Reducing house offer after months of waiting for completion

comeandgo

If you are only considering staying a few years then I’d not buy anything.  Depending on the size of your deposit you have a higher risk of negative equity and the costs of buying any property are not small.

LLM000

RelievedSheff said:

You were clearly happy with the price or you wouldn't have offered.

Again, initially we were happy, albeit a little cautious (how terrible to have normal human emotions 😆) I am only saying with recent news on house prices/ mortgage rates etc etc, is the house still worth what it was a few months ago?!

I come on here as I understand it to be a place where people can ask questions and get helpful advice - I hold my hands up to the fact I am a FTB and I am naive about the whole process, as any FTB is - we all have to start/ learn somewhere! 

So I would like to hear advice on if a house is worth what it was a few months ago.

LLM000

comeandgo said:

If you are only considering staying a few years then I’d not buy anything.  Depending on the size of your deposit you have a higher risk of negative equity and the costs of buying any property are not small.

Thank you. We have a 16% deposit and are borrowing just under £300k. Our concerns were being in negative equity in a few years time - it is a risk. However the current owner (if the offer stands) has made a 40k profit in just 3 years, so it is hard to call.

Murphybear

RelievedSheff said:

This is exactly the reason that may buyers, ourselves included, will not entertain offers from first time buyers!!

It would be interesting to see what would happen to the market if every seller refused to sell to FTBs 

meeemee

So if there are no houses close by to compare is it a sort after area? Could the owners remark at a sane price or even higher and sell quickly?  Two months seems ages to you but in house buying terms it really isn’t, if you pull out would you be upset to see this resold to someone else? 

Would you have to pay rent and save more to buy a bigger house and in that two years would you be ok with knowing the amount you paid on rent could of been paid on a mortgage and possible over payments? Nobody knows the future but maybe you are not ready for a big commitment quite yet if you are worried two months in? 

CSI_Yorkshire

It really doesn't sound like you actually want advice - anything that doesn't agree with the opinion you already have you are just dismissing out of hand.

As people who have been through this before, we are giving you the benefit of experience.

They are not unusually slow, you don't get a price reduction for a normal delay, and no, you are not being especially patient.  You are being an impatient and overly optimistic FTB.

If you're that worried, pull out and start again.  Don't blame it on the seller though.

LLM000

meeemee said:

So if there are no houses close by to compare is it a sort after area? Could the owners remark at a sane price or even higher and sell quickly?  Two months seems ages to you but in house buying terms it really isn’t, if you pull out would you be upset to see this resold to someone else? 

Would you have to pay rent and save more to buy a bigger house and in that two years would you be ok with knowing the amount you paid on rent could of been paid on a mortgage and possible over payments? Nobody knows the future but maybe you are not ready for a big commitment quite yet if you are worried two months in? 

Yes, I appreciate two months is not especially long but I feel like if there is a long chain and it has taken 2 months to get to a point where the sellers have only just chosen somewhere to live then it is a little tight considering mortgage offers are only generally on the table for 6 months. Those two months could be crucial and make or break the sale if things continue to happen slowly and end up not completing until the offer expires. I say this as our mortgage was approved in April so time is ticking..

pinkteapot

LLM000 said:

TheJP said:

You are 2 months into a process that can take 4-6 months. Calm down. What is delaying the conveyancing? This is the very reason i don't sell to FTBs.

Yes we are only 2 months in but we are 2 months in and nowhere further than we were when it started! We have our mortgage and solicitors are on hand but it is the seller who delayed the process as they did not have somewhere to go. If they were not in a chain, I would imagine we would be close to moving in as we are in the best position (no chain below us, mortgage offer ready to go and solicitors ready). We only stopped progressing as we found our the sellers had not done any of what we had! So actually we are very good first time buyers and any seller should be more than happy with us as there are no delays on our side. 😊

Was the chain fully formed when your offer was accepted? In other words, had your vendor found a place, then had their vendor found a place, and so on? The process only starts when there's a full chain - from a FTB or cash buyer, up to someone selling with no onward chain. Only then can the process really start, and then takes a few months. Next time, ask if there's a full chain when you offer, and if not keep asking regularly and find out what's happening.

There was no real point in you getting your mortgage application in and starting the conveyancing until there was a full chain. It could have taken far longer than 2 months for each person in turn to have an offer accepted on a house.

2 months is nothing in house-buying terms. However, if the market has changed significantly in a way you couldn't have foreseen in April and such that you'd offer a lot less on the same house today, you can say you're changing your offer. Be prepared for the vendor to say no, though. 

chanz4

lets turn it around another way if they got a valuation and it has gone up, are you happy to pay more?  I have had this done across me this month I told the buyer where togo

MeteredOut

If I'd bought and had an offer accepted on a house after being told the seller had no onward chain (as has been stated), and was now having buyers regret (which sounds like what's happening here), and was looking for a reason to pull out, I'd likely use the fact that I was told there was no onward chain as a reason to pull out.

As alluded to by others, I suspect the OP has already decided they want to pull out, but is looking for a crowd-sourced approval of that decision.