Buying a house at auction

gazfocus

Simonon77 said:

Houses very rarely sell at guide price at auctions. Unless you are a property developer already, or a builder with a team of people working for you, it will end up costing you more than buying traditionally by the time you are done.

Avoid modern method of auction like the plague, it is a scam

To be honest, we are not looking for a ‘bargain’ as such, just something that we can buy now and take our time doing it up (as finances allow) so using the example above, rather than spending £125k in one go, we could spend day £100k on the house, then say £25k doing it up but in our own time. We are not looking for a house to live in so there’s no time pressure etc. 

gazfocus

Mutton_Geoff said:

gazfocus said:

Mutton_Geoff said:

The reason you don't see them listed with regular agents is the double bubble rule.

What's the double bubble rule?

When an agent takes on a property that needs real work doing on it, they will contact their list of known builders as once renovated, the house will come back to them for sale again. Two lots of commission instead of just one if they sold to you. Often these projects don't even get listed on the portals.

Sounds like I need to get friendly with some estate agents then haha. 

baser999

And you only need to check out the Homes under the Hammer programme to see that the final prices at auction are invariably a lot more than the guide prices

gazfocus

Just to give an idea of what I’m up against, these two properties are both up for sale (not in the area I want to buy, but not too far away), and are both within £10k of each other. 

eddddy

gazfocus said:

Just to give an idea of what I’m up against, these two properties are both up for sale (not in the area I want to buy, but not too far away), and are both within £10k of each other. 

It sounds a bit like you're complaining that....

- you have a plan to buy a cheap house and renovate it to make a profit...

- but nobody will sell their house to you cheaply enough to make your plan work.


I guess one comment  could be that you need to think of another plan, which has more chance of working.

gazfocus

eddddy said:

gazfocus said:

Just to give an idea of what I’m up against, these two properties are both up for sale (not in the area I want to buy, but not too far away), and are both within £10k of each other. 

It sounds a bit like you're complaining that....

- you have a plan to buy a cheap house and renovate it to make a profit...

- but nobody will sell their house to you cheaply enough to make your plan work.


I guess one comment  could be that you need to think of another plan, which has more chance of working.

That’s not necessarily my complaint, my complaint is more that I don’t understand why houses in dire need of renovation are so closely priced to those that are ‘move in ready’. 

At the end of the day, if I need to wait a few months or buy something smaller than I’d have liked, so be it, but that doesn’t change the wondering why houses don’t seem to be being priced with their general condition in mind. 

user1977

gazfocus said:

eddddy said:

gazfocus said:

Just to give an idea of what I’m up against, these two properties are both up for sale (not in the area I want to buy, but not too far away), and are both within £10k of each other. 

It sounds a bit like you're complaining that....

- you have a plan to buy a cheap house and renovate it to make a profit...

- but nobody will sell their house to you cheaply enough to make your plan work.


I guess one comment  could be that you need to think of another plan, which has more chance of working.

That’s not necessarily my complaint, my complaint is more that I don’t understand why houses in dire need of renovation are so closely priced to those that are ‘move in ready’. 

At the end of the day, if I need to wait a few months or buy something smaller than I’d have liked, so be it, but that doesn’t change the wondering why houses don’t seem to be being priced with their general condition in mind. 

As alluded to above, are you comparing the actual prices achieved or just looking at asking prices?

eddddy

gazfocus said:

That’s not necessarily my complaint, my complaint is more that I don’t understand why houses in dire need of renovation are so closely priced to those that are ‘move in ready’. 

At the end of the day, if I need to wait a few months or buy something smaller than I’d have liked, so be it, but that doesn’t change the wondering why houses don’t seem to be being priced with their general condition in mind. 

I guess the short answer is that properties sell at whatever price a buyer is willing to pay (and a seller is willing to accept).

Although asking prices are sometimes set too high initially, and have to drop.

Quite a few buyers like to buy places to 'do-up', so perhaps they sell for more than you'd expect. 

Estate agents often tell me that it's not economic to replace kitchens, replace carpets, repaint before selling - because buyers might not like my choices, plus buyers like the idea of 'personalising' their new home.  So I wouldn't get my money back.


But it probably depends a lot on the target market. A young FTB couple who are both working long hours and have limited spare cash might not be interested in places that need doing-up. But a family looking for a long-term family home might be.

Titus_Wadd

I think, looking at the comparison photos posted, that I'd buy the habitable one.

In my yoof we bought fixer-uppers but it's no picnic.  Mostly lenders wouldn't lend the full amount so we'd need a bigger deposit or they'd imposed hefty retentions and we relied on favours from mates in various trades...not gifts because we'd be repaying them with our own skills; everyone's time is money, whatever skills you're exchanging.

Easier than buying a wreck is buying a well-looked after but dated property...if it has a pink bathroom suite that is perfectly usable, I wouldn't be put off and then I'd upgrade in my own time, easier than moving into a house with no bathroom.  All I would suggest is viewing everything in your price-band, a few ££ either side and a few just outside your preferred location.  Make a value judgement on each one in terms of instant and potential plus-points.  Whatever you buy you'll want to change and update things.

[Deleted User]

The only slight advantage to buying a wreck is that it's easier to do a full survey on. There might already be holes in the walls that can be used to see what's in them, for example. They probably won't be too bothered about lifting carpets, if there are any. Also means you can customise it to some extent, get it re-wired without wrecking all the decoration etc.

If you want that then maybe it's attractive, but there is a massive shortage of non-wrecked housing for people who can't or don't want to do extensive renovations.