Buying first home - cold feet about area

Cakeguts

Rae18 wrote: »

I realise this is true but it's all I can afford I'm 28 and still live at home so my options are 1) buy a nice property in a poor area and pay <£400 a month on a mortgage. Or, move out into a !!!!! rented property and pay someone else mortgage by way of >£400 a month in rent. Either that or I live at home the rest of my life :-/

And I have no idea what the most sensible option is tbh!

You have another option. Make a big effort to save as much money as you can. Put down a larger deposit and buy a house that needs decorating in a much better area. You can buy an awful lot of paint for £5k. You don't need to do the kitchen and bathroom straight away.

Rae18

Cakeguts wrote: »

You have another option. Make a big effort to save as much money as you can. Put down a larger deposit and buy a house that needs decorating in a much better area. You can buy an awful lot of paint for £5k. You don't need to do the kitchen and bathroom straight away.

Offering 5k over their asking price isn't the same as having 5k to spare though :-/ my mortgage repayments between 80k and 85k would be a couple of quid a month.

It would take me a good few years to save more for a mortgage (because the 10k deposit I have now came SOLELY from my student maintenance loans over 3 years) and at 28 I desperately need to move out for various reasons:

1) I live with my severely mentally ill mother who has been, and continues to be verbally/emotionally abusive and who's illness I simply cannot tolerate any longer (ever lived with a severely paranoid schizophrenic? It's not good), and

2) our upstairs neighbours are giving us hell with their noise - police, management letters and talking to them haven't had any impact whatsoever. We can't move out as there is nothing in our range suitable for my mother. If I moved out alone, I'd have to buy a new car and furniture which would decrease my savings significantly anyway (at the moment, I'm allowed to use my mother's mobility car for work which saves me a load) and then I'd be paying over the odds in rent to pay someone else's mortgage, all to live in another crappy flat. And I don't make enough to be able to save much at all by the time all my expenses/tax is covered. I would have barely enough to survive on, let alone money to save if I moved out on my own.

My options seem to be:
1) continue living with a mentally ill woman who makes my life hell but means I can save heavily, but at the same time is having a massive effect on my own mental health and costing me money in private therapy.
2) move into an over-priced terraced house in a poor area just so I can own my own home and have reduced rhousing costs via a mortgage.
3) move out into rental accommodation, pay someone else's mortgage, and have to live in a much less nicer place and probably in an equally dodgy area as the house I'm looking to buy is in, along with funding my own furniture and car.

:-/ dunno how to make this situation work in my favour at all to be honest.

Rae18

Cakeguts wrote: »

So let me get this straight. You offered 5k over the asking price of a house that they couldn't sell at the asking price because that was too expensive for the area it was in? Do you need a mortgage? What are you going to do is the mortgage company value it at a lot less than you have offered?

I offered more so I would have room to negotiate if the valuation came back less. I guess I felt that they were saving me a lot of money offering their furniture with it.

Edit: Also, I only realised they had lowered the price by 15k after putting in the offer, which is what sparked my scepticism. It didn't have the full history on rightmove where I originally saw it. I found this info via I think it was MousePrice. I realise it was naive (I have Aspergers so naive is kinda my forte...). Bare in mind I've never bought a house before and wanted to make sure I wasn't gazzumped because on the surface I thought I was getting a good deal. It's only since then I've started questioning. So, lessons learnt!

scriv

If the area bothers you now, it will continue to bother you when you are living there believe me and there is likely to be a ceiling on the value of this house because of its location no matter how you improve it.

Also, you say how you and your mother are upset about the current noise by neighbours now, so it seems risky to be looking at a house where you are aware that renovations etc are going to be causing noise and disruption for you. Are you not going to get upset again?

The owners/Estate Agents are obviously doing all they can to ply you with incentives inside the property to sell it and move away. I would ignore all the emotional spin! They want out.

