Seen a house we love 3 months too early!

halia

We have been talking about moving for a little while now and 6 months ago we narrowed down the area search to a specific Dale.

We have 2 properties to sell (one tenanted) so we put house1 on the market and we've been getting good interest in it so far. That would give us enough profit to pay of the mortgage on our family home leaving us in a better position financially.

We decided we needed to go up and view some properties and have another good look round the area we want to move to, to start getting a feel for things. We were up last weekend and sods law dicatated we found a GREAT house!

its in the village that scores top of our list, its commutable (in the medium term) for my partners job, its near a nice school and the house itself is a fab size with a lovely garden.

Problem! we weren't expecting to find anywhere this quickly and havn't even put house2 down here on the market yet!

Now the area we are looking at is suffering badly at the moment, average time on the market is 9 months+, this house has been on since August 2007. House prices up there are being dropped all over the place, we viewed 10 houses of which 6 had prices dropped. Its a buyers market

In contrast our area is escaping the crash right now, and we don't need to push our selling price up to the ceiling price for our street either.

We would only need a mortgage of less than 2x partners wage once we've sold both houses here so there's no problem getting that approved. The issue is timing.

Should we just accept we won't be able to do it, or do we go for it?

My other question is what to offer if we do decide to give it a shot.
Ups:
Its a good sized house with a Large garden+ garage which is rare in the area
It has central heating
the roof is in good condition

Downs
The house hasn't been updated since the 1970's!
The kitchen is a tiny galley kitchen with old formica units (actually they look like they're from the 50's) and a sink on legs
The bathroom is 1970's pink suite and carpet
The general decor although well done is definitly VERY dated!
The windows are old single glazed and pretty rattly.
I suspect the wiring is over 25 years old
the boiler/central heating system is definitly over 20 years old
The drive and garage are a little too narrow for many cars
Its on the main road so there is traffic noise
It doesn't look 'attractive' and this is in a village of lovely 'quaint' stonebuilt cottages.

Its on the market for £230, essential renovation work (windows, kitchen, bathroom, boiler,) would cost about £15k minimum then you are looking at an update of all decor.

Would it be reasonable to put in an offer around £210 as a starting point?

PasturesNew

I'd put my efforts into selling what I'd got ... and just keep an eye on that property. If it suddenly changes to sold/subject to survey you can phone up and bid higher. But if that area's bombing already it might still be there in 3-6 months' time with another reduction on it.

Only put offers in if you are in a position to proceed now and you've said this is 3 months too early.