Buying in London. Come here and share your stories

[Flowers2014]

So we are trying to buy in London and the market is crazy. Everything that we've seen has gone for 10%-20% over the asking price. Because of DP and his work we can't go too out of London which is making this whole process much harder than it needs to be. We have a good budget but in this market it's just not enough.

I'm tired by the process now so we are taking a break from it. We have until Nov to move out of out rented flat so we are going take the spring off and try again in the summer.

Anyone else in the same boat of trying to buy in London? Come share your stories with me!

I am looking at the bathrooms on Celtic's 2nd link.
The first bathroom photo, what is on the wall by the bath? Are they tiles? I love it.

Laquitar it is a glass shower divide (as opposed to flappy shower curtain) with etched glass circles on it, I think.

Daughter's and her husband's 2 bed flat (zone 1) : they just bought it and it cost £750k. With the loan on her husband's first flat in the same block which he's kept and will let out, they owe about or over £1m. There was no chain and they had nothing to sell so it made it easier and they knew the block as they already live in it. Even so the market is very competitive and there are not enough properties.
My other daughter (both are in their 20s) zone 2 paid £330k for a one bed 18 months ago. I owed £1.3m fairly recently until I paid down some debt. Not fun.

Stamp duty is particularly unfair on those buying in London. My girls between them have paid a total of £40k in stamp duty just about in the last 18 months. What a waste. It used to be zero or much less for first properties. That money should have gone into the property not to the state to squander and spend.

Fair enough Flowers. I know a fair few non drivers or non car owners in the area but it might not suit you. I always had a car there.

Oh Is it the glass thing? I couldn't see well and i thoughtit was smth 60' style on the wall, on the tiles.i like a.ything with circles.
Thank you Lessons.

60s big dots design on tiles would be lovely though! You've given me an idea for a bathroom look.

We're in north london, looking a year, and getting so desperate. It seems to have gone mad just in last month. Checked land registry - to get real prices, and in Feb. House in Mill Hill East for £470k went for £447k or so. Now houses on at £460k going for £480k. What is that about?! Cash buyers? But we daren't move out into rented, because gap will grow even bigger.

The Fieldings went for well over £500k to a cash buyer.

Who the fuck are all these people with over half a million in cash????

Sorry you missed out lessons.

Oh I'm sorry to hear that lessons!

And I echo your question. I have no idea where people are getting the cash to pay for 500k+ flats

lessonsintightropes sorry to hear that, unbelievable.
But I am sure that with your budget you will find something soon (there are plenty of people looking and buying in London with much lower budgets)

we bought a wreck late last year, we could put it straight back on the market, no work completed, for 270k more than we bought. we were at least 10-15 years older than most other couples looking at houses in our price range. I have no idea where the money is coming from.

Where is the money coming from for cash buyers? Some people will have sold, moved into rented or parents and then buying. My daughters (and me) certainly have mortgages. Mine was over £1.3m and daughter 1 and husband about £1m I think and the other daughter about £250k. No cash buyers here.

About 10 years ago mys house (zone 5) (which is quite big) was about half the price of a mews house in Curzon St W1 but bigger. The one in W1 was about £4m rather than £2m for half the space (but much more central). So when we'd paid our mortgage off had we wanted to we could have taken out a 50% mortgage and moved centrally (we decided not to). What is interesting is how the market then moved. Our rather nice house, private estate etc zone 5 is probably not worth much more than 10 years ago whereas the very central London W1 freehold houses even smallish ones increased in value much more. It does not bother me as I prefer living out here but it shows how even within inner and outer London different areas have had different price rise levels so my daughters wanting to live in zone 1 or zone 2 suffer the consequences of those rises. Mind you even in 84 when I first bought we could only afford zone 5 so in 30 years not that much has changed.

£1.3m mortgage [faints]

Seriously though - and I don't really expect you to answer this Jane - but what the actual fuck are you earning to get that mortgage!!

where is this zone 5 place that hasn't increased in 10 years?

It was less until we divorced and I had to pay off my children's father more than half our assets (he earned a lot less, tenth of what I did so go more than half of our assets and I wanted to keep the 5 children in their home and me in this house where I work my business from too so I was very keen to keep the house). As house prices had gone up about £1m from when we bought in 97 it meant he was entitled to loads of money. Never marry a man who earns less than you do is the lesson from this of course.... I have spent 11 years trying to pay back as much as I can. I work for myself as a lawyer and my income varies. We had 5 years when I owed 1.3m on the house and was overdrawn with no savings and 5 children to support alone - which requires quite a bit of nerve and hard work. It is under £1m now thankfully as interest rates have been so low - I pay 3.1% interest presently.

