Really confused about what I want :(

AdrianC

danlightbulb said:

I had a look back through the houses I had saved on rightmove. A few I viewed, and offered on, most I didn't. I think looking back I should have viewed them as some of the ones I had saved are now, in hindsight, far better than what's available at the moment.

Some links no longer work but some still work for comparison purposes:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/62131899#/ i offered asking price on this and didn't get it. I like the estate that this house is on, but prices have risen £20k in the past year there.

£180k in May 2019, so now £200k... Fails the piano test.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/71738599#/ i offered £4k over asking on this one too in a best and final situation, and it went for £7k above the asking price. Same estate as the one above.

£190k in May 2019, so went for £197k. Integral garage, fails piano test.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/74493178#/ i offered asking price on this and lost out because I wasn't first. It wasn't ideal this one, very small driveway and I have a large car, and parking is a problem down that road generally.

Link no work.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/75440494#/ i offered on this one but got cold feet due to the work involved in it and some personal issues I was having at the time made me very stressed out. Nice large house, nice location, father away from where Im looking now though.

£190k in Nov 2019, fails the supplementary piano-as-feature test.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/76353799#/ this was one I was really quite keen on but I felt it was overpriced

£180k in Dec 2019...

...having been bought only a small number of months earlier for £60k less

So what?

Again its a few miles further away from my core area.

...so fails the postcode test.

The house next door later came on the market for £210k I think, but was better as it was bigger and had a garage. That sold quickly too but was out my range anyway.

Yet £180k minus garage was overpriced? https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/72264681#/ i viewed this one and was initially keen. But it was on an unadopted road, right near the canal in a not so great area (potential for crime problems), it had a big water main going through its back garden, and it needed some money spending. All in all I decided it was not right.
Ah, NOW I remember you and your threads...

PerfectMess

Not for me, because i can do a kitchen myself for £5k, but wouldn't want to tackle windows, which is a £15k job for a whole house.

I’m not sure if anyone else has replied to this but we just put new windows in our 3 bed. 2 big bays, set of french doors. Cost about £5k and took them about a week. We didn’t have to do a thing. The normal windows were about £300-400 each, bays and doors were ~£1000 each. 

danlightbulb

PerfectMess said:

Not for me, because i can do a kitchen myself for £5k, but wouldn't want to tackle windows, which is a £15k job for a whole house.

I’m not sure if anyone else has replied to this but we just put new windows in our 3 bed. 2 big bays, set of french doors. Cost about £5k and took them about a week. We didn’t have to do a thing. The normal windows were about £300-400 each, bays and doors were ~£1000 each. 

That sounds amazingly cheap. I put new windows in a previous house back in 2007 and it cost around £12k for one bay, 3 regular sized bedrooms, one set of french doors, a front door, kitchen, landing, and the small bathroom one. I got several quotes, all about the same.

danlightbulb

AdrianC said:
£180k in May 2019, so now £200k... Fails the piano test.
£190k in May 2019, so went for £197k. Integral garage, fails piano test.

£190k in Nov 2019, fails the supplementary piano-as-feature test.
£180k in Dec 2019...So what?...so fails the postcode test.Yet £180k minus garage was overpriced? 

Yeah I had let the piano playing lapse a bit a couple of years back, Ive since picked it up again and making steady progress. I know its not an essential thing but its just a nice hobby to have and I want to make the most of it.

re the £180k - i didn't know £180k was about right at the time because there was nothing to validate it against, no other house had sold in that street for many years so they were jumping from well under £100k to £180k, and when I tried to estimate the house price inflation using nationwide it was coming well short of what they were asking. Its only since it sold, and then the other one came on and was sold, that shows that price was reasonable after all. Catch-22.

MovingForwards

danlightbulb said:

PerfectMess said:

Not for me, because i can do a kitchen myself for £5k, but wouldn't want to tackle windows, which is a £15k job for a whole house.

I’m not sure if anyone else has replied to this but we just put new windows in our 3 bed. 2 big bays, set of french doors. Cost about £5k and took them about a week. We didn’t have to do a thing. The normal windows were about £300-400 each, bays and doors were ~£1000 each. 

That sounds amazingly cheap. I put new windows in a previous house back in 2007 and it cost around £12k for one bay, 3 regular sized bedrooms, one set of french doors, a front door, and the small bathroom one. I got several quotes, all about the same.

