Well done PM I'm thinking of getting shot of my two when the Tennancies come up for renewal - I've got the sniff of a bloodbath in the Property market. The last of the BTL Investors have climbed on a grossly overwieght ship which is going to start sinking anytime now!

Just a thought, maybe the first couple didnt want the hassle of finding another place to rent and moving or maybe this is the area they want to live in for the forseable future. A property is worth how much someone is willing to pay for it. Thats what they wanted to pay for it! Maybe, other people were not interested in it because it had tenants in it.

With regards to the second couple, well thats crazy. Thats all I'll say!!!

There will always be a never ending supply of lemmings willing to take on 50 year self certification mortgages that are in reality 15 times their gross income in a blind belief that property only goes up in value.

May they continue to blindly to jump off that cliff....:-)

I'm not surprised with the first buyers. They liked the property they rented from you, they thought they could make it their permanent perfect home and they propobably had certain view on your business tactics and they presumed you would probably reject their offer at the last minute and kick them out as soon as better offer came along. And so they just wouldn't risk it and offered asking price and wouldnt' even negotiate. Of course I have nothing but presumptions in this case, but I had various lanlords too and I don't think the fact they were ready to perhaps overpay rather than deal with owner doesn't make them fools, as you call them, it only reflects the opinion people have about you.

As for the second buyers and low yeld. Perhaps they have an idea how to make the property more desirable, rent it higher and make better profit then previous owner. Maybe they know something you dont' about the area..

It is an interesting topic. I have been in the property sector for a good many years but have been slowly selling off all my rental properties. I only have two left now. I separated from my partner a year ago and have rented a house for that time as the other properties were tenanted on long tenancies. A lot of people questioned this but from my point of view, the rent was much cheaper than it would be to get a mortgage to buy this property. A lot of people can not get their head around this at all. If you rent, you are throwing money away they seem to think without questioning it. I used to think the same but the situation in my area is that there is plenty of property to let at very reasonable prices and if I got a mortgage I would have to pay stamp duty and costs, and then about £600 pcm more than the rent. Fine if the market keeps rising but I didn't think it would so I went with the gamble. I am staggered to find that the market is still buoyant though and that property around here is selling very quickly. It just doesn't add up and I am still going ahead and selling the two remaining properties. Who is buying all these houses and how are they affording it? FTBs have to take out huge mortgages and the earnings multipliers must have been increased substantially. How does someone on £15K afford a house? I just think it is like the dot.com bubble. Everyone keeps piling in just in case they miss out.

Houses must be more interesting, what they are spending on a mortgage they are not spending on other things in life. That might be allright for a bit but they'll soon get sick of it.

A couple of FTBer friends of mine have taken on huge mortgages.

And they really are suffering debt fatigue now. They haven't had wage increases and all they see is 20-odd years of massive IO payments.

Both are hoping to sell this summer and you know what? Both properties have been revalued around 40K above what they paid 2 years ago!

Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.

As I've said before, there will be no soft landings. The market rockets then runs out of fuel and falls out of the sky.

But that might not be for a few years yet. Prices still need to be around 40-45% above where they are now before we hit that wall of total unaffordability.

To see our bleak future, look at Ireland. It's scary.

And that's without the interest rate rises that look like are coming along.

Be interesting to see if they get it. What would these properties rent for? Where are they going to live once they sell?

I still believe we look for an outside trigger to "hang" the turn in the market on (or replace "hang" with "blame"). We had the double MIRAS removal in 1989 and changes to stamp duty at one point, which is why I now suspect the introduction of HIPs next year will be one such point. Joe Public will ignore the interest rate rises either made or foreseeable at that point, but a glut of property in the spring followed by a dearth of new property coming on the market in the autumn will affect the market.
Now anyone want to guess how much the market needs to correct? i.e. how big a fall from top prices now to bottom of the market?

Ive just read this topic with great interest. I am a first time buyer or will be as Im thinking about buying my council house (good area and good discount). However i keep reading about the "what if the prices drop" and the more topics i read the people believe it is going to happen. If I buy this house which i want to as i love it my morgatge will be double my reant and then some. If then the prices drop i will be totally knackered. Its such a huge decision.

