Having doubts after offer accepted

NewShadow

danlightbulb said:

Its nice yeah. But it has no garage no driveway (on street parking). I dont know why you think i should be willing to accept that when I can spend £20-30k more than that. 

I didn't say you should accept it - I said it's the one I like from the few I glanced at... 

I'm not your personal shopper and you're the one that's said you'll only accept a 'normal' house. I'm just slightly aghast that with over 100 to choose from you might not consider your definition of 'normal' is - maybe - not... normal.

You're blaming the local housing stock, you're blaming the agents for pressuring you, you're blaming society at large for overpricing houses... 

MovingForwards

danlightbulb said:

Its nice yeah. But it has no garage no driveway (on street parking). I dont know why you think i should be willing to accept that when I can spend £20-30k more than that. 

But you pulled out the bungalow because you didn't want to stretch yourself, yet now you are saying you can spend £20-30k which will be taking you to the top of your budget.

Just because you can spend more, doesn't mean you have to.

Something has to give, you will have to compromise on area or wants of the property, if you do actually want to buy. Either that or keep saving until you are able to get exactly what you want, at the risk of still only having the properties you are currently rejecting.

Be careful, you are fast losing members willing to assist / comment.

danlightbulb

MovingForwards said:

danlightbulb said:

Its nice yeah. But it has no garage no driveway (on street parking). I dont know why you think i should be willing to accept that when I can spend £20-30k more than that. 

But you pulled out the bungalow because you didn't want to stretch yourself, yet now you are saying you can spend £20-30k which will be taking you to the top of your budget.

Just because you can spend more, doesn't mean you have to.

Something has to give, you will have to compromise on area or wants of the property, if you do actually want to buy. Either that or keep saving until you are able to get exactly what you want, at the risk of still only having the properties you are currently rejecting.

Be careful, you are fast losing members willing to assist / comment.

To answer your first point, the bungalow required a significant cash injection on top of the deposit and monthly mortgage. That was the problem, not the monthly repayments. An extra £10k on the mortgage is vastly different to having an extra £10k in cash.

Its just a frustrating situation. I know other people have it far worse, god only knows how londoners cope with only getting a flat for half a million quid.

But i dont think the prices should mean i settle for something that doesnt suit me at all. 

orangecrush

danlightbulb said:

@orangecrush You say that in a sarcastic way (or I read it that way)?

As if you think my goal is not achievable and its all a pipe dream?

Sorry @danlightbulb, I didn't mean it to come across as sarcastic.  I genuinely do wish you luck!  I'm just not being helpful to you, so, I thought it best I bow out. 

D.L

danlightbulb said:

Its just a frustrating situation. I know other people have it far worse, god only knows how londoners cope with only getting a flat for half a million quid.

But i dont think the prices should mean i settle for something that doesnt suit me at all. 

That's the whole point though isn't it... everyone has to compromise. I would hardly say the bungalow doesn't suit you at all. It basically had everything you wanted except a driveway and the bedrooms being upstairs. You have to decide if these are things you can accept. The next one will also have things you need compromise on.

MovingForwards

danlightbulb said:

MovingForwards said:

danlightbulb said:

Its nice yeah. But it has no garage no driveway (on street parking). I dont know why you think i should be willing to accept that when I can spend £20-30k more than that. 

But you pulled out the bungalow because you didn't want to stretch yourself, yet now you are saying you can spend £20-30k which will be taking you to the top of your budget.

Just because you can spend more, doesn't mean you have to.

Something has to give, you will have to compromise on area or wants of the property, if you do actually want to buy. Either that or keep saving until you are able to get exactly what you want, at the risk of still only having the properties you are currently rejecting.

Be careful, you are fast losing members willing to assist / comment.

To answer your first point, the bungalow required a significant cash injection on top of the deposit and monthly mortgage. That was the problem, not the monthly repayments. An extra £10k on the mortgage is vastly different to having an extra £10k in cash.

Its just a frustrating situation. I know other people have it far worse, god only knows how londoners cope with only getting a flat for half a million quid.

But i dont think the prices should mean i settle for something that doesnt suit me at all. 

The bungalow did not need £10k spent on it immediately, a bit of TLC to sort a couple of things out and the rest was personal wants. Same as everyone when they buy, unless it's a new build where they get to pick everything out and pay for it.

Yes, the carpet / decoration wasn't the current fashion, but there's not many places people can walk in and like what is already there.

