Help! Buying a house which was misadvertised

pinkteapot

Is it within walking distance of a station with a lot of people commuting by train? Those households are slightly less likely to have two cars. If it's the sort of estate where you have to drive to get anywhere, pretty much any buyer in the future will have two cars and would choose a house with room for two cars over yours. 

You'll be reducing your future market - a lot of people (myself included) simply wouldn't buy a 4-bed with one parking space (unless it was considerably cheaper and it was the only possible way to afford 4-beds in the area). With fewer people willing to consider a house, your price will be a bit lower, and you may find it takes a while to sell. But you're happy with one space - and someone else out there will be too. 

If you've struggled to buy I'm guessing it's at the low end of the prices for a 4-bed in that area? In which case it sounds about right. 

Cakeguts

hercs182 said:

Thank you everyone, all of your comments are really helpful.  Where we are at is that we would be ok with 1 car parking space, but are more concerned that it will be an issue for buyers when we come to sell again.
Finding a house within our budget in our area hasn't been easy - and we have saved a very good deposit, so the house hunt process was disheartening to say the least!  We just feel so stuck as to what we should do!

Am I right in thinking that this house appears to be "good value for money?" 

Firstly you will have a problem selling this house because of the parking space problem. A 4 bed house is a family home and as such most people would want two parking spaces.  The way that you sell a problem house is by making it very cheap and although this one appears to be cheap it may not be cheap enough for the problem that it has but that doesn't mean to say that you will be able to get any more money off.  There is a chance that it hasn't already sold because no one will pay the asking price with the parking problem and there is a parking problem.

Just to give you a bit of extra information. I am a landlord and I wouldn't entertain that house however cheap it was.  The problem it has for me are two things.  I don't like allocated parking because you only need a couple of families where both adults and a couple of the children have cars and you have a major parking war.  The other thing is that I wouldn't entertain any property with only one allocated parking space.

What would put me off the one you are looking at is the way that the vendor is trying to make out that it has room for two cars and not only one parking space that shows that they are very aware that they are going to have a problem selling the house. It also suggests that this is a sticking point that has already come up with this house sale. You need to look at how long it has been on the market now and whether any previous sales have fallen through. 

The vendors will be trying as much as they can to sell to you because you are first time buyers and they will think that you don't realise how much of a problem this house actually is with its parking situation. The fact that they said that there were two parking spaces to start with and it has only come to light on the land registry documents that there is only one tells me that they know that they have a problem.  It would not be a good idea to believe anything they say about how easy it is to park generally in the area around that house.

foxy-stoat

hercs182 said:

Thank you everyone, all of your comments are really helpful.  Where we are at is that we would be ok with 1 car parking space, but are more concerned that it will be an issue for buyers when we come to sell again.
Finding a house within our budget in our area hasn't been easy - and we have saved a very good deposit, so the house hunt process was disheartening to say the least!  We just feel so stuck as to what we should do!

If your thinking about not buying it just because when you come to sell the new buyers wont like it then your thinking very short term.  If it suits your needs buy it - if it doesn't then don't.  I wouldn't worry about what your future buyers are going to think, unless it has subsidence or some other major issue.

hercs182

Thanks again all.
The house is 6 years old, structurally sound and in a popular area in City outer suburbs.
The nearest train station a 15 min walk and well-connected. (There is a new housing dev. under construction between the house and station which will be connected to a road near ours, making the walk more like 10 minutes in the future).   Bus connections 15 minutes which takes 30 mins to city centre.
It's definitely not priced at the lower end for a 4 bed in that area, i'd say it sits somewhere in the middle (Bit of background - it was on the market for £7.5k more before it was reduced in price and we got another £7.5k below the asking price again).  But a similar 4-bed property on the same development sold for £5k more about 6 months ago, that had a driveway though, with space for 2 cars.
The house was on the market for about 5 months before we made our offer (fairly normal in the area at that time with Brexit Unknowns) apparently there were a few previous offers they didn't accept, but no fallen-through sales. 
The reason we're quite mindful of the effect it has on re-sale value is that it isn't a forever home and we'd be looking to sell in around 5 years (long-term, we plan to move out of the area).

