Buying a home during the current climate

C1996

I am a first time buyer and I started looking for a house at the start of 2020 just before the pandemic. At the time there was a lot more properties available on the market, I would visit around 3 houses a week, and it was definitely a buyers market. 

Obviously since COVID-19 hit, it’s become a sellers market, limited properties available, ridiculous prices. 

I recently viewed a house yesterday which was advertised as excess of £130,000. I placed an offer at £130,000 and planned to go up to £132,000 as I didn’t feel the property was worth much more. 

The agent noted down my offer and passed this to the vendor, they still continued to go ahead with further viewings. They then called me to inform me that the vendor rejected my offer and went with another buyer, they said that they received 8 offers in total. 

The property was a 2 bedroom property, would have needed a new kitchen and bathroom. I have been looking for 2 years now and I feel like I am facing a losing battle, I’m either ending up having to go to best & final offers or getting a call to say that a buyer has offered above the asking price. 

This is more of a rant as I am very frustrated. 

I know that stamp duty holiday ends this month, do people this will make a difference and make it easier for first time buyers to find a property or not? 

Flugelhorn

I am sure that there are lots of views on what will happen to the market - the thing is no-one really knows. there have been surges in house buying and selling in the past and they tend to wind down after a while and it goes back to being a rather more drawn out process.
 we sold a couple of houses in 1988 when the market was very active, I advertised them with 2 line ads in the local paper and sold them ourselves  in both cases to the first people who saw them - the prices were going up ++ I think it was something to do with mortgage interest tax relief changing and everyone wanted to get mortgage sorted quickly - the new house we got was bought for 101K, within months they were selling similar for 140K, in 3 years we sold it for 107K . Strongly doubt anything like that will happen again. 

p00hsticks

Flugelhorn said:

 we sold a couple of houses in 1988 when the market was very active, I advertised them with 2 line ads in the local paper and sold them ourselves  in both cases to the first people who saw them - the prices were going up ++ I think it was something to do with mortgage interest tax relief changing and everyone wanted to get mortgage sorted quickly - the new house we got was bought for 101K, within months they were selling similar for 140K, in 3 years we sold it for 107K . Strongly doubt anything like that will happen again. 

Yes, it was the effect of Nigel Lawson giving advance notice in the 1988 budget that he was going to withdraw Multiple Mortgage Rate Relief later in the year, rather than making it apply immediately, with the result that there was a rush for unmarried couples and sets of friends desparately trying to buy a property before the deadline. Similar to the rush to beat the stamp duty deadlines we've seen recently.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_source

rigolith

It's a horrendus time to buy, but also if you wait it will just get worse. You can't win.

staffie1

When looking on Rightmove etc, might be worth sorting listings by oldest listings first. My logic is that the properties that have been hanging around the longest are more likely to have no other offers on the table. Having said that, I don’t think there is any logic at play in the current market - it seems to be just down to luck (and deep pockets).

Flugelhorn

p00hsticks said:

Flugelhorn said:

 we sold a couple of houses in 1988 when the market was very active, I advertised them with 2 line ads in the local paper and sold them ourselves  in both cases to the first people who saw them - the prices were going up ++ I think it was something to do with mortgage interest tax relief changing and everyone wanted to get mortgage sorted quickly - the new house we got was bought for 101K, within months they were selling similar for 140K, in 3 years we sold it for 107K . Strongly doubt anything like that will happen again. 

Yes, it was the effect of Nigel Lawson giving advance notice in the 1988 budget that he was going to withdraw Multiple Mortgage Rate Relief later in the year, rather than making it apply immediately, with the result that there was a rush for unmarried couples and sets of friends desparately trying to buy a property before the deadline. Similar to the rush to beat the stamp duty deadlines we've seen recently.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_source

ah yes that sounds familiar now - the interest rates being high it made a significant difference to the cost of the mortgage. Also remember people steadfastly refusing to borrow more that 30K or 60k as the mortgage got more expensive after that. 

lookstraightahead

The thing is, what is happening at offer stage isn't always following through.
look at the amount of sellers on here whose buyers eventually can't get mortgages.

the house value is only valid once completed. The whole housing market is currently made up of fantasy stories IMO.

stick with it. You are not in a chain, you know what you can afford. Don't get pulled in to made up thinking. A savvy seller will see your worth soon 👍

MobileSaver

lookstraightahead said:

The whole housing market is currently made up of fantasy stories IMO.

Official verifiable statistics from HMRC confirm that your "In My Opinion" of what's happening is simply wrong.

Property transactions have continued at roughly 100,000 every month on average even including the worst of the pandemic; for example, last month there were over 106,000 actual residential property transactions... the only fantasy stories are from those who won't admit how wrong they've been about the market and for how long.

MrsBrush

staffie1 said:

When looking on Rightmove etc, might be worth sorting listings by oldest listings first. My logic is that the properties that have been hanging around the longest are more likely to have no other offers on the table. Having said that, I don’t think there is any logic at play in the current market - it seems to be just down to luck (and deep pockets).

This... is probably the most sensible advice I have seen. 
A property will sell at the right price, and to the right people. Most that are still on the market after several weeks will be the ones that are either overpriced or are not perceived to be move-in ready. Has anyone been watching the Nick Knowles Channel 5 programme about too much stuff, where houses are undervalued significantly because the volume of clutter makes them unattractive? Look for these - often very good properties hiding under all that stuff!

lookstraightahead

MobileSaver said:

lookstraightahead said:

The whole housing market is currently made up of fantasy stories IMO.

Official verifiable statistics from HMRC confirm that your "In My Opinion" of what's happening is simply wrong.

Property transactions have continued at roughly 100,000 every month on average even including the worst of the pandemic; for example, last month there were over 106,000 actual residential property transactions... the only fantasy stories are from those who won't admit how wrong they've been about the market and for how long.

These statistics are during the lead up and year of the pandemic.
Lockdown patterns will have influenced the statistics.
Your link (which is very informative by the way) even states that the current pandemic will have influenced the stats.
Based on the current situation and all the variables I find it hard to assume prices will keep going up.
I'm not in denial, I've just moved house. I would love my house to keep rising in price but I doubt it will.

lookstraightahead

staffie1 said:

When looking on Rightmove etc, might be worth sorting listings by oldest listings first. My logic is that the properties that have been hanging around the longest are more likely to have no other offers on the table. Having said that, I don’t think there is any logic at play in the current market - it seems to be just down to luck (and deep pockets).

I agree with this as well. There is no logic.

That's what a pandemic does and the stats are all squiffy