Struggling to find a house to buy

GingerLs

Is anyone else finding it difficult to find a suitable house to buy? Could I be right in thinking that people don't want to sell in these unpredictable times?  

Currently looking for a house to buy in the North East of England and it seems like there's very little coming onto the market!  

juliedee4663

We are really struggling too, nothing even comes close to the house we are currently in but staying here is not an option. Wish we could just move the actual house!!

csgohan4

careful not to rush buying one for the sake of. Patience will pay off. Worst thing is buy something you regret. Fingers crossed something will come in soon

AnotherJoe

Even with hundreds to select from back in August onwards I found very few i was happy to buy, in fact, just 3 out of maybe 100. And two of those sold before i had a buyer. I have been in number 3 for 6 weeks

oystercatcher

I know people who want to move but are waiting for pandemic to sort itself. I think there will be a huge rush of properties when times are a bit safer.

Octothorpe

Yup! Nothing decent and what is is really overpriced. People are paying the prices though due to so little on the market. 

Hebblethwaite

I've seen loads of great houses that I think I could be very happy with, but the garden is an absolute priority for me and I've seen very few houses with gardens I could grow lots of fruit and veg in. I suspect a lot of people selling are looking for more outside space, so the houses coming on the market are mostly ones with small or very shaded gardens. I viewed my first house with a decent garden last weekend, but there was quite a bit of standing water on the lawn which was a concern, and the vendors did the viewing themselves and were very off-putting! Houses here are going for tens of thousands over asking price (£30 - 50k over seems fairly standard right now) so I'm concerned about how much I'm going to have to throw at an offer when I finally find a house/garden that will work for me. I'm really hoping to find a house in need of a bit of work (that will cost me under about £30k) with a good-sized (or decent-sized but well-aspected) garden (happy to tackle overgrown and wild!) in a pretty large area of my city. I'm just not seeing houses like that coming up very often. The ones I've seen so far have either needed too much spending on them right away, or the photos have massively exaggerated the garden sizes (I have learned that satellite pictures are a much better representation!)

dungabeagle

We are half way through buying a house in the North East! 

I have actually found that there have been a load of properties on the market recently! We are in Sunderland though- maybe not the case in other areas. 

We were quite picky with where we wanted to live (literally only the estate we rent on or the “posh” estate next door) so jumped at the chance to buy when we saw something that fit our needs. 

The market is moving very fast locally though, the house we bought was on the market 4 days (we saw it about 30 minutes after it was listed & there were 6 other viewings between seeing the property online & being able to visit in person) & a house on our estate was listed and moved to “sold STC” within about 18 hours! -how often do you check? Do you look at the “STC” properties to see if there are things being listed that get snapped up before you see them?

bigkenny1975

We are in the middle of buying in Middlesbrough. Like the above comment, we were really picky and only wanted to live in one of two areas. When a house came on the market round the corner we had booked a viewing within minutes. We had a second viewing and an offer accepted (for asking price) before they even got a sign up. 

Before this one I had been to see every single house that came up in the area for months.

Thrugelmir

Register with EA's. Some properties won't even hit Rightmove. 

JJR45

Yes, stock is very low and anything in good condition is selling very quickly. We sold last year and have been renting since December as we could not find anything.
Fortunately a new build came up in the area we are looking at yesterday and looks like we will put a deposit on it tomorrow.
Oddly buying off plan at the moment is cheaper than a currently built house (in the last 10-15 years)
Presumably because people need to get a house asap so if in a chain so can't wait 6 month+