in for another of those times.

TrickyTree83

Part of this market relies on confidence. If buyers suddenly believe they can "hold out" and ask for drops of 5% - 7% then of course the market will stagnate and eventually drop, if everyone did that.

You may find that due to the lack of housing (which still persists) that there will be another set of people right around the corner who don't have the concerns that you do who will snap it up at asking and you're left in the situation you didn't want to be left in and they've bought a home and you haven't.

The reality of the situation right now is:

- we haven't left the EU
- we don't know what it would look like if we did
- we don't know who the next prime minister is
- it looks like we're going to get trade deals but we don't know what they look like yet

Until those questions are answered everyone is in the same boat that the future is more uncertain than it would otherwise have been. And that is all anyone can realistically say about our current circumstances.

WombleBat

We are seriously considering dropping out of our purchase.

We are 95% LTV with a house that needs work. We can only get a two year fixed rate mortgage (At a rate we are happy with)

What concerns us is negative equity + a rise in interest rates (Or worse still negative rates) would destroy us at the end of two years.

For us the risk v's reward balance has shifted.

We are going to hang fire for as long as we can to see if we can see a ray of sunshine at the end of the tunnel but I'm not optimistic.

I am also acutely aware that if things do go south so will our chance of getting a mortgage in the near future so this is not a decision we are taking lightly.