Buy now or wait? Is the crash coming?

MerseyLad · 21 September 2020 at 2:43PM

Hi,
We currently rent and have a mortgage agreed in principle thats valid until the end of November. We have been looking at houses over the last 3 months or so but only got the mortgage all sorted in the last 2/3 weeks. Since then, nothing has caught our eye [sod's law].
The housing market initially was crazy when the original lockdown was lifted as the industry slowly got back into action. House prices were really high, estate agents were saying they were as busy as they had known and houses were selling at asking price or above within hours of being listed [if they were even listed at all]. We missed out on a couple of houses on this basis and everything thats been listed since in our price range was seemingly valued at about 10% above the pre lockdown prices.

Anyway.....we are obviously at a stage now where we are keen to finally move and get settled but we are wondering if it is indeed a good time to do so. The market I describe above has shown signs in the last week or two that its slowing and house reductions are happening rapidly across the board in the areas we are looking.
Is it a good time to be buying a house with the uncertainty, or should we wait until Nov/Dec when we may have a better idea of the financial markets reaction to COVID?

This house is likely to be 'our forever home' and so that obviously changes things somewhat as if the market changes slightly for the worse then we are committed to the house anyway and thankfully we have very secure jobs.

Its all a bit confusing at the moment and both of us are very inexperienced in the housing market having rented for the majority of our adult lives.

Any advice or guidance would be appreciated.
ML

Thrugelmir · 21 September 2020 at 3:05PM

If you find a house that you wish to make a home go for it. Once gone you may never see it on the market again.

Sistergold · 23 September 2020 at 3:36PM

This question is being asked in one form or the other almost every week so if you search the forums you will get a comprehensive answer. A home is not a house and when you need to and can buy there is no need to hold off just because of speculation about right or wrong time as it’s just a guess and you need to live somewhere. If forever home then things will even out mostly but all guess work.