Buying a central London property - help!

John_M_Business

meanmachine wrote:

Good for you John.

Now maybe you'll stop being so aggressive. :rolleyes:

If in doubt, move the goalposts... perhaps you should look at some of your posts 'cloud cuckoo land' etc. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

The thing is that if you prejudge, you lose credibility. A house at £280k can be overpriced, underpriced, or priced right. You don't know until it's sold. You don't know the local market - so to assume that it is overpriced is a little presumptive.

You thought I needed a chain with an FTB - at the moment this is highly unlikely and your assumption was wrong. Perhaps this offer will fall through, perhaps not. Perhaps the other interested parties won't come through. The interesting thing is, however, that the majority of people viewing my property are not part of a chain... and that traditionally we've seen the need for FTBs to be at the low end of the market - but it seems to me that this is also changing - people are now much more comfortable switching in and out of the 'ownership' game. Chains may be getting shorter...

Additionally, at least in my area, prices are still rising. I read a lot of posts on these boards from a handful of individuals that are trying to tell me to the contrary, everything is collapsing. But I just don't see this happening in the real world. We've had about a viewing a day (therefore the price on our property is reasonable in the eyes of the buyer), we had our first offer about 3 weeks after it went on. We still have a number of interested parties...

In most cases my advice is simply this: Know the area. Take advice. Make the offer that you can afford / think is reasonable for the property. Stick to it. Be prepared to see the house sold to someone else. Use your head.

lush_walrus

John_M_Business wrote:

In most cases my advice is simply this: Know the area. Take advice. Make the offer that you can afford / think is reasonable for the property. Stick to it. Be prepared to see the house sold to someone else. Use your head.

Exactly!!!!

I agree, prices are not dropping in all areas, and mean machine with regards to the lending criteria changing....Go and see a mortgage advisor, check the offers, the fact that BTL mortgages still exist (which as we all know was not the case 10 years ago), the ease of getting a self cert mortgage (without accounts), the possibility of borrowing up to 5 times your wages (without wage slips), the 100% mortgages with cashback (again not available till recent years) and then come back and tell me if things have really changed. I for one do not know of any bank which has tightened up its policies, which leads me to believe that people are still able to borrow far more against their income than ever before and therefore are able to afford higher prices than previously and thus are still buying.

Im not a mortgage advisor by any means, but I know from the information that again comes in from my agencies (which all have desk spaces sub let to mortgage advisors) and beleive me there is still many a bank unworried about the level of lending. Furthermore, one of the first genuine signs of prices dropping are in actual fact brought about by the surveyors who, when worried that the tide might turn start to downvalue propertys, and thus reduce the loan available from the bank, which again is still not the case in any of the areas we opporate in.

We will see what happens on this case, but I fear that £260,000 is a very unrealistic offer for a property on the market at £280,000 and only available for 8 weeks. Good luck to the OP if they manage it!

And meanmachine, I can't wait for anything you own to come up for sale, as its bound to be a bargain price!!!!

John_M_Business

natalie685 wrote:

Well just as you mentioned, we have viewed many properties, know the streets, know the area, know roughly what prices are on the market (although not so aware what they are going for). And for what I've seen, and comparing it to this one, I would say this property is worth between £260k and £270k. We will see, they can only say no!

Another thing that has arisen is that we still don't know the service charge for the building. The EA initially said between £1600-£2000. The porter said it is over £2000. Second time we viewed it EA said it was £2500 and then said it was £2000 over the phone. And whether that is per annum or per 6 months I don't know! This is a big factor before giving an offer. It surprises me that the EA's don't know this and after a week still don't know.

Unfortunately, the EA is reliant on the vendor to give the exact details of the Service Charge. Some are better than others at doing so... I agree that this is an important factor. Service charges over £2k are a pain to deal with.

lush_walrus

Also, the porter may not be the best advised to tell you very accurately either. Sometimes the service charge varies from flat to flat ie: proportional to the size of the flat, two beds often pay more than one beds, and in most instances penthouses pay substantially more.


My guess is it will be per annum, I have never heard of maintainance being split into six months.

As you are going for quite a big offer, I would probably offer anyway and test the water, in the meantime ask the EA to find out the amount paid last year and what
the ground rent is. Thats the best you can do, as even if it is £1600 this year, it may well be hiked up next year, its a variable thing unless the block manages itself then each owner has control over how much moneyto put aside for repairs and maintainance