Viewed first house tonight - FTB

[silver.fox.2008]

Mr POD said:

Luke Pearson said:

Anyway im back.

Viewing another property tonight, just keeping our options open at the moment. Tonights property was a new build in 2007, bought by the owner for 240k, repo property up at £169k but is will accept £160k.

4 Bed Link detached, fair bit of garden, obviously mint interior as new. but 80k less than when originally built is definately worth a look for investment for the future also.

Which bank owns it now ? Make them an offer based on a 10 year fixed rate at today's currrent base rate for a laugh.

Even funnier if the bank that he's getting the mortgage with is the same bank that's repossessed it. They'll be negotiating with themselves.

Buyer: My bank says only worth X amount so will only offer Y
Seller: No, value too low

[pdV6]

To the OP: Don't get hung up on the original selling price or any talk of how much the vendor has recently dropped the price. The property is only worth what he can get for it so clearly it wasn't worth £180k and probably isn't "worth" £150k currently. It's a buyers' market, so press any negotiations as hard as you like; there'll always be more property available.

To Pablo: I'm sorry but it sounds like you're simply not going to sell your place if you insist on hanging on for what you need in order to fund the onward move. In this buyers' market it's simply not going to happen, so if you "need" over market value to climb the ladder but don't actually need to move at the moment you might as well take the property off the market and save yourself the hassle. In fact, if the market continues to fall then the gap to trade up gets smaller in £££ terms so you're probably better off saving hard so that the LTV on the new place drops even quicker.

[anonymous-user]

loafer123 said:

pablo said:

NoelWatson said:

pablo said:

as someone trying to sell a house at the momnet, heres some advice. the person you are buying from will need to get a suitable amount from their home sale because to buy another property they will at best, only get a 75% LTV mortgage at the moment.

thus they need to have at least 25% of the value of the house they want to buy in equity and/or some cash to pay for the fees.

in my position, the house is on for £130K but selling at that price would only give us £35K to play with as we bought it for £100K and i think we have about £95K owing. So anyone offering less than £120K is gogin to get turned away, we are not desperate to move but would like to be closer to the city centre but we arent going to just accept the first offfer knowing that prices are a little higher where we intend to move.

in short, its all very well saying you will try to get £XXXK off the price but the lending market is so screwed at the moment that whilst you are in a good position with the deposit etc, most people with a house around the FTB price, will be relying on equity in order to move up the ladder. Unless the person is desperate to move for work/personal reasons, your plans to put in a cheeky offer will end in disappointment.

I'm interested in your logic. With the market falling at a fair rate, surely you want to be selling as soon as possible - chasing the market down will can only end in disaster?

we only want to move because we quite fancy living closer to the city, we can easily afford our mortgatge at the moment as personal circumstances have changed since buying the property, we dont live i nthe best part of bristol but its ok and is handy for work etc. i am not willing to sell the house if it means struggling to buy another, albeit more expensive house, in a different part of town.

my point was that unless you have enough equity in the house you are selling or cash in the bank obviously) to cover the fact that a mortgage lender will at present only offer 75% LTV, you cant move, simple as that. therefore anyone putting in a silly offer will be politely refused. if the seller HAS to move for whatever reason then yes, they are more likely to accept the offer but even then its not guaranteed.

I am not chasing the market down, although my house is on the market, i am not selling unless i can cover that missing 25% which at present asking prices, i can not do...

...therefore i stay put, but the important thing to remember is that my house is ideally priced for FTBs but if i ant move on then i stay where i am meaning their logic of offering silly money wont work...

the houses we are looking at are about £175K, therefore to get a mortgage at the moment, we need to find £43K. if we sell the house for £120K, taking into account mortgage payments made to date, we get about £25K back....which isnt enough so we stay where we are and rethink our plans. as i said, i dont care really, although the house is for sale it suits us not to move hence the market stays as it is becuase second time buyers for want of a better phrase are stuck and there is nothing for first time buyers on the market bar thouse who have to move.

sorry i think i have repeate dmyself numerous times in this reply but i hope it helps!... put it this way, trying to sell a low value property at the moment isnt the problem, getting the cash to fill that 25% gap is!... i have no other assets to sell to make it up and in reality, wouldnt want to sell things just to move...

Don't take this the wrong way, Pablo, but the market, or an individual buyer shouldn't give a monkey's about your personal circumstances.

As a vendor it is entirely within your right to choose not to sell at an offered price, but the price itself will be set by the competition which will include people like you, people who have no mortgage, forced sellers through death, divorce and redundancy and so on.

Therefore your formula for your marginal price is personal to you and not good advice to an FTB.

To the OP, the advice above where you should start so low it is embarassing is good. The Estate Agent will manage the vendors expectations accordingly and as long as you aren't buying a unique house, there will be another one along anyway.

I am a bear, and sold up in early 2007, but even I am starting to look now, as forced sellers anticipate further market falls, or at special houses coming available.

