Or are first time home buyers expecting too much?

[ifherbumwereabungalow]

I think this is my first AIBU so am girding my loins to get blasted...
Background story - we put our house on the market last year and after following the agent's advice we didn't do any decorating but made sure everything was spick and span and decluttered. After what felt like a million viewings and no real offers we decided to take a break and try again. We fixed a crack in some plaster and repainted the living room and kitchen. We'd replaced the kitchen and bathroom since being here so they are looking good.
We had our first viewing with the new agent yesterday. The feedback from the young couple was that they thought it needed modernising. We live in a bog standard, three bed mid-terrace built in the early eighties. The rooms are a good size and we have a garden front and back and off road driveway parking in a cul-de-sac.
My issue is that the current crop of homebuyers seem to have very unreasonable expectations of what a house like mine is going to be like. I'm assuming that they think every house on the market has been transformed by Kevin McCloud or George Clarke and that a futuristic utopia should exist behind every front door. I'm looking at houses to move in to and my main criteria are based on the size and number of rooms and whether I can live with the kitchen and bathroom, the decor is secondary to that because I figure we are going to go in and change it all anyway.
So, am I being unreasonable in thinking that people are going into viewings with highly inflated ideas about what they are going to see? And if so, why don't they look at the photos online before they book an appointment??

Perhaps things work differently in the US.

Oh, most definitely they do!

Personally, I like the floor to ceiling built in wardrobes. I put new doors and handles on them. You can have them painted professionally quite easily.

It's too expensive for what it is OP. That is all. I actively want a house in can do to my taste. Ideally a probate sale where it's all swirly carpets and 80s kitchen, but loved and kept nice. What puts me off is "improvements " where it's all plastic windows and laminate flooring and bathroom tiles I hate. Trouble is, the doer uppers are asking the same money as beautifully done houses.
If your house is the right price it will sell.
I think it's sellers who are entitled. They seem to think they are entitled to make a quick £100 k just because they have lived in a house for 10 years.

Congrats OP!

@backforgood @floatingfancy

Those are fair enough reasons.

I don't mind seeing OIEO against houses i'm viewing. I interpret it as the owners bottom line - a bit of transparency really. If they don't want to spend the time and energy making the place look nice and clearing out for a day of viewings, only to get a load of nonsense low-ball offers...I kind of get that.

Re the “too small bedroom” thing, it can definitely be worth looking at houses that have a less than ideal feature or two if everything else is desirable. I didn’t want a house that had no front garden/yard and which wasn’t within about ten minutes’ walk of public transport when I was a ftb. They were redlines for me, but my dp set up viewings to see two such houses. The first left me cold - the second (on the same street) we loved the moment we walked in and lived there for eight happy years.

On the other hand, we went to see a big house on a main road for our second house. It was absolutely cavernous when we went in (hard for us to gauge the ‘feel’ of the size before we went) and there was nowhere in the house where you couldn’t hear the roar of traffic. Immediate no for us based on factors we knew about before viewing. We’d been prepared to give it a chance though.

Different people have different priorities... first time buyers included. Some of them will be after that perfect finish and would settle for a house with less space that was completely done up. But some will want the space you have even if they need to update it a little!
We've just bought our first house and it was mostly based on the views it had to be honest... that's just what we wanted most. Its falling apart compared to others we saw but it has spectacular views.
It had been on the market for absolutely ages. But it was our dream house.
You just have to wait for the right buyer sometimes. First time buyers arent all after the same things.

I think pricing is key

If buyers are at the top of their budget and they see that lots of work needs doing e.g. modernisation of kitchen/bathroom rather than superficial decorating/paint job, this will all need to be factored into the price

Nowadays, with the massive prices that we see on Rightmove etc, at least where we are in London, I think it's no surprise that FTBs are taking a very highly critical approach

Some of the properties we've seen are just a complete joke- every room needing updating but yet still asking for price at top of the market.

FTBs don't have the 'monopoly money' that house price inflation has enabled for certain owners, so everything comes down to cold hard cash from savings, gifts/loans from family or borrowing more on the mortgage

@Yabbers whist older properties may not need immediate work, my point on new builds is that for a ftb needing to replenish savings because they're all going into the purchase, the benefit of new builds is the developer is responsible under warranties for things going wrong. I don't have to worry about unexpected things financially like my boiler breaking, the roof needing replacing, a leaking window fixing etc. If something goes wrong it's the builder that has to put it right. I can afford time to get the fixes done (since ant further damage is their responsibility too), but not the cash. Whilst new builds can be shoddy, I did a lot of research before paying up for mine to get a good developer. I also compared to other properties not new build in the area and they were all properties smaller by 1 bedroom (thanks to new build initiatives boosting what we can get) and built in the 90's and 00's when new builds really were match boxes. (Everything older was more expensive) They didn't need immediate repair or upgrade on the surface (useable fixtures and fittings) but their boilers were out of warranty, their roofs would be needing replacing in the near future, rewiring, redecorating etc were all on the horizon. After seeing my DB stretched when unexpect extras happened (boiler packing in etc) I was very happy for the security of a new build and it's warranties for my first home. We're looking to stay here for 5 years then move on and then we'll take up something that needs work, but by then we'll have savings and equity so it'll be more affordable.

