Overpaid for house...

jumbowindows

Hi there, I'm new to this forum but have been reading much of it for a while.

I'm sure that I know what everyone will say here (i.e. nothing to be done now, move on, get over it!). But I feel like have to vent to some people in the know like yourselves...

We recently moved out of London (where we had rented for 10 years) to the North West, just in between Manchester and Liverpool and bought a decent sized 1930s 3 bed semi for £215k - coming from London this seemed cheap to us! And we fell in love with it when we saw it as it did have a lovely amount of character about it, big wide tiled hallway, high ceilings etc.

Now I've just seen that a house a few doors down from ours, more or less the same house, has just gone for £185k !! we may have overpaid by £30k on our first house and feel sick to be honest

There are some differences 1. we have a downstairs toilet, 2. we have a (sort of) loft conversion which would be a 4th bed (it doesn't meet building regulations for an actual bedroom & we knew that when we bought) 3. the other house has a very different style e.g. pebble dashed frontage!

But still, I don't think any of it would amount to £30k

We found the market really hard to judge and were looking for about a year, some places which we thought were nothing special sold really quickly, some which we thought were lovely didn't sell. This was easily the nicest place we saw in our price range, but having spoken to locals, paying over £200k for a semi should have been a red flag. Amazing really, I would estimate that this would go for close to a £million where we lived in London

We had always loosely planned on living here for around 10 years but who knows what will happen by then

I don't really know what I expect anyone to say but I can't stop dwelling on it so would appreciate anyone's comments, shared experiences, tirades of abuse etc.

thanks

Crashy_Time

Plenty on here will be happy to spend many posts telling you that you have actually made money no doubt .....

pinkshoes

The value is irrelevant unless you want to sell.

Enjoy your home and stop thinking of it as a pile of cash.

iammumtoone

What did the valuation value it at?

Cakeguts

It doesn't matter you have to have somewhere to live. You can only get the money out when you sell the house while you are living in there it is worthless.

jumbowindows

iammumtoone wrote: »

What did the valuation value it at?

Yes sorry, I should have mentioned this. We got two valuations done, 1. bog standard done by Nationwide - they just rubber stamped it as we had a 25% deposit, then 2. we got a home buyers report which put it at £205k. We were prepared to lose £10k after looking for a year, but £30k is a completely different level!

Crashy_Time

When interest rates rise it is going to lose more "value", just settle in and enjoy your home is the best advice.

iammumtoone

jumbowindows wrote: »

we got a home buyers report which put it at £205k. We were prepared to lose £10k after looking for a year,

Theres your answer you knew you overpaid slighly but were willing to accept that.

How do you know the other house valuation report didn't say £205k and the buyer paid 20k less - not unheard of.

Scotbot

The North West has the greatest house price growth at the moment. You could make back your loss after a couple of years.

KiKi

Don't dwell! You haven't overpaid £30k, you've bought somewhere you love and want to live. (Seriously, you'd pick pebble dash and want the hassle of changing it?! And loft conversions are expensive.) The thing is, you have no idea why the other house is cheaper. Could be all sorts of problems, or they need a quick sale. But in the whole scheme of things when you come to sell it won't matter. You can hold out for a bit more when you sell, if it makes you feel better.

Don't forget, unless you're a cash buyer, you're not £30k better off. You're just a little bit worse off each month. Plus, you were looking for a year. In another year, things could be cheaper, or you might be much better off. Who knows. Only you can stop yourself dwelling on it, but a downstairs loo and loft conversation are not cheap things to put in if otherwise the houses are the same, and the fact is that you love this house. You're happy.

JoJo1978

You don't know that the other house wasn't priced that way for a quick sale or because work needed doing.

You're now on the way to owning an asset that you can cash in one day not burning money in rent. Well done : )

Doesn't matter if the value continues to fall for a bit, that's only a problem if you need to sell again soon.

Relax and enjoy!