At the end of the day, it's your home, so get that right, and if you can afford it through varying circumstances, there is no reason not to buy at a price you are comfortable with.

no offence taken, i was simply providing a reason as to why low offers may be rejected.

to pdv6, no worries, as i said we are content here, we probably wont be moving out of choice for a while, i appreciate its a buyers market and we would have been laughing had we sold when prices were high but it wasnt right for personal reasons. we have another plan though which is emmigrate to Toronto so in some ways, if we do move, we might be wasting a lot of money on fees and stamp duty etc

Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 9th January 18:14

[Luke Pearson]

Anyway back on track with this thread. The house wasnt for me, since then we have viewed another 4 properties.

The last house we viewed we just knew it was the one so made an offer, and was accepted the next day!
Currently going through solicitors and just finished mortgage and other cover tonight ready to be process.

Hopefully in by mid feb! I really cannot wait!

[rah1888]

Excellent news, hope it all goes well!

[darronwall]

only read the first post,the best advise i can give is if they reject your first bid,DONTjust jump straight in with a bigger bid,leave it for a week or 2 esspecially if its been on sale for a time

[Nolar Dog]

Luke Pearson said:

The last house we viewed we just knew it was the one...

That for me sums up the housing market perfectly.
It shouldn't be about getting it for nothing or offering ridiculous sums.

It should be about finding a house you know is right and making a sensible offer.
Congratulations and I hope it goes smoothly.

[texasjohn]

best of luck with the purchase. I'm in a similar position...

How much lower (as a percentage) was your offer than the asking price, if you don't mind?

I'm viewing this weekend and hope to have finally found 'the one'.

Here she is...I like her a lot...







Trouble is, it is about 12-15% more than I want to pay / what I think it's worth.

Slight threadjack but whats the consensus - do you think I am wasting their time by even viewing it? Yes I know all scenarios are individual and different...but 12-15%?

If it helps, their asking price is the same as a house (same size) that sold in the road in Feb 2007.

There was a chap on the houseprice thread ("VX Foxy" IIRC) who has just sold in Lichfield, for my budget. I loved his house when I saw the pics.

Gutted, we could have potentially had the first PH property transaction!

eta pics

Edited by texasjohn on Wednesday 14th January 22:22

[LukeBird]

mouseymousey said:

Do most first time buyers get their parents to give prospective houses the once over then?

I probably would, there'd no doubt be something I'd forget!

[Luke Pearson]

texasjohn said:

best of luck with the purchase. I'm in a similar position...

How much lower (as a percentage) was your offer than the asking price, if you don't mind?

I'm viewing this weekend and hope to have finally found 'the one'.

Here she is...I like her a lot...







Trouble is, it is about 12-15% more than I want to pay / what I think it's worth.

Slight threadjack but whats the consensus - do you think I am wasting their time by even viewing it? Yes I know all scenarios are individual and different...but 12-15%?

If it helps, their asking price is the same as a house (same size) that sold in the road in Feb 2007.

There was a chap on the houseprice thread ("VX Foxy" IIRC) who has just sold in Lichfield, for my budget. I loved his house when I saw the pics.

Gutted, we could have potentially had the first PH property transaction!

eta pics

Edited by texasjohn on Wednesday 14th January 22:22

Only 7.5k but the guy gutted the whole house and re-wired the whole lot, re-fitted everything. Really good job aswell, but he had also fully furnished it so is saving us ALOT of money not buying sofas tables chairs, got two double beds aswell..and lots more.

ETA: Just noticed the photos, thats an awesome house, very nice indeed!

Edited by Luke Pearson on Thursday 15th January 10:16

[MiniMan64]

Luke Pearson said:

Anyway back on track with this thread. The house wasnt for me, since then we have viewed another 4 properties.

The last house we viewed we just knew it was the one so made an offer, and was accepted the next day!
Currently going through solicitors and just finished mortgage and other cover tonight ready to be process.

Hopefully in by mid feb! I really cannot wait!

Good luck with that, my advice? Add a month on to your move in date. We had an offer accepted pre-Christmas, we've got all of our mortgage stuff and cover sorted, intstructed our solicitors, they're all ready to go too.

Today it turns out the seller hasn't even contacted his solicitors to say he's selling yet. We're going to be here forever at this rate!

[pdV6]

Luke Pearson said:

Only 7.5k but the guy gutted the whole house and re-wired the whole lot, re-fitted everything. Really good job aswell, but he had also fully furnished it so is saving us ALOT of money not buying sofas tables chairs, got two double beds aswell..and lots more.

As a FTB I realised that that probably really helps you out.

Don't let it sway your purchasing decision or offer price, though, as for all the vendor knows you hate all his furnishings and have a warehouse full of your own to put in. If he has to shift them all out and has nowhere for them to go you're actually doing him a favour by allowing him to leave it all behind...