Prices have come down a lot, also if the frames are fine you can just have new units put in which is even cheaper.

Perhaps it would be worth you reading through the "is this quote fair" and "in my home and DIY" sections to get up to speed with things now, rather than from 13 years ago and again move on from what was.

theoretica

So what about these three?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-73647306.html

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-74160759.html

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-98631188.html
All look to me like they would fit a piano on a non-party wall, have parking, a shed or room for one and are near other properties you liked.

AdrianC

danlightbulb said:

re the £180k - i didn't know £180k was about right at the time because there was nothing to validate it against, no other house had sold in that street for many years so they were jumping from well under £100k to £180k, and when I tried to estimate the house price inflation using nationwide it was coming well short of what they were asking. Its only since it sold, and then the other one came on and was sold, that shows that price was reasonable after all. Catch-22.

Forget street-level. Nobody is looking at houses in just one street - comparables are over a wider area than that.

danlightbulb

theoretica said:

So what about these three?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-73647306.html

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-74160759.html

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-98631188.html
All look to me like they would fit a piano on a non-party wall, have parking, a shed or room for one and are near other properties you liked.

Appreciate you looking. The first one is sold unfortunately, I did call up about it. They still haven't put sold STC on it.

The other two are currently very run down and whilst I don't mind doing some work, that is too much. I'd do the work for a house that was special in some way but neither of those are worth the hassle in my view.

AdrianC said:

Forget street-level. Nobody is looking at houses in just one street - comparables are over a wider area than that.

The problem is I know the area well, so when you can have a house in one street that is nice and just two streets down its as rough as hell, then comparing A to B no longer makes sense. What I see happening is that the worse areas prices are creeping up, because they are matching the comparables in the nicer streets. Then, the nicer streets prices creep up because they clearly need to ask more than the prices in the worse streets. When I look in a poor street, I consider the houses over priced (and clearly so do many other people, as they're not selling). Then when the 'correctly' priced nice houses come up, they sell quickly because they seem relatively good value in comparison to the overpriced houses in the bad areas.

I know there's nothing I can do about this, Im just pointing it out.

Also to add, the prices are all over the place. You've seen some people post detached houses in this thread for less than semi's and some mid terraced houses cost in the same general area. That's crazy and makes it hard to judge what the right price is.

theoretica

You did notice this bit in the description? 'is undergoing some further internal renovations which be completed before sale.'

Tiglet2

danlightbulb said:

I had a look back through the houses I had saved on rightmove. A few I viewed, and offered on, most I didn't. I think looking back I should have viewed them as some of the ones I had saved are now, in hindsight, far better than what's available at the moment.

Some links no longer work but some still work for comparison purposes:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/62131899#/ i offered asking price on this and didn't get it. I like the estate that this house is on, but prices have risen £20k in the past year there.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/71738599#/ i offered £4k over asking on this one too in a best and final situation, and it went for £7k above the asking price. Same estate as the one above.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/74493178#/ i offered asking price on this and lost out because I wasn't first. It wasn't ideal this one, very small driveway and I have a large car, and parking is a problem down that road generally.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/75440494#/ i offered on this one but got cold feet due to the work involved in it and some personal issues I was having at the time made me very stressed out. Nice large house, nice location, father away from where Im looking now though.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/76353799#/ this was one I was really quite keen on but I felt it was overpriced, having been bought only a small number of months earlier for £60k less. So I didn't view it. I also felt the internal layout could have been better especially as they had the opportunity to do that during the modernisation. It sold though at asking, it is in a very nice location. Again its a few miles further away from my core area. The house next door later came on the market for £210k I think, but was better as it was bigger and had a garage. That sold quickly too but was out my range anyway.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/72264681#/ i viewed this one and was initially keen. But it was on an unadopted road, right near the canal in a not so great area (potential for crime problems), it had a big water main going through its back garden, and it needed some money spending. All in all I decided it was not right.

Perhaps taking a second look at these properties, you can see that there were missed opportunities here.  The £180k house that had been done up was one I linked to in your other thread, but your response to me was that it had sold six months earlier for £120k and you didn't think it was worth the £180k price tag.  I think you know that actually it was worth that because someone did pay that price.  Today, it is probably worth more.  The other properties you linked to all sold at, above, or very near the asking prices which suggests that  you are not being realistic.  The longer you procrastinate, the further out of reach your ideal house will be.