How long house hunting ?

Scottishgal19

Hi,

Hope everyone doesn’t mind me posting don’t want to come across as negative or a moan. I have hit a house hunting low and would love to hear people’s stories on how long it took to find their home?

We have been saving for years and finally in a position to be able to buy a house which I was really excited about. We have been viewing properties for the past 6 months offered on 3 houses with no success. In my area to stay within 5 miles of kids school there has not been many come on the market. Hopefully as the spring comes in there will be more.

Is this slump I find myself in normal

RelievedSheff

It took us a good six months to choose our first home and we had plenty of choice of properties at the time within budget.

This time we had no intention of buying a house so only viewed this one new build and loved it. A little under four weeks later we had moved in!

comeandgo

Each time it's been the first one we viewed we liked and we bought. I do a lot of research before I visit a property so don't visit maybes and have never offered low. If you snooze you loose.

ReadingTim

About as long in weeks as the length of this string is, in centimetres.

So, how long is a piece of string?!?

Davesnave

Choosing my first home: 5 minutes with newspaper, sealed bids, done & dusted in 2 weeks.

Second home: Bought from friend. Agreed price over a pint & meal.

Third home.....err......22 months with 10 of them in a rental.

It is a lottery.

Moneyminded

This is totally normal, particularly if there isn't much choice locally. I took over a year to find my current home and was losing the will with house hunting. Everyone talks about the nightmare of buying a house but I found the most stressful bit finding a house I wanted to buy in the first place.

Keep the faith and your future home will appear sooner or later. Good luck

SimonBck

We are in our first month of looking. We have viewed a couple of houses. Not alot to choose from so we are just waiting for houses to come onto the market. Would like it done sooner rather than later but if the right house does not come up we wont buy for the sake of it.

leftism

I feel your pain. We got our AIP a few months ago and were so excited. We saw 5 on the first day and offered on one of those. It was rejected. Since then we have viewed loads and offered (rejected) on 4. Now it just feels like I’m constantly staring at the same properties on Rightmove. As soon as something new comes on, it either goes after an open day and scrabble of offers or it’s awful haha.

Tightaz

I hear your pain.We have just had an offer accepted and we had been looking for just over 5 months.

Try and stay positive and remember you are getting an education at every viewing you attend. We learnt that floor plan design is very important, some properties photograph very well but are botched DIY jobs when you view them. The list goes on. But as time goes on you get better at spotting deal breakers and can ask the right questions.

One big thing we did learn is that going in with a low offer isn’t the right approach. We always though giving ourselves room to negotiate up was a good idea but sellers clearly don’t want to do that. Your first offer will never be accepted but it needs to be attractive enough for the EA to want you to submit something a bit better.

Scottishgal19

Thank you everyone. It’s good to hear all your advice and experiences. We have definitely realised over the months what is more important to us in a house through the viewings we’ve had.

The excitement has dropped a bit since we received our decision in principal but have to be realistic that it will be a home we will live in for a long time so want to make the right decisions while being realistic within our budget. We have waited this long after all a bit longer won’t hurt.

Good luck to everyone also house hunting

Jrose1927

We had a offer accepted on our house then couldn't find a place for 7 months most stressful 7 months ever thought our buyer would pull out luckily it was an investor

Something will come up be patient don't jump at something your not 100% on it's worth waiting