Is it true that the best time to buy a house was always yesterday?

[treesareyellow]

Rates are so extortionate at the moment I can’t help but hope they’ll fall a bit

Would we be crazy to continue renting for now in the hope we’ll get a better deal later this year. We’ve been viewing houses and the one we fell in love with would be £500 more a month than what we are renting. I know you have security but we could use that money now, really. What does everyone think, will rates fall? How are people coping who are due to remortgage this year?

Buy as soon as you can afford to and are able to comfortably overpay. If you can over pay you're in a good position for if the rates go up (as you have flex in your budget) plus you'll be chipping away at what you owe quicker.

I could have borrowed more than I have to get a bigger place but I didn't want to. Where I've got meets my needs in a good area and I'm able to over pay comfortably and still save.

People have been saying every year since the 2016 referendum that it's a bad time to buy. Anyone taking note of this would have paid 7 years of rent and be in a significantly worse position. Buy as soon as you are able to.

We thought the same but ending finding a house we both like so went ahead. Mortgage is double our previous rent but we did not think it would fall anytime soon so..

That’s fair enough. Hope you love your home! It’s so tricky isn’t it

I'm sure we could all use our mortgage payments 'right now' 😂

Theyre always saying there's going to be a crash.

no one knows what's going to happen. But personally I don't think there's a better time to buy a house than yesterday or any time previous to tomorrow.

if you can afford it, stress tested to at least 7%.

yes, it's more than your rent, but it's going into your asset, building equity.

you say it's suitable for the next 5-10 years. What would be the driving force to move then? If it's something you'd Prefer/like but you could stay 15/20 years then I'd buy now.

I'm looking to move, porting my rate for the Amount left on my mortgage and getting extra at the current rate.

it'll be a chunk more to pay each month, but if I can find what I want, at a price I can afford, I'll be there & sit tight.

They have, surely it’s got to come to a head at some point but I suppose that might not be for another many years as you say. It’s tricky

Theyve been saying it every year since 2001 …. Still waiting

I think there's a big difference between speculating on the property market and buying a place that you love, to live in.

In my experience/opinion, it's nearly always a good idea to get on the property ladder and buy your own place, as long as (a) you can afford a repayment mortgage and have a little bit of cushion in case the rates go up again, (b) you are planning to stay there for a few years at least, and (c) you are buying a property that is likely to be reasonably appealing to similar people when you sell.

Negative equity is only actually an issue when you come to sell. In the meantime, every month you are effectively enlarging your deposit by paying your mortgage back so your 5% will quickly become more.

You're right that rates are high now but over the course of any mortgage rates will go up and down, no matter where you started. But in the end you generally come out better:

With both my 1st and 2nd properties, I bought when prices were fairly high and during the 7 years or so that I owned each the value of the property didn't increase massively (say 10%) - but my equity went up hugely because of the repayments, so each time I sold I had a much bigger deposit for the next place.

Do your due diligence and check that there hasn't been a massive unjustified rise in prices where you are buying, or that you're not buying a very unusual property that might be harder to resell - but I think that in most popular areas with decent schools/commuting etc, prices are unlikely to go down much as homes will continue to be in demand.

IMO there is no point in the past 15 years when there has been more negativity around house prices and more clearly negative indicators for the market.

2007/2008 was the last time. People in my area buying new builds in 2007 did not recover their purchase cost in sales value until 2017.

Will there be a drop in prices in the next few years as big as there was in 2007 ? Hard to tell and no one can say for sure. But everything seems to be lining up towards that, and this time QE is not an option. Inflation appears to be defying (goverment) expectations and the talk appears to be of rates going higher than previous expectations not lower.

I would be wary of purchasing highly priced new builds at the limit of my affordability, even more so flats and even more so luxury flats. These are the types of properties that can get the most negative equity in a falling market.

I would also be very wary of buying a "starter" property - ie a property I expected to move from in a couple of years time. Reason being is if there is negative equity in a falling market, I wouldn't be able to sit tight for years in order to climb out of it, and therefore I would be stuck in a house probably too small for my needs and unable to upgrade.

On the plus side for buying, inflation is eroding money all the time it is left in the bank (in fact because house prices aren't rising strongly atm they are actually falling in real terms) and I think it will be at least 6 months to a year before any significant movement starts to happen, so that is a fair bit of rent.

There are no certainties as to what is going to happen in the future, only probabilities.