Solidarity thread for house hunters

[LoobyDop]

Trooping off to view our 8th, 9th and 10th houses today, and it’s all a bit demoralising. Crazy asking prices for frankly pretty crappy houses, estate agents who are clearly used to coining it in for zero effort and can barely be bothered to pick up the phone. Vendors who set aside one two hour window for viewing, and if you can’t do that, tough. I know we aren’t the only ones in this position because the last place we offered on had 43 viewings, 17 offers, and our offer of £50k over the asking price was “tens of thousands” less than the one that was accepted.
Come and share your woes here!

Mad scramble with the remnants of cheap money. Bide your time. Property has been on a bull run for 27 years and it is about to end.

Nothing much to add but you have my sympathy. My brother and his family went to an auction but sadly the house went for £££ more!

I don't envy you. Where are these people who spend £££'s over the asking price getting the money from ?

@ValleyOfSomewhere were you not around in 2008?
But despite that time when some prices fell by as much at 15%, prices are now higher than ever. I don't expect a similar crash as borrowing still cheap (I remember 14% interest rates and people still bought).
A friend's daughter just finally won a best and final after three tries, paying £590k for a London flat (no outside space) listed at £565. Mind you I bought last summer and had three offers accepted (two of the sellers pulled out and withdrew their properties from the market), all under ask. It's a volatile time for sure.

It’s so bad right now and hardly anything on round here. Madness!

I agree.
Unless you're desperate you'd be mad to buy atm imho.
(We bought in the slump after the 2008 crisis in 2011. We sold for less but bought for less too and went into rented to put ourselves in a good position)
It's already started in most places...houses being down valued by lenders, vendors dropping their prices, hardly anything coming on....perfect conditions for total stagnation.

I was just saying to DH that I've been into a local agent's office twice to ask them to value and not heard a dickie bird back from their bloke that does the valuations.

I cba to chase...

Ridiculous. Why on earth are people paying so much. I wonder if they will regret it when prices drop and mortgage interest rates rise. Like others I wonder where the money is coming from.

I think people are just taking silly risks with mortgages. Our offer in principle is more than double what we’d actually be comfortable with in terms of repayments. And, where we’re looking at least, it’s just so overheated that it encourages people to panic and make bad decisions. 20% increases in two years makes you think it’s only going to get worse if you wait.

@easyday I have been around a very long time. No need to be so patronising.

I was managing property before the 1988 Act which was the gamechanger to UK residential prices. Overnight tenants became commoditised. It took some years for that to feed through to property pricing - basically protected tenants had to die or be prepared to move for higher paid work. Then landlords could charge what they wanted and a short supply of housing gave them the initiative.

Your 15% fall in house prices isn't really. It is a market correction. Especially in the context of homes. *

Do you remember 1990 - 1995? Much worse and the macro factors coming into play now are similar to those (with one exception). You can expect corrections from time to time. Collapses where prices fall by a third or more are rarer, but historically they happen and the reasons are well understood with war being the major influence. In fact, without these sorts of opportunity how does a capitalist make money?

These days I am much more interested in the stock markets because property can be accessed by funds and in fact all sector stocks provide better returns. Never has there been a year when a fall of >30% not been matched by a 85% bounce back in the following 24 months, before normal growth assumes. Yet we have had a 40% fall this year. When the stock markets bounce back, which they have always done since the 1700's, what is left of the tailwind of Quantitative Easing will whiplash back into liquid assets.

There is no more cheap money for houses. The days of QE are over. The standard variable rate with Nationwide is now around 4% give or take 0.1%. That is 'all-in' ie price you pay not base rate plus. Still, somewhat different to what has been on offer since 2012 (when banks margins were repaired after the 2008 'crash' you refer to - which I call a correction) and all that QE.

UK housing, in the generic sense, is going to change fundamentally, but not quite yet. The reasons are not relevant to this thread. We will see a greater transition to rental property, but the landlord will be nothing like we perceive or experience some landlords today.

But freehold ownership will also abound. Like all asset classes, timing is everything. A crash in UK housing is my prediction, not now, but in about 4-5 years time. So if I was buying a home * especially if it was a starter or staging home, I would invest elsewhere for now.

See what I did here > *

Of course, I could be wrong.

@ValleyOfSomewhere We will see a greater transition to rental property, but the landlord will be nothing like we perceive or experience some landlords today - Can you elaborate further of this?