To just be so upset about house prices

[spuddy56]

We started looking in December after scrimping and saving for years and its got more and more out of reach with every passing week since then. We've had two sales fall through due to downvaluations, so not only did we need the huge deposit we had saved up for years, we needed 10k on top of that which is impossible for us. We are paying rent and have no family help. We viewed a tiny house that we love and has been on the market since beginning of April with no offers but the seller won't budge on the price. Based on one year of sold prices in the area its about 40k too much, even taking into account the 10% rises over the last 12 months. Theres just no way a mortgage company would lend that much. Been to view another one and it's tiny, has had no offers and is worth a lot less but agents don't think they will go lower. We've had to adjust our expectations down and down despite being what we thought were healthy earners. How are first time buyers managing to buy right now without help?! I'm so so upset at not having somewhere to settle and call a permanent home.

Close to buying isn’t ready to buy.

OP, I get it, it’s frustrating. You ask yourself what am I doing wrong?! The answer is nothing. I agree with the others to stop and wait. You have the sound of desperation in your posts. Desperation leads to bad decisions.

I watched this the last time the housing bubble was was expanding. There I was on the the sidelines thinking I was missing my chance. I resigned myself to never buying. Then the market dropped like a stone. Was in a great position to buy with plenty of savings and no house to sell in a market when houses weren’t selling. I negotiated 30K off the selling price before submitting an offer.

You are surviving in a rental, sit tight, your time to buy will come.

This should true, and maybe this is t

Oh we have offered on many more but been rejected or outbid! Those were the only two the offers got accepted on

I really feel for you. My 40 year old DS and DIL were in the same boat so we agreed to put our money together and buy a place. It's easier because I'm single. It's not ideal but at least I know they'll have a decent home when I'm gone. But I basically have a bedsit now where I had a house before. I have the bottom floor of a townhouse and they have the top two floors but needs must.

@saltinesandcoffeecups thank you. Yes I'm feeling desperate, I just want a permanent home so much at the moment. Terrfied of a rent increase coming too. I really hope waiting doesn't mean we get even more priced out. We don't really have a choice but to wait though haha 😭

Not in my area they’re not.

@MNSureIsBreachin I just looked im our area and they are gorgeous but start at almost 400k! Why can't they build some crappy new builds for poor people like me.

I think the market will soon drop. Hang in there. Post covid bubbles are bursting the world over. I think you will see a levelling very soon (before the end of the year).

The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 9.0% in the 12 months to April 2022, up from 7.0% in March. This is the highest CPI 12-month inflation rate in the National Statistics series, which began in January 1997. It is also the highest recorded rate in the constructed historical series, which began in January 1989.1. The only way to counteract this in conjunction with the energy crisis is to raise interest rates. This will result in an immediate cooling of the market.

If you are patient and time it well you could take advantage of a buyers market and lock in a higher but manageable fixed rate to ride out the next few years.

Good luck!!

Give it 12 to 18 months and save a little more. If anything the lenders have done you a favour. Interests rates are on the way up and there's a recession round the corner. This is absolutely the worst point in the cycle to buy.

Market is slowing. I'd hang on until the autumn if you can. Prices will still be high but less competitive I reckon. We bought last year and offered on about 8 houses until we finally got one we liked and wanted.

We’re on our second house, sorry to sound boastful. Anyway, our first house was in the roughest area in town. However, it’s an area that’s so popular with first time buyers because the houses are really cheap. It actually went to sealed bids as houses in that area often do. Point is, have you considered doing something like that?

I dunno but SAME !
approaching 40... no family help.... scrimped my little deposit up... then BOOM all this shit started.
ive stopped looking as any offer i make is a measly £3k over the home report and im stuck renting a box for more than an actual mortgage would be.
i dont know how such high rents or multiple owned properties are even allowed ? I went to see a few dump flats ( with the view to do up over the years) and every time there was some guy in overalls just waiting to flip it and rent it out in 6 weeks :..(
feel absolutely hopeless. What are all these people finding 20k extra from and are they all ok to loose it if they move or remain there forever?

YANBU it's a terrible situation. I'm not even that young, but am single, and due to mental health struggles and other stuff, my income has never been high. I save as much as I can, but in my situation, and with a terrible landlord, and with a government that basically despises the poor and rewards the rich, it feels utterly hopeless 😔
I'm starting to think outside the box re housing - I'm thinking along the tiny house movement lines.
I wish you well OP

OP, I get it, it’s frustrating. You ask yourself what am I doing wrong?! The answer is nothing. I agree with the others to stop and wait. You have the sound of desperation in your posts. Desperation leads to bad decisions.

Agreed. You don’t have to look very hard in recent history to find people making terrible, terrible decisions about property. Repeatedly, and never learning from what has happened before.

I’m old enough to remember the crash of the early 1990s. People clamouring to buy houses in the late 1980s, buying with friends to ‘get on the ladder’, the sure and certain belief that you could never lose money on bricks and mortar. Except when you did. The friends who bought together had to decide how to divide up the negative equity. The people who bought a studio flat found that it was worth less than half what they paid for it and couldn’t move to a house suitable for children. Prices stayed depressed for years afterwards: I bought my first house in 1998 for less than the original owners had paid for it, new, in 1991.

Then in the early 2000s prices took off again as everyone rejoiced when the banks and demutualised building societies relaxed lending criteria and loaned more. Which pushed up prices, of course, whilst everyone devoured property programmes on TV and assured themselves that property was a one way bet. Until the credit crunch in 2008 when it was difficult to remortgage and prices corrected.

More recently banks are lending even more over longer terms, anything to keep business coming in and retain market share. Borrowers are like lambs to the slaughter. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a crash on the scale of the early 1990s. The government has already pulled all the levers to keep property prices high. Help to buy, quantitative easing, keeping interest rates low. At some point it will run out of options. Nobody wants to hear this, though, because as soon as somebody actually buys a house they tend to become invested in prices staying high, especially if they have over-borrowed to buy. They can’t countenance any talk of house prices correcting and react furiously.

I agree with previous posters, why not look at flats? I don't know anyone whose first purchase was a house unless they were gifted a substantial amount from family. A lot of flats are actually bigger than the tiny houses that you mention you've been looking at. You are certainly not being unreasonable to be depressed at the state of the housing market though, home ownership is becoming more and more out of reach for first time buyers without external financial support.

Here is why she is (sensibly) not buying a flat.

The same sentiment, from a different poster. If the OP buys a flat whilst prices are high she’ll struggle to “trade up” to somewhere suitable for a family.

Wages have not decreased over the last twenty years.

You do have choices. You can buy a flat, you can buy in a cheaper area, or you can buy a house that needs significant work to be done to it, and live in it while you do the work on it yourself.

It sounds at the moment as though you are looking at things outside your budget.

Don't want to say where I am.

But put say, Warrington into Rightmove. Look for houses within 10 miles. Discount buying schemes, retirement homes etc. You will have a very significant choice under 100K. There is a lot of employment in the area.

They may not be the type of houses that you want, in the areas that you want, in the condition you want. But with a deposit saved, I would be suprised if you can't buy something.

Make a 5 year plan... buy one a year trading up on location, property type etc. each time. In 5 years you could have something really good, with equity.

You mention DP but not DC. I am sure you could do this.

Christ. You are actually advising the OP to massively leverage herself to buy a bunch of overvalued assets - houses in poorer areas of the north of England, which will be the most vulnerable to price falls - in an overheated market? One a year. That’s the quickest way to bankrupt her.