A lot of buyers seem to act like insurance company loss-adjusters (or a certain company that buys any car, so I hear) in actively looking for anything they can to justify paying you less, even if there's nothing actually wrong.

who in their right mind would want to pay top price for a house? Of course you try to bring the price down as much as the market allows. A few years ago, you were lucky if your full asking price offer was accepted, properties were flying off the shelves. (in my area I mean). The market has massively slowed down, buyers can afford to negotiate.

If you do not like their lower offer, just ... say no?
It's a business negotiation, sounds more than reasonable to try to move the price.

I have no problem at all with people making an offer of what they're willing to pay at the outset and, of course, the asking price is always going to be very overly-optimistic, so it's completely normal to negotiate on price then.

I probably didn't make my point very clearly, but the part I hate is where people have made offers that have been verbally agreed in principle, in good faith on the part of the seller, but instead of their supposed offer being their actual offer, the buyers actually see it as their opening gambit.

The seller believes that they have a serious buyer at an agreed price and the buying/selling process begins in earnest, but, as planned all along, when the process is well underway, the buyer then starts fault-finding and making spurious claims in an attempt to chip away at the price they pay.

Obviously, any genuine areas of concern that subsequently arise are fully valid, and may well lead to a price re-negotiation, but things that were blatantly obvious from the start or invented concerns, such as structural or integral parts of the property not having been constructed in accordance with standard regulations that didn't exist until decades after the house was actually built, and then suddenly demanding a huge price-drop on that basis or threatening to pull out, are outrageous.

It wasn't to do with actually selling the house, but we had the lender's valuer come as part of our application to re-mortgage for a better rate. Now this was shortly before the financial crisis hit, so I wonder if inside information had caused lenders to instruct their employees to pare things right down and refuse new borrowing for spurious reasons without raising any alarm.

However, he expressed grave concern at a single-skin upstairs wall that apparently made our house valueless/unmortgageable and he almost fled downstairs in fear for his life because of this impending death-trap that could fall and crush the breath out of him at any moment.

The house was built in around 1820. The wall shows no signs of ever having moved since then (just a few slight cracks in the plaster). It was safe for 150 years before the valuer was even born and I fully expect it to still be safely standing 150 years after we've gone.

As long as the price is realistic, you'll find a buyer soon enough. However some will always want everything shiny-new and perfect. Which is all very well if they can find all that for what they're able to pay.

Some will find that their expectations were unrealistic and they'll have to compromise, or else wait and save more money - though in a rising market that can be very risky.
Anywhere around here though, prices are now falling - not the same everywhere in the UK I know - some areas are still on the up.

Having said that, both my first time buyer dds bought doer-uppers - one was a probate and incredibly dated - swirly carpets, hideous wallpaper, Artex and all! - but it was clean, obviously well loved, and perfectly liveable. If they'd been picky they'd both have been looking at rather higher - and rather less affordable - prices.

We just wanted a house where we didn't have to replace the bathroom and kitchen. The one we bought, the kitchen was fine, except for the ugly tiles, the bathroom looked lovely but unfortunately was a botched DIY job.

There were various jobs that needed doing, but we were pretty skint after rising the boiler and getting the gutters sorted. Then I was pregnant and we were offered the opportunity to live in a better house - though that house needs a new bathroom, kitchen and to be redecorated throughout and we're unlikely to have the money to do it anytime soon.

It's the hardest thing, from both sides. You need sackfuls of patience. We've bought and sold over the past few years and as sellers were scratching our heads why our last property wasn't selling. In the end it took 7 months to sell and we went through 3 buyers. I do think the whole process has slowed down over the last decade.

Over time I've come to the conclusion it's like buying a wedding dress - that unspoken fit that tells you it's the one, even though there are lots of lovely dresses in the shop that could do the job. Sorry that's not much help to you OP! Just try and keep getting the viewings in - it's a nunbers game. Change agents and get new photos after a few months, that can spark renewed interest.

And yeah, people are weird. It's probably not you.

Just seen your update. Congrats!!

@LoopyLu2019

Those warranties aren't worth the paper they are written on. There also isn't such a thing as a decent developer. If you've ended up with few snags you are the exception rather than the rule.

Do you count the time and cost you spent on flooring, on curtain poles and towel rails and toilet roll holders, on the garden? Fine if you want to live with everywhere magnolia or white, but most will decorate within a short period of time.

I've moved into several old properties and in to several new builds. I spend way more in the new ones than the old ones.

@Yabbers so far we have had a few snags but everything is being fixed in a timely manner, we have had no issues with our developer or the contractors they use. We had no optional extras at our expense, we've spent

@LoopyLu2019 this house was my first new build. Well, it was actually 6 months old, the first owner didn't get on with it. We have had very few problems and love living here. I was skeptical about new builds but I'd struggle to live in an older property now I think! My husband bought his new build flat he owned before our house, with Help to Buy. Without that, we would not have got on the ladder.