lindos90

Did they mention anything about 2 spaces in the documents they completed? (I can't remember the name of it but its where they fill in the fixtures and fittings forms and confirm boundary responsibilities, neighbour disputes etc)  If they have, and this contradicts the other official information you have from the searches/title deeds etc then it is something to legitimately bring up. I would point this contradiction out to your solicitor. I would also contact their EA and say their vendors info lead you to believe there was two, as did their advert for the property, when theres actually one, (yes the EA info is not legally binding, but the sellers information is). You could mention your offer was on the basis of it having 2 official parking spaces. Its likely at this stage they will be desperate to see the sale completed and may be happy to go to the vendors to suggest a reduced price. But you may risk losing the sale if the vendors will not accept a reduced offer, or if they have someone else interested who would pay the full amount, or if the reduced offer means your vendors can't then afford to move up the chain. You also need to think what would be a reasonable reduction in the offer to reflect having only one designated space rather than two.

When we were first time buyers, we didn't find out till very close to exchanging contracts that the garden didn't belong to the house, the boundary actually finished at the edge of the back yard! It only came up in conversation when we went round to measure for curtains! The solicitor hadn't given us copies of the documents to look at, and when we raised it with him he said he assumed we knew!  As in your case, the EA information mentioned the usual phrases like 'garden laid to lawn with planting borders'. We were very naive and ended up paying for an insurance policy to cover us if the owner of the land came back to claim it, although we did negotiate a reduced purchase price.

Good luck and pop back to let us know how things go. There are often lots of uncertainty during negotiations, but most can get sorted out enabling sales to go ahead. You do right asking here though, I have learnt so much from this site over the years, saved us a fortune! 

DCFC79

Any chance of a link ?

steampowered

I would be pretty annoyed to be told that a house has 2 car parking spaces, and then to find out during conveyancing that it only has 1. That's a perfectly reasonable basis for reducing your offer.

At the end of the day though if you really want the property despite only having 1 parking space you will still have to agree a price with the seller.

pickledonionspaceraider

Yes I would be put off

PasturesNew

I can see the problem.  If you thought you were buying two side by side spaces you'd have mentally thought a 3rd/4th could occasionally have blocked those in, thereby giving you all the space you needed 99% of the time. 
To only have one space, when you need two (+ others) means you'd have not viewed this house to start with. 

You have to now choose.  Is this a deal-breaker?  I'd suggest it probably is.  
Is there any compo? No, it's the buyer's cost/job to check these details during the buying process.  An agent/seller's word is a guess, or how they see things. 

Chances are you could probably often/always 'guarantee' your tandem spaces... but that's not what you thought you were buying.  You thought you were buying two side by side, giving you the "stacking" option when needed. 

Going forward, it would put some buyers off... so you'd have fewer viewers, it'd take longer to sell.  Nobody can pretend otherwise. 

hercs182

lindos90 said:

Did they mention anything about 2 spaces in the documents they completed? (I can't remember the name of it but its where they fill in the fixtures and fittings forms and confirm boundary responsibilities, neighbour disputes etc)  

When we were first time buyers, we didn't find out till very close to exchanging contracts that the garden didn't belong to the house, the boundary actually finished at the edge of the back yard! It only came up in conversation when we went round to measure for curtains! The solicitor hadn't given us copies of the documents to look at, and when we raised it with him he said he assumed we knew!  As in your case, the EA information mentioned the usual phrases like 'garden laid to lawn with planting borders'. We were very naive and ended up paying for an insurance policy to cover us if the owner of the land came back to claim it, although we did negotiate a reduced purchase price.

Wow! What a huge thing for the Solicitors not to check!

The documents just say 'allocated at the front of the house' but we do have a separate email from them via the Estate Agent where they have said it is tandem parking (which we know we can't do!).

I'm really trying to separate the emotion from it all, and make a decision with a straight head, which is much easier said than done