Yes it's a gamble and I suppose a lot of your decision will be based on what sort of discount you will be getting. Obviously the higher it is, the better it is to buy as you can always sell and recoup the difference other than costs, but the increase in mortgage payments is understandably a worry.

To be fair though, I have been in the property game for 25 years and have been so lucky that what started as a "hobby" of transforming dumps into attractive properties (pre-Changing Rooms) has served me well, but I have been predicting the market can't keep going up for four years and sold a property then, thinking well it can't go up and that house is probably worth £60K more now. I don't think anyone knows for sure, it's all guess-work and luck. I just can't get my head around the prices now compared to what I paid when I first started and keep wondering who is buying at the bottom end, ie, FTBs and how they are paying for them. Wages are not going up very much so there must come a point when FTBs simply cannot afford anything and then the market must react.

In your case work it all out and factor in things such as loss of interest, stamp duty, legal costs, increased payments etc so you can roughly weigh up what you think either option will cost

:rolleyes: Reading this thread with great interest, excuse me if I waffle this is my first post on here!

Well, I'm a young(ish) FTB, currently waiting for notice period on a repossesion to expire. Having bad credit history and been on a medium salary in a major city, me and my husband had resigned to renting private property for the next 10yrs.

After reading articles on this website , we decided to approach a broker. It turned out if we could get a 5% deposit together, we could have a mortgage 7 and a half times our joint earnings, and they would take into account our various tax credits etc...... We decided we would go for a 4 and 1/2 times mortgage in the end.

If this is what we could could get, what can those 1st time buyers with spotless credit get?!?

Ps, I believe the house with have an offer on is good value. Prices foe the equivalent property are 30% above our provisionally accepted offer....

Wish us luck that no one sees the public notice!!!!

Welcome to the boards, batley1! Good Luck with the public notice.

We complete on a reposession on Friday, so I know how nail-biting the time until exchange is!

It is nail biting, whats worse, we have to wait to weeks before I know i we can instruct.... Ps Do conveyancers do home buyers surveys? or do I hav to pay some one else to do that? (Sorry if I'm hyjacking, let me know, and I'll start a new thread.

You can ask the surveyor who does your mortgage valuation to do a homebuyers at the same time (which may be cheaper) or you can find your own if they only do mortgage valuations or you want to check on prices.
There's a searchable database of surveyors at www.rics.org

Nice profitable & selfish way to live your life.
Some among us, not ruled by capitalism, would view u as a fool.

Well out of order comment on two fronts.

Firstly "pls be nice to all moneysavers" especially when your comment does not give any useful information!

Secondly, if someone wants to buy a house your selling what do you suggest OP does - refuse to sell? Renters want to own the home they are living in, whats the problem with that?

I have to agree with silver car. For ftb its trechorous getting on to the market. Jobs are paying the same, but house prices and the cost of living is going up. Like my husband and myself, when the chance comes up, you have to take it. Because of the council right to buy policy, there is a decreasing amount of cheap rented property on the market, and as A result for the last 4 years we have had to privately rent. We live in leeds, and with a family, to get a decent house is costing us over £500 a month. We cant get a council property to rent because we haven't been homeless for 6 months. But private renting contracts only last for a year, and if you dont want to move house every year for the rest of your life, then taking and inflated mortgage is the only answer..... does it make me a fool for wanting some stability for myself and children...?

Ok, you lot scare me!! We're buying our second home, we're looking for rundown reduced property, which we can substantially (sp?? sorry) increase in value, and are not taking our full mortgage, just the paymants we can afford + a 1 point interest raise. I dont work, and Mr can get extra work, so we can increase our income if we need to.

We are not selling this house, but letting it longterm to cover the mortgage, (the rent is over 130% of the mortgage) We intend to sell it in 10/15 yrs time all going well.

Do you all think we're mad, we are aware of the impending crash, and are not assuming house prices will keep going up, but hope we can ride it out the other side keeping one house as a home, one as a pension.

Apologies for typos

This whole "keeping a home as a pension" is a temporary fad.

You'll soon realise it's crazy when the working population starts to reduce (which it will do big time from 2010).

All you can hope for is that we continue our open door immigration policy, otherwise you'll find you won't have anyone to sell your house to.