No suitable homes for sale?

Smalltownhypocrite

amandaleeds said:

Smalltownhypocrite said:

amandaleeds said:

housebuyer143 said:

You really need a bit of luck. I had a house in my mind that I wanted and honestly I was just super lucky it came up at the right time because I can count on one hand the number of houses I thought could be suitable on Rightmove over the past 3 years. 
Either lower expectations or keep waiting.

Dream house at a cheap price came on last Jan, but they wouldn't accept my offer of 10k over as I needed a few days to get my flat on the market (and they had an offer at asking price from a proceedable buyer). Sold my place, and in May two 'OK' properties came on, one which was fine, just needed a bit of updating, and the other needed about 30k spending on it as the landlord hadn't touched it in 20 years and the garden needed seriously landscaping. I offered on both properties, and rejected despite no other offers. Eventually both withdrew from the market. The estate agent of the ex rental said the landlord wanted 10k more than they'd valued it at. The other house withdrew as they hadn't been able to find a bungalow to downsize to.

Had an offer accepted on a house that wasn't at all what I wanted but I was getting desperate. Needed a fair bit of work but was liveable. After some research, I discovered the homes in that development had struggled to sell for years, due to the layout of the interior (bedroom downstairs, kitchen uostairs) and lack of parking. Everyone said it was a bad decision to panic buy something.  At it wasn't my forever home, it seemed to risky to spend 30k money fixing it up and renovating it, to then struggle to sell 5 years later.

Saw another home thar had been flipped and asking price was 20% above similar recently sold prices when interest rates were more affordable. It's a much bigger house than I need, therefore more than I need to spend. I've offered three times, within 10% of asking price, but rejected. I'm the only offer in two months since coming to market, and it's now changed to 'offers in excess of'.. 

So they outright rejected your low ball offer THREE times and now changed it to 'offers above'... I think you need to take the hint. Doing that will get you blacklisted, even if you offer over they are unlikely to deal with you because you'll have left a reputation as a nuisance who plays silly games.

Just because its 'bigger than you need' etc... doesn't mean you get money off. If its a flip they likely put money into it and won't take a loss.

If you don't think its worth it then just don't buy it but they don't have to sell it for your self appointed 'valuation' of it. The fact its 'the only suitable one' says it is actually worth money though.

I was within 10% of asking price and offering similar to bigger homes of similar standard that had recently sold, and that was when mortgages were more affordable. They've had lots of viewings but only offers from me. There's a bigger house on the next street that's asking for around the same amount I offered for the smaller home. It's also fully refurbished, just not to my taste. 

Ok buy the bigger and better house for the same price then.

They don't HAVE to sell for a loss... they don't have to sell at all. They can be on market and turn down as many under the asking price offers as they like.

Home buying sets such weird entitlement in people. You wouldn't walk in waitrose and say I think your bananas are over priced because I paid 20p less in Asda 3 years ago and I measured a bunch from each and Tesco are bigger for the same price so I'll only give you 90% of the price you want.

If you can really get better for the same price then DO IT. The fact you aren't clearly shows its not actually comparable/suitible.

Bonniepurple

annabanana82 said:

Finding similar though we don't even have our house on the market yet. 

The latest flurry of houses are outside of our budget -  some are more than what we are looking for and some just seem over priced. But what we want just doesn't seem to be coming on the market. Our top budget is around £350k but that has to be perfect ideally I don't want to spend more than £320k 

We are looking in South Gloucestershire and South Gloucester. I keep hearing the Bristol market is still hot but not sure how true that is? 

I take it you’ve looked at Dursley/Cam?  There’s some lovely houses up for sale atm.  

ProDave

This sounds like my second house purchase over 30 years ago now.

I wanted a rural / village property with 2 or more bedrooms, decent garden and the big one off road parking and a garage or space to build a garage.  For my price I could have any number of 2 bedroom modern housing estate boxes in towns with on street or remote allocated parking, but nothing rural with off road parking actually within your own bit of land.  The only way I eventually found that was an almost uninhabitable 1930's semi that needed a LOT of work.  So that is what I bought.  The only way to get what I actually wanted.

At the time one of the EA's blacklisted me because I have viewed about 10 houses and not offered, because what they were sending me bore no resemblance to my requirements.

Bonniepurple

We realised that we needed to move after Lockdowns.  Unfortunately our then house needed some work to make it presentable (perfectly habitable, but first time buyers have been spoilt by brand new properties which are immaculate.  50 year old houses aren’t!) and it was also a marmite house.  We loved it but it wasn’t working for us.

By the time we were proceedable, it was towards the end of the Stamp Duty holiday and we’d seen loads of lovely places being snapped up.  There was only one place left that was suitable (parking, no steps up, downstairs cloakroom, not a townhouse (I struggle with stairs and couldn’t face the arguments if one child had the biggest bedroom and en-suite while the other didn’t) and I was really worried that it would sell beforehand or they wouldn’t accept our offer.  Thankfully they did.  I suspect that we paid about £5-10k too much but over a lifetime that’s nothing.  

strawb_shortcake

Bonniepurple said:

annabanana82 said:

Finding similar though we don't even have our house on the market yet. 

The latest flurry of houses are outside of our budget -  some are more than what we are looking for and some just seem over priced. But what we want just doesn't seem to be coming on the market. Our top budget is around £350k but that has to be perfect ideally I don't want to spend more than £320k 

We are looking in South Gloucestershire and South Gloucester. I keep hearing the Bristol market is still hot but not sure how true that is? 

I take it you’ve looked at Dursley/Cam?  There’s some lovely houses up for sale atm.  

