House search drawing a blank

YoungBlueEyes

Have you done the usual advice - make a list of must haves/nice to haves/no way nevers? Could you add a few miles to the search radius?

Try and view it through different eyes, and forget your current house.  'Would this suit us now?' rather than 'our garden is far nicer'. Are you looking for the "perfect forever home" or will "absolutely good enough" do?

One thing I did when I was house-hunting - on RM I listed the properties starting "newest added" first. When I'd gone through them I changed it to "oldest listed" first and upped my budget. If something's been on a long while you might be able to take good lumps off the price.

I'd also do the letter thing  

MFWannabe

A week is a very short time 
I think rather than comparing everything to your current house you need to make a list of must haves and things you could compromise on 
if you compare everything to current house you won’t move 
the question then will be do you really want to move? What’s your reason for moving? Downsizing; is that to free up equity and new place should be smaller and therefore cheaper to run? 

Why would you be homeless if you accept an offer on current property? It takes a long time for a house sale to go through in which time you will be looking and hopefully securing your new home 

Murphybear

Someone suggested going into a rental.  In most areas rentals are more difficult to find than houses  are

mi-key

I wouldn't go into rental personally. If there is nothing suitable stay where you are for now and wait until you see some come up. if you have interested buyers now, the chances are if you remarketed in 4 or 6 months you still would. 

GDB2222

Just to clarify, we are happy to accept an offer on the current house before finding something else, but we won’t actually be selling unless we can buy our new home at the same time. 

My concern is that all the other properties we are looking at either seem overpriced compared to ours or are wrecks or the layout is unsuitable.

For example, we quite liked one, but it is priced at 25% more psf than ours, is in a worse position, has nowhere  to park the car, has a smallish garden which is heavily shaded by the neighbours' trees and is noisy, a lot of the floor area is on the 3rd floor, which is not where we need it, it's listed … The list of cons goes on. 

I don’t think our house is wildly undervalued, as we have not been deluged with offers. 

We don’t want to move out of the conservation area we currently live in, so we can’t just add a couple of miles to the search area. At least, that’s not a compromise we want to make at the moment. I have looked further afield, but DW is adamant she wants to stay hereabouts. 

RedFraggle

What's the main driver for smaller?

GDB2222

RedFraggle said:

What's the main driver for smaller?

Fewer bedrooms. 

housebuyer143

GDB2222 said:

Just to clarify, we are happy to accept an offer on the current house before finding something else, but we won’t actually be selling unless we can buy our new home at the same time. 

My concern is that all the other properties we are looking at either seem overpriced compared to ours or are wrecks or the layout is unsuitable.

For example, we quite liked one, but it is priced at 25% more psf than ours, is in a worse position, has nowhere  to park the car, has a smallish garden which is heavily shaded by the neighbours' trees and is noisy, a lot of the floor area is on the 3rd floor, which is not where we need it, it's listed … The list of cons goes on. 

I don’t think our house is wildly undervalued, as we have not been deluged with offers. 

We don’t want to move out of the conservation area we currently live in, so we can’t just add a couple of miles to the search area. At least, that’s not a compromise we want to make at the moment. I have looked further afield, but DW is adamant she wants to stay hereabouts. 

You just need to be patient but then be prepared that it might come up and then you may not be in a position to proceed when it does. Or someone chain free offers. That's is why rental is suggested because if you have such specific requirements then you need to be in the best position to pounce if it comes up. 

We also didn't want to sell without finding our next house and ended up having to buy the new place without selling our old one because it was the only one we found for months that we loved and we lost out buyer shortly before it came up. 

Slinky

GDB2222 said:

RedFraggle said:

What's the main driver for smaller?

Fewer bedrooms. 

Can't you just shut the doors and ignore them?

trailingspouse

Do you really need to downsize? Why? And does it have to happen right now? I'm asking because you seem to like the house you're in - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Whenever I've been house hunting (and I've been house hunting a LOT), I write a shopping list. List all the things you have to have. That helps you to avoid buying the house with the lovely kitchen that doesn't have the downstairs loo or the parking space that you have to have. You can also list the things that would be nice to have (eg has to have 3 bedrooms, 4 would be nice).

I wouldn't sell your current house until you've found somewhere. If money is tight, going into rented and putting your furniture into storage for an indefinite period isn't going to help the situation.