In view of what you have said, this does not seem a good decision. Once you have bought a property, it is not so easy to sell up and move again as in renting.

sparky130a

Rae18 wrote: »

Hi guys,

I could use some advice. I'm a first time home buyer and I've just put in an offer on a 2 bed terraced property for 85k which was accepted. It is a beautiful house, absolutely stunning. All recently renovated - brand new high quality wooden floors in every room, completely new kitchen and bath room, beautifully decorated throughout, brand new wood burner fire, new boiler etc.

At that price i find it hard to believe anything is high quality.

walwyn1978

Remember that when you come to sell it again, all the 'new' things they've put in won't be 'new' any more so will carry no extra weight with the next buyer - you won't see any return on your 'investment' in those. Hugely sympathetic to your situation but negative equity - paying top end for a property already over the natural limit of the area - isn't a smart move.

+1 for scriv's comments about noise from the renovations by the way.

I understand your reasons for falling in love with it. But I would consider renting for a while and seeing what else is out there. Presumably you'd be buying a car at this new Skem house anyway so that's a cost regardless? If you're renting you could always get started with charity shop/auction preloved furniture - that would help save money.

Good luck - not an easy decision either way.

moneyistooshorttomention

I must admit I'd go against the consensus here personally.

OP's position is that bad currently and money spent on rent is money thrown away after all - and I would buy the place. Sounds like your nerves desperately need a break from your mother and those problem neighbours. A house that you can move into without having to do a thing to it could represent a haven from all that.

Buying it doesnt mean having to commit yourself to living there for the rest of your life after all. The renovation work next door isnt going to be going on forever - so I dont think its a matter of undue concern personally (unless they are planning on adding a blinkin' great extension).

It should be possible to gather some idea of the extent of the renovation - ie check with Planning Department of local council to see if any applications have gone in for an extension on the one hand and use commonsense to figure out how the gardens of these houses are as to whether a very determined person could cram an extension into them (as I've seen a noticeable number of extensions built onto a house when the garden simply wasnt big enough to allow for that - but the owner did anyway and was left with a pocket handkerchief garden).

So:

1. Check to see if next door work will include extensions.
2. If the coast is clear on that front (ie they arent planning extensions) = then buy the place.

If it doesnt work out in your mind as a long-term bet - it's not that big a deal (ie as many people move on at some point from their first house).

You're near enough to a nicer town to get to it - so its doable imo.

AnotherJoe

Rae18 wrote: »

Stupid thing is, I offered 5k more than asking price.

Read that back to yourself, very slowly.

Read it three or four times.

Then consider what is driving you to such irrational behaviour because that really is not normal if you are the only buyer. Is there a sense of desperation here that you must buy "something" ?

I think you know this isn't the right property for you and the comments about appliances are bunk (not to mention, how many people moving into an apartment take a chest freezer with them?). As is the "help someone get on the housing ladder" comment, the price reduction is because no one else wants it and given what you've said about the house, then its the location that's dragging it down. And as another poster commented, that's the one thing you can't change about a house.

Your criteria about adding value don't work out here (FWIW landscaping is never going to add value) because they are impractical or too costly for you and this house is obviously too expensive already so that with your irrational £5k extra makes it even less likely you'd make profit, as you'd be starting at the top and need the area not the house to improve. Unless you are prepared to wait for that to happen, you'd be stranded like thie sellers are.

csgohan4

i would wait tbh, Buying for the sake of buying will only lead to regrets. Nothing wrong with renting, you still getting a service from it, a roof over your head.



Focus on your career and look to earn more

Rented for 14 years before I bought a house

LandyAndy

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I must admit I'd go against the consensus here personally.

OP's position is that bad currently and money spent on rent is money thrown away after all - and I would buy the place. Sounds like your nerves desperately need a break from your mother and those problem neighbours. A house that you can move into without having to do a thing to it could represent a haven from all that.

.

Have you ever been to Skem?


While I appreciate the OP may be very keen to move I'd be looking to rent elsewhere rather than buy there.


And money paid in rent is not 'wasted', it puts a roof over your head.