What do you wish you'd known as a 1st time buyer?

StumpyPumpy

What other people have said, plus: Learn how to research properly on the internet.

There is a huge number of resources available to help you choose a house, it amazes me how often people are unaware of them. Rightmove, Zoopla and OntheMarket are much more useful than simply finding the house in the first place.

Zoopla value estimates are pretty useless a lot of the time but the sold prices section is very good, and they often have an archive of previous listings. Rightmove also does previous listings but they don't keep an archive so you may find one old one or be shown the current listing. Also, Rightmove doesn't seem to show old listings for flats in their sold prices for some reason, an appropriate Google search using the "site:" parameter is your friend here. And talking of Google, its Streetview history can often turn up some surprises. Sadly, the best tool for Rightmove - PropertyBee no longer works: there are alternatives that are slowly filling the gap but I haven't used them extensively enough to recommend any (someone else may be able to suggest one for you)

Once you have a house/location in mind check Facebook to see if there is a local page and maybe post something along the lines of "I'm thinking of moving to your delightful town of Springfield, are there any areas that people would recommend?". Take any replies with a pinch of salt but it often gives you an idea if you want to move to an unfamiliar area. The local newspaper might give some insights too.

Make sure you are familiar with the local council's planning portal and their Local Development Plan (LDP) You might find that the beautiful view from your prospective front door is earmarked for a 400 property housing estate in the LDP or one of the neighbours has a planning application in to convert his shed into a slaughterhouse (or just knock down the house and build another. Don't think that would necessarily be short term - I know someone whose neighbour's house has been a constant building site for the last 10 years!) A general look over the planning will also give you an idea of how likely the council are to give permission for development (good if it is for you, potentially bad if it is for all your neighbours).

Whilst you are looking at the council site check to see if there are any ongoing issues in the neighbourhood, such as noise issues: You may fall in love with the property overlooking the cricket green but not be so enamoured after the third weekend of karaoke nights in the pavilion that vibrates your new home until past midnight. Licensing applications and Temporary Event Notices are worth paying attention to: most people do not want to live with a popular party venue over the garden fence. Sadly, all the different councils seem to use different online systems so you need to hunt around to find out where the useful information is hiding.

Police.uk will give you a map of reported crime in the area which is always good to know about and the old map sites such as maps.nls.uk are interesting in themselves but can also throw up other issues such as footpath routes, culverts and previous uses of the site that may otherwise only turn up in the official searches.


SP

ProDave

I wish I had know 3 or 4 years earlier how the housing market in the 1980's was going to go silly and bought earlier.

I wish I had know interest rates were going to go up to 15%, I might have save more and been even more frugal that I was (actually I am not sure that would have been possible)

Whoever says buying a house used to be easy is lyeing. Even back then, I bought literally the cheapest house for sale in the county, I could only just afford it, taking the maximum mortgage I could get, which even took into account a pay rise due in 2 months, that left me several £K short for the deposit so my good car had to go and be replaced with a £200 rusty banger. t was a new house but it was 2 years before I could afford new carpets for it. People today would not give up their pay tv, internet, phones etc to save money and be frugal to afford a first house.

I also wish it had been possible to borrow money to buy land. I had the chance of a reasonable building plot buy nobody would lend money to buy the land. It was another 20 years before I finally got my dream of building my own house.

hammy1988

Don't fall into the trap of the Help to Buy scheme as a FTB. We used the HTB but we were not a FTB, we had a lot of equity in our first house that was a first time buy. It was an ex council house and we bought it cheap and did it up, which then meant five years later we could get our dream house along with promotions at work etc. I'm seeing too many FTB rushing into the HTB scheme without thinking about it and the massive financial tie and lack of scope it gets you in.

We are treating this house as our forever home now, but always knew our first purchase would be cheap, its all we could afford back then!

armchaireconomist

- Property report is barely worth the paper its written on
- Inspect everything, lift carpets if they consent, don't worry about being seen as overstepping
- Buy something cheap and teach yourself to DIY, you'll save thousands (FYI, in a lot of jobs its easy enough to get a "professional" standard as long as you're prepared to spend the time on it)
- If you can, don't move in straight away and get everything done you can afford.

xsor

Hmm, that not everyone is on your side.

Everyone is there to make money off you, and it's up to you to make sure you don't lose too much of it. Take every advice you get from these 'professionals' with a pinch of salt, because in the end, they just want to get the job done.

Keep a log of everything, get everything in email/writing to confirm. Don't put too much trust in anyone, and assume they'll carry it out.

If you're buying new build, always make sure they fix everything first before you commit (exchange).

Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but you normally end up disappointed/hurt from the promises and advice you get.

NaughtiusMaximus

armchaireconomist wrote: »

(FYI, in a lot of jobs its easy enough to get a "professional" standard as long as you're prepared to spend the time on it)

Spot on. I can redecorate a room to as good a standard as a professional painter and decorator, the difference being a competent pro would do it in half the time or less.

pumpkin89

Honestly, I wish I'd researched the end-to-end process before I started (didn't even know that 'exchange' and 'complete' are different things).

I disagree with people who've said buy the best house you can afford. Depending on your budget, that might be the only realistic option. However, we went for a cheaper house and it's been nice having a bit of spare money, rather than putting every penny into the mortgage.

starshapedbrick

• Buy in the best area you can afford, and do plenty of research

• If buying a flat, educate yourself on lease extensions beforehand (not as I did 10 years later when I wanted to sell - fortunately I wasn't left out of pocket, but others in the block I used to own in have been left with unsellable flats worth a third of what they paid at the peak of the market!)

• Find a solicitor who uses email. I cannot emphasise how much difference this made between my first purchase and subsequent ones.Not only for convenience but for having a written record of everything and being able to keep people in the loop quickly.

• And finally, as a recent 3rd time buyer but first time in a chain - the pain does end, and it's not worth getting worked up over the many annoyances of dealing with the chain. I just kept in mind that there would come a time when I would never have to deal with our vendors, our buyers, their agents and solicitors ever again and that kept me going

butterfly72

If you really want to research an area look at what used to be the Public Health Observatories. You can see how an area compares to other local areas and the whole of England in relation to health, smoking, obesity, employment, violent crimes, life expectancy, no of GCSEs, alcohol, activity levels, cancer diagnosis, diabetes... etc... It can give you a really good idea of an area and the people living there and is quite fascinating to browse anyway!

It's not massively user friendly anymore but you can navigate it with a bit of playing around.

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/health-profiles

steampowered

ProDave wrote: »

Whoever says buying a house used to be easy is lyeing. Even back then, I bought literally the cheapest house for sale in the county, I could only just afford it, taking the maximum mortgage I could get, which even took into account a pay rise due in 2 months, that left me several £K short for the deposit so my good car had to go and be replaced with a £200 rusty banger. t was a new house but it was 2 years before I could afford new carpets for it. People today would not give up their pay tv, internet, phones etc to save money and be frugal to afford a first house.

I am afraid if you were a young person today you simply would not have a hope in hell of affording that property. You need a much bigger deposit these days, and your rent before then would have been more expensive.