This is what I'm trying to get at, separating wants from needs. For your budget, you cannot get everything on your needs list.

As you are not prepared to do any work, then stop wasting your time and sellers time, only look at properties that have been modernised and do meet the configuration you want. Keep saving as you will need a bigger budget.

I would have loved a bungalow, but couldn't afford one, same with a house. I couldn't afford to buy where I rent, nor in the same city. Instead I looked at what I wanted and what other areas could give me that.

I am buying a 2 bed, middle floor flat, with a private garden (highly unusual for these flats in Scotland), water / mountain views and a shower room.

I have no direct parking, the bathroom suit doesn't match, the tiles are really not to my taste nor is any of the flooring /decoration throughout, the kitchen could be configured a lot better with nicer units, the bedrooms are long, not square. It's got a lot of potential to make it mine over the next 10 - 15 years. And for me to visit anyone or get to work, requires a train journey, followed by a bus or I drive.

When I move in, I won't even notice the carpet, the cupboards, the bathroom etc, instead I will be sitting on my sofa, in my home and eventually I will have some money to start tackling something.

Please, sit down and write lists of what you must have, what you would like to have, what you definitely don't want, what you can do without, compare your lists to what's on sale and then cross reference that against your budget.

Tiglet2

And bear in mind that in 20 years time, a bungalow might be the very type of property that is on the top of your need list.  Needs change with time.  What is a forever home in your 30s or 40s is very different to the needs of the 60s, 70s or 80s.

Davesnave

We bought a bungalow because that's what came with the land, not because we're of more mature years. Given the choice, I'd probably stick with the convenience of a bungalow. There's also something to be said for staying with a house and using the stairs daily for exercise as one ages, but it's not essential, especially if there's land to be looked after.

danlightbulb

@D.L @MovingForwards the bungalow really did need a significant cash injection straight away, and that's why I pulled out not because of the layout or the driveway, which I had got used to the idea of over the past month or so.

The windows were in bad condition and causing all the brickwork under the bays to be damp. £3.5k to replace both not including the bay window roofs.

There was no shower in the bathroom and no extractor fan. And because the original vented tank system was old and in very poor condition it makes complete sense to fit a high pressure system (combi boiler) and get rid of all the old tanks at the same time, and also then fit a shower off the combi. This could have been done in isolation I guess (c.£3k) but it makes complete sense from an economic point of view to replace the bathroom at the same time given the work needed to fit a shower, shower screen and proper extractor system. A bathroom refit is a horrible job to DIY (Ive tried before and got in a mess), especially if the only toilet in the house. So there is £4k to get someone to do the bulk of the work on that.

The repointing, exterior repainting, soffit and guttering repairs I was planning to do all myself.

There were some other issues too, primary of which was insulation. Both external doors were single glazed, and one window was also, and the roof only had a small amount of insulation in. Now I don't mind about having single glazed doors as such, knowing that its at least a grand each to replace a door with a UPVC one, but it would likely mean my energy bills would be higher, which in turn would take away from the do up fund.

But there is £10k gone immediately just on the windows, heating and bathroom. That wasn't allowing anything for the rest of the interior. I would have needed an additional bank loan immediately after taking out the mortgage to get £10k to spend on those things.

So whilst its possible to say that those things could have been left for potentially years, its really not the right solution to live with highly damp walls (which could be rotting the sub floor the longer its left) and bodge up the bathroom. I don't think that is an unreasonable position to take - I was fully happy with not tackling the kitchen for years or the other rooms so I don't think Im being too unreasonable with that. There is a limit to how poor condition one should let things get. In my case I was buying into that immediate problem/risk.

It was a huge financial commitment, buying a house knowing it needs £10k of work pretty much straight away followed by probably another £10k over the next 5 years. I'd have had no emergency fund, no fund for car maintenance.

NewShadow

danlightbulb said:

It was a huge financial commitment, buying a house knowing it needs £10k of work pretty much straight away followed by probably another £10k over the next 5 years. I'd have had no emergency fund, no fund for car maintenance.

Whatever we think - you made the right decision for you... I think what you're hearing is a little frustration that it's taken quite so much time/collective energy to get there when most of us knew that's where you'd end up eventually anyway, but you made the decision and that's what's important. 

Now - what you need to do... IMO, of course... is learn from this/build on your new knowledge of what you can and can't live with - and not spend another several months stringing things along to get to the same conclusion...