Open Day viewings: 15 mins to decide!

hanb

stardust09 wrote: »

Oh no, undervaluing is not good news. I'm looking in the Bedminster/Southville outskirts areas which are not easy as they are in high demand and over-priced already, without being advertised at an undervalued price. I am wary of settling for a flat due to the multiple other charges and hassle they involve so would much prefer a small house. I'm accepting that it could take me a year or two to find anywhere, unless there's a massive Brexit market crash (!).

Thanks for your advice.

We started off looking there too but it was just crazy money. Ended up buying in Brislington (just off Sandy Park) and love it already - helps we could get a 3 bed instead of a 2 bed for less money! Was a bit of a shock coming from Whiteladies road but glad to be away from the mass ascent of students that's just happened


Don't worry too much about the undervaluing - it's only 0cean I noticed doing it (they sold a friends house who said that was their tactic too) and you could always tell it would go for much more because it was so noticeably lower than similar.

ThePants999

Hoploz wrote: »

I do all my research before booking viewings. I knew I wanted to buy the house I'm in before even seeing it. Right place, right size plot, I knew what it looked like from google aerial photos, I knew the internals from local council planning portal. All the EA had given me was the name of the house and the price. I had to wait for a week before they accepted viewings, then had to endure an open house saturday with 10 other people looking around MY house, with ogfers on the table on the monday. Then best and finals. And a load of stress, but we got it.

You know the important things are location and what's outside. That's what you can't change. Inside you can change to suit you.

Hahah, this was almost exactly us too! We saw it the day it went on the market and immediately knew it was right, but they were doing viewings via open day a week and a half later. I tried hard to wrangle an earlier viewing, but they wouldn't budge. In the meantime, we gawped at Street View, researched the village, checked on schools, crime, yadda yadda, wandered round the local nature reserve, visited at a few different times of day, tested the commute to my workplace... By the Saturday open day, I was throwing eye daggers at all the other people who had the temerity to come wander round this house that was blatantly ours but for a bit of negotiation. Then it was sealed bids on the Monday, so cue two days of agonising over what bid would secure it for us without ludicrously overpaying, and then the nail biting wait to see if our offer was accepted, followed by jumping round the house for a while when it was. (Sure enough, six months in the house and we're loving it.)

FWIW, we made it clear to the agent at the open day that we were deadly serious buyers, already minded to put an offer in and didn't want to inconvenience the sellers by asking for a second viewing later, so we were not going to be constrained by this arbitrary 15 minute slot time and we were going to have a PROPER look round. She was OK with it - stayed with us for 15 minutes, then let us wander round on our own while other people turned up for their slots.