I prefer Berkeley, Hubby likes Cam and Dursley though

amandaleeds

Smalltownhypocrite said:

amandaleeds said:

Smalltownhypocrite said:

amandaleeds said:

housebuyer143 said:

You really need a bit of luck. I had a house in my mind that I wanted and honestly I was just super lucky it came up at the right time because I can count on one hand the number of houses I thought could be suitable on Rightmove over the past 3 years. 
Either lower expectations or keep waiting.

Dream house at a cheap price came on last Jan, but they wouldn't accept my offer of 10k over as I needed a few days to get my flat on the market (and they had an offer at asking price from a proceedable buyer). Sold my place, and in May two 'OK' properties came on, one which was fine, just needed a bit of updating, and the other needed about 30k spending on it as the landlord hadn't touched it in 20 years and the garden needed seriously landscaping. I offered on both properties, and rejected despite no other offers. Eventually both withdrew from the market. The estate agent of the ex rental said the landlord wanted 10k more than they'd valued it at. The other house withdrew as they hadn't been able to find a bungalow to downsize to.

Had an offer accepted on a house that wasn't at all what I wanted but I was getting desperate. Needed a fair bit of work but was liveable. After some research, I discovered the homes in that development had struggled to sell for years, due to the layout of the interior (bedroom downstairs, kitchen uostairs) and lack of parking. Everyone said it was a bad decision to panic buy something.  At it wasn't my forever home, it seemed to risky to spend 30k money fixing it up and renovating it, to then struggle to sell 5 years later.

Saw another home thar had been flipped and asking price was 20% above similar recently sold prices when interest rates were more affordable. It's a much bigger house than I need, therefore more than I need to spend. I've offered three times, within 10% of asking price, but rejected. I'm the only offer in two months since coming to market, and it's now changed to 'offers in excess of'.. 

So they outright rejected your low ball offer THREE times and now changed it to 'offers above'... I think you need to take the hint. Doing that will get you blacklisted, even if you offer over they are unlikely to deal with you because you'll have left a reputation as a nuisance who plays silly games.

Just because its 'bigger than you need' etc... doesn't mean you get money off. If its a flip they likely put money into it and won't take a loss.

If you don't think its worth it then just don't buy it but they don't have to sell it for your self appointed 'valuation' of it. The fact its 'the only suitable one' says it is actually worth money though.

I was within 10% of asking price and offering similar to bigger homes of similar standard that had recently sold, and that was when mortgages were more affordable. They've had lots of viewings but only offers from me. There's a bigger house on the next street that's asking for around the same amount I offered for the smaller home. It's also fully refurbished, just not to my taste. 

Ok buy the bigger and better house for the same price then.

They don't HAVE to sell for a loss... they don't have to sell at all. They can be on market and turn down as many under the asking price offers as they like.

Home buying sets such weird entitlement in people. You wouldn't walk in waitrose and say I think your bananas are over priced because I paid 20p less in Asda 3 years ago and I measured a bunch from each and Tesco are bigger for the same price so I'll only give you 90% of the price you want.

If you can really get better for the same price then DO IT. The fact you aren't clearly shows its not actually comparable/suitible.

It would be to other people's taste, but not mine, and it's a lot of money to spend on something you really don't like? 

A nearby big 4 bed lovely refurbished home sold at a similar price in Dec, and the house I've been looking at is small for a 3 bed. Absolutely agree they don't have to accept my offer, but my offer reflects current market value for the condition and size of the house. I could have asked for more when selling my flat which was in a highly sought after area, but would have struggled to find anyone willing to buy it at a price significantly higher than everything sold in the area. 

I was told to offer based on recently sold prices of similar homes. I've spoken to a mortgage advisor who used to be an EA in the area and he's said it's worth 10k+ less than the asking price, and warned against overpaying for any home at the moment. 

FlyMeSomewhere79

Where I live in the north the market has really started to pick up and a lot of property has sold in the last month or so. There is a lot of not that nice ex rentals on the market and far too many overpriced old semis that have been empty for god knows how long and don't look to have been decorated since 1978!

We just moved house and I must admit that even though there was lots of property sat on the stagnant market, it still wasn't easy to find one that ticked all the boxes. We didn't another dated renovation project as we had that with our last house and didn't want all that work to do this time, we had noisy neighbours so didn't want another semi, didn't want to be near any main roads because the road outside our last house became a noisy nightmare. Some houses looked the part but ended up being next to really rough areas or in places earmarked for motorway by passes - you almost have to do detective work to make sure you don't buy something you regret!

amandaleeds

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

Where I live in the north the market has really started to pick up and a lot of property has sold in the last month or so. There is a lot of not that nice ex rentals on the market and far too many overpriced old semis that have been empty for god knows how long and don't look to have been decorated since 1978!

We just moved house and I must admit that even though there was lots of property sat on the stagnant market, it still wasn't easy to find one that ticked all the boxes. We didn't another dated renovation project as we had that with our last house and didn't want all that work to do this time, we had noisy neighbours so didn't want another semi, didn't want to be near any main roads because the road outside our last house became a noisy nightmare. Some houses looked the part but ended up being next to really rough areas or in places earmarked for motorway by passes - you almost have to do detective work to make sure you don't buy something you regret!

I'm in the North too, so hopefully it will start to pick up here too. Seems to be mostly very big homes coming to market for the past 6 months, or the same as you - unloved ex rentals and properties that need fully renovating which I don't have the time or money to do. 

[Deleted User]

Too many landlords.

amandaleeds

Still tumbleweed here. A lovely house in my budget came up, but as good quality homes are like gold dust at the mo, it sold in less than a week to an offer way in excess of asking price, and way above the ceiling for the area. I even offered above asking price which I felt was risky in the current market. It needed a fair bit of work outside to create a parking space (no feasible street parking), isn't near shops, schools, or train stations, and its age meant it probably needs rewiring 😬 Amazed people are throwing so much money at properties...