My daughter and her husband (lawyer and banker) have taken on over £1m of debt to be 5 mins walk from work. (only a 2 bed flat).Her first property, just completed on it. I think they are wise to retain her husband's one bed flat and let it out. However that means they and I think Central London property over the next 10 years + will be a good investment.

Mind you I am the person who in about 1996 sold two buy to let flats at 50% less than we paid for them! I am not the best property investor around.

Sorry to hear that lessons.

We had an offer accepted around10% above asking price in North London. By the time we complete, it'll already have increased in value by around 4%.

It's like Monopoly money isn't it?

London is crazy! I just had a call from an estate agent and he was confirming our place at an open day on sat, I was dithering a bit and got into a chat with him about how crazy the market is etc, and he said to me not to wait around too long because the flat (tiny 2 beds; 500k-600k) would be worth 100k more in a year. I told him who would buy a 700k 1 bed flat and straight away he said foreign investors it does feel rather pointless to be trying to buy a home so that we can try and have some stability in our lives when it seems the competition is all foreign investors.

Not sure where to from here.

So all the govt have to do is to start introducing restrictions on foreign buyers and potentially the ar*e will fall out of the market.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Except they have, but given a nice long lead time to introduce it.

In France - capital gains tax for non-residents is a flat rate of 35% for EU citizens, 49% for non EU citizens.
In the UK non-doms typically don't pay tax, residents pay 28% (usually)
AFTER April 2015, non doms will be liable for tax too. Will be interesting to see if the market stabilises then or if investors pile out of the market in advance of the CGT deadline.

flowers does your EA really believe that? London is bonkers - I know because the market moved so much over the period we were looking (April - August last year). But if it keeps going up at such a speedy rate, how is that sustainable? Something has to give soon. What do people think?

Flowers, £700k for a one bed sounds a lot but my daughter and husband just bought a 2 bed for £750k which is not too different (and they are not foreign investors, just very hard working London professionals with a very large mortgage).

I just had an email from a contact who sold his business which was away from London. With part of the money he says he has bought two flats in London (he already had one) as his view is Central London property always tends to keep its value. He is building 4 more luxury homes where he is based away from London too. He does not know what to do with the rest of the money. He will be an example of someone else (over 60 in his case) sold a business, wanting more than the interest on savings you get - my savings account at Nat West currently pays 0.4% before higher rate tax !! on my very small savings which means every year due to inflation the savings would smaller and smaller if I were not using them to pay off mortgage debt - so you can see why people might want to invest in property instead. However I think over the last 40 years the stock market has often done better than property for investment.

When people wait for a massive price crash it is so hard to predict that that many just lose their chance to buy. If you are going to buy and own a property for 40 years as many of us I think it's just best to get on with it. I remember just the awful 1970s property crash. We suffered the 90s crash, negative equity, 12% interest rates, we sold 2 buy to lets at 50% less than we paid for them etc etc... So it not a smooth ride for people over decades of ownership and always difficult when you buy. We then (and probably now) could not afford anywhere but out here in zone 5. 30 years ago any more central was prohibitively expensive for us. It was not dead easy with loads of cheap central places 30 years ago. It was much as now - most of us even professionals having to commute in as properties in the centre were just too expensive to buy.

Me2- apparently he really believes that. It would seem we are only 3-4 years away from 1M 2 beds in Kentish town/south hampstead etc. being normal. Not sure how anyone will live in London. I guess we will just have to move abroad to get a decent quality of life.

I'm not in London but in zone 5/6 out in Surrey and it's pretty nuts here. We put our 3 bed flat on the market this morning and haven't had photos/measurements etc done yet, an hour later we have ten viewings.

We've just had an offer accepted on a house that needs a lot of work and we paid 15k over the original valuation.

Davethecat I think you might live on my road, or very close to me anyway ;)

We're in the same position, except we have DC3 on the way. Big 3 bed ground floor flat with garden but still bursting at the seams - will make good money on our flat, but nowhere near enough to make the move to a bigger place in the same area (and certainly not on the same roads). I want to stay in the area as I'm very settled here now and have a good network of friends, but DH thinks we should move.

It's all so unachievable I'm burying my head in the sand a bit and hoping it all goes away Burying my head so much that I still check the asking prices on rightmove every day though.

Oh goodness, London does seem to being crazy. My H and I are FTB and had an offer on a 2 bed flat near Stratford accepted a few months ago. We are now in a fairly precarious position as we have everything lined up and are ready to move... but the seller now seems to by dragging her heels which is making us very nervous as we know we got a bargain (even though it was pushing our budget at £210k). Nothing we can do but keep our fingers crossed!