Another House Buying Dilemma

[LIZS]

Having gone under offer to a Buy to Let cash buyer (hooray!) 10 days ago we are making a concerted effort to find somewhere to move to . The market is pretty quiet atm. Went for a 2nd viewing on one which ticks lots of our boxes, is the practical (safe?) choice and has some scope to improve but lacks a certain something and feels "dull".

Location and garden good, nice looking and well presented house but the 4th bedroom is a loft conversion, bathroom not huge, kitchen dated and in need of reconfiguration, and it is on a slip road parallel to a vey busy road. Also it is at the top of our budget although agent says they would take an offer and vacate, so potentially no chain.

Aargh !!! Would you go with practical or move into rented by the time our sale went through, waiting for the "right" house to come along ?

congratulations!! at last!

is your buyer pushing you to move quickly?

imo moving into something that doesn't get you excited could be an error. yes, it might be expensive and inconvenient to rent for a while, but less expensive and less inconvenient than changing your mind a few monhts in and moving again.

oh - and also, being in a rented place puts you in a strogn position to buy when you do find the dream place - assuming you're out of your 6 month min tenancy period you can move within a month and are chain-free - very attractive to a vendor

(we're renting next btw - and hoping to exchange on our sale tomorrow)

Our buyer doesn't want to complete until January earliest (presumably the money is tied up) but by March, so we have a little time . We have said we would rent if needs be to prevent the slae falling through again . I'm not sure why I'm not completely taken by this one though , confusing as I've driven past over the years and thought they were very nice .

It all depends on your view on the direction of the housing market.

I personally would not want to gamble and get out of the market unless I had a very very strong view on it. And even then, not at this time of the year.

We are coming up to Christmas now, supply is bad as it is, it will only get worse in the next couple of months - nobody wants to be moving over Christmas.

So I would go for that house if I were you if you are not too unhappy about the negatives.

Hope it goes smoothly Tutter

Personally, I'd wait. You have to live in this house for a LONG time and there will be other houses without a chain. The list of negatives would put me off - esp, the busy road. Not a huge problem in the winter with the windows closed but could you imagine it in the summer? Besides, I feel that you "know" that the house is for you once you step inside.

Hang in there. Good luck!

I would rent til the right house appears. we did that this year. it was an expensive way of doing it but we were able to leap in and make a quick offer with our ideal house when it did come on the market. It was worth waiting for.

LIZS, we moved to rented in order to find the right house.

It was a fabulous move and I am SO happy in our new home; it really feels like home and it just feels really nice to be in a place that is 'us' if you know what I mean. It's a very small house, 2 bed terrace but it's in exactly the right road, in exactly the right location by the sea

I would certainly recommend renting and waiting for the right place. We didn't want to be off the property ladder too long though as it does start to panic you, that prices are going up but the funds in the bank stay more or less the same..gulp...

I reckon you should be ok though if you manage to find something in the spring - round here things really get going in march or april time.

oh, meant to say that when we did make an offer on our current house, we were told the vendor accepted our slightly lower offer purely because we were renting and thus able to move fast with the purchase.

Hi LIZS!

Whilst you don't want to wait too long in case the market continues to move upwards, could you afford to wait until the Spring? A house is such an enormous purchase that you should buy it without reservations (except of course the price). The kitchen isn't such an issue as you can always change it later, you might even somehow get round the 4th bedroom via an extension, but the very busy road will always be there and may always bug you.

Thanks for the replies - mixed views but leaning towards renting ! hmm this one just feels too "sensible" iykwim, head ruling heart !

Hi Issymum!! You are right about the road but it is a trade off for being less than 5 minutes from a mainline station for dh's commute and therefore less need for a 2nd car. Having said that there are similar houses in the area, less near the main road, but not for sale right now ! An extension to create a "proper" 4th bedroom is a possibility long term but I'm worried that there will always be a ceiling to the value of the property due to the road and Stamp Duty thresholds so we may not get that expenditure back should we come to resell.

SunnysideUp, what you say echoes the experience of a friend I spoke to this morning .They felt in a stronger negotiating position because they were completing regardless then renting, plus they could decorate and update their new house before moving in.

I'm with Issymum -- a busy road is always bad news and makes it harder to sell a house on.

We bought a huge decrepit house 11 years ago for what was clearly a ludicrous bargain even at the time. The compromise we made is that it was on a busyish road, with a bus stop opposite. It also has a medium-sized council estate at the back. We bought it only because it ticked every other box for us. The alternative would have been a tiny two-up two down cottage-y thing of which there were several on the market at the time we were buying, mainly for £10-20K more than we paid for ours. Given that our current house has five beds, two bathrooms and a good-sized garden for London, it was a no-brainer, and has worked beautifully for us as a family house -- the interior and the garden are now lovely and it's a fantastic size.

BUT it has been harder to sell than many other houses -- lots of the people who've booked viewing appointments didn't even make it through the door because they couldn't get their heads round the road, and lots of others never came back for a second viewing even though they liked the inside. We have now accepted a good offer from a buyer who has worked out that he's getting a lot more house for his money than elsewhere, but it's taken five weeks and a lot of viewings (but only a small price drop ).

Needless to say we're moving to a house on a quiet road. In summary: only buy a house on a busy road if it is clearly significantly better in every way than anything else available to you.

Is stamp duty a consideration? If so, you wouldn't want to pay that twice, along with other moving costs, agency commisions etc.....

Good news Lizs!

If you don't think teh house could be "yours" by changing stuff then, no, wouldn't go for it. Not sure I agree any more with the "you need to get excited by it". Had too many experiences (well, a few) where that has happened and I wasn't thinking straight.

Thing is, if you rent and market starts to move up, you could still buy a not perfect house to get back in and you would be no worse off than you are now. So waiting a while won't hurt.

Maybe it's just anxiety about move that's making you view the house negatively if previously liked it??

Oh yes, and the stamp duty makes buying and selling in quick succession very very unattractive indeed.

I nearly fainted when I saw what Gordon Brown's cut was going to be on the house we are buying. Suffice it to say that any ambitious plans we might have had for adding a second bathroom are going to be on hold for the next decade or so until we have digested the cheque we're going to have to write to the Inland Revenue... [gritted teeth and grimacing in pain emoticon]

If your purchaser is a buy-to-let person then he should be able to wait a bit longer since it won't affect whether he will have a roof over his head or not. I would keep looking - chances are something will turn up - rather than rent. Don't know where you are, but you could get caught out if the market rises and I would have thought it would be difficult to get a place to rent for less than 6 months...

Could you rent off your buyer?

Location Location location everytime for me.

BTW I am sitting next to the phone ready to leap on it as we are expecting to exchange this afternoon on our sale We are going to try and tie up our purchase with the completion of the 5th Jan. We have definatly gone with LLL as our new house is in a Vale (still feels like a dream though)

and now I've discovered that the sale on a period house in need of renovation, but which could be lovely has just fallen through - same area but not quite on the main road .... what's a bit of subsidence between friends lol !!

There you go, meant to be and all the other cliches. Sounds good.

Still waiting for agent to call me back . Rather suspect the structural problems (very visible cracks now I've looked at outside again !) could be an obstacle but at least if he saw it dh would see why other houses are lacking something.

I like the idea of trying to persuade your buyer to hold on for a minute until you find something you like. Hopefully all those sensible people who aren't me (I've just stuck the house on the market) will start thinking of putting stuff on after Christmas. I personally think you need to feel a certain something for a house before you buy it. I've seen a fair few in the past that seemed fine but I just couldn't imagine living in for reasons I just wasn't sure of so have walked away. And each time I have been pleased I have as something that I really wanted has come along.