First Time Buyer - First viewing

Clutterfree

NicNicP wrote: »

We fell in love with our current house and the house we lived in wasn't even on the market when we first viewed the property. We were open and honest with them and told them we loved the house and explained our situation. I think the fact they knew how keen we were went in our favour and they accepted our offer, even though it was under the asking price and agreed to leave us some of the kitchen appliances.

I agree. With our first house we played it cool but with the house we are currently buying we weren't in a position to play it cool.
We wanted it and our house wasn't even on the market.
We told them we wanted it but had to sell ours first.
Unfortunately before we had an offer on ours, they "sold" theirs.
We were gutted so immediately removed ours from the market.
When their sale fell through we put ours back up for sale.
This made them see we were serious and they stopped viewings for a few weeks and luckily we sold.
Hopefully exchanging soon...

wjr4

I have a quick question - we have been viewing houses for the first time recently but none have really stood out. Our budget means that we can't buy a house exactly where we want to live etc and have to 'settle' slightly. I'm just a bit worried that we won't know if a house is 'the one'. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? I've been quite lucky growing up in nice areas and houses so it's quite hard to see myself in a house that isn't in the most desirable place etc or needs work done to it. We live in quite an expensive part of Essex so we can't afford to live in our town unless it is in a less desirable part.

Thank you for your help in advance

Steph1993

I am in the same situation at the moment.
We are first time buyers and got 2 viewings booked for this Friday which we are quite excited about.
If we fall in love with one of them on Friday do we have to make an offer straight away? or can We make an offer a few weeks after the first viewing gives us some time to view quite a few more.
Any help would be much appreciated ��

elverson

You can make an offer whenever you like, but if someone else makes an offer before you do then you might lose your chance.

smile88egc

In the current post brexit climate buyers seem pretty scarce so you've got more time to consider your offer than you would have had previously!

Don't feel rushed, it's the most expensive purchase you've ever made.

cashbackproblems

Yep post Brexit be aware that prices are slowly dropping as seen by many RM reductions and generally. Have the app and alerts on your email so you can see what daily things are coming up for, how long they stay unsold etc.

Steph1993

Thanks for you help it's very much appreciated.
One of the houses we are going to view has been reduced around 2 weeks ago from £99,950 to £94,950.
It has been up for sale since March 2016.
We really like it so far but obviously need to view and see if our opinion changes.
The house on the same street across the road sold in Feb 2016. It was advertised at £94,950 but sold for £85,500 it was a 3 bed compared to the 2 bed that we are viewing. It had a bigger garden, new bathroom fitted and new kitchen along with new boiler system.
Would we be cheeky by offering the 2 bed up for £94,950 £85,000 due to what the other house went for?
Many Thanks

Alpaca

Steph1993 wrote: »

One of the houses we are going to view has been reduced around 2 weeks ago from £99,950 to £94,950.
It has been up for sale since March 2016.
We really like it so far but obviously need to view and see if our opinion changes.
The house on the same street across the road sold in Feb 2016. It was advertised at £94,950 but sold for £85,500 it was a 3 bed compared to the 2 bed that we are viewing. It had a bigger garden, new bathroom fitted and new kitchen along with new boiler system.
Would we be cheeky by offering the 2 bed up for £94,950 £85,000 due to what the other house went for?

I think an offer at around that level wouldn't be unreasonable. If a bigger, better house went for around that price a few months ago and since then prices likely haven't increased (or may even have decreased slightly) then I think that's some fairly helpful evidence to say that you shouldn't pay much more.

However, two additional considerations that this doesn't account for and you should factor in:

1) Your status as a buyer. It may be that the property that sold in Feb was to a cash buyer and that's partly what justified the offer being accepted at a decent discount to asking price. If you need a mortgage, it wouldn't be fair to assume that you could get a similar discount. That said, as a first time buyer you won't have a chain so you can use that fact to your advantage since it decreases the risk of the deal falling through and also likely means you'll have a shorter completion timeline. A quick call to the agent who sold the other place in Feb could let you know the status of the buyer so that you know where you stand relative to them.

2) How many other people are interested in the house and how desperate the sellers are to sell. Clearly there won't have been much (or even any!) serious interest to-date if the price has recently been reduced but it may be that with the reduction more people start considering it. Again, it's difficult to know how this compares to the accepted offer in Feb. It may have been that the eventual buyer was the only offer and the sellers had to sell quickly so they took a big discount. The dynamic with the house you're looking at may be different. There's no harm in calling the agent and asking about some of these things: why the sellers are selling, what they're moving on to, whether other people have been to view the place and if they've had any offers yet. Of course agents will tend to talk things up, but you may be able to get a bit of a sense of whether you're in a strong position or not.

mattk_180

I think you know when you've found "the one". Even if it's not as nice as you'd hoped, if you can imagine yourself living there and already thinking about what you could do to it and where you could put things, I think you're already there.


We had that exact feeling last weekend. We have our first ever viewings on Saturday and out of 4 we saw, we fell head over heels in love with one of them and didn't even consider the others after that.


We put in our offer on Saturday but it was an open house with a lot of viewings. We got a call on Monday with the chance to submit a final offer as our original had been surpassed. Luckily our second and final offer did the job and was accepted.


Our mortgage has now been accepted, our solicitors have been appointed and we are just waiting for them to complete on their new house so we know when we can move in.


I'm really worried that everything has been rather "easy" so far and although I'm hoping it continues that way, in the back of my mind I'm waiting for something to go wrong!

Steph1993

That's brilliant Mattk_180
It seems like it's moving really fast for you already.
We went to view both houses today first house didn't like at all.
Second house fell in love with, it needs work doing which we already knew about.
Estate agent said that it has been up since March but reduced couple of weeks ago hasn't had much interest and no offers and he is open to offers.
In the front room it had what looks like the tiniest damp spot but I am going to book a second viewing to have a proper check of that.
Other than that we are impatient and want to put an offer in haha.
Did you have your solicitor lined up before the house viewing?
We have got our mortgage in principle but that's it. Do we need to have anything else before putting an offer in?