FTB market/ offers and tactics?

[3asAbird]

We just had dream house offer accepted and withdrawn as seller no longer wants to sell. Agents not said why.

It was on the market for 2months
We put offer in 5k under asking
Accepted taken month get mortage fully approved as had in principle offer before.
We have large deposit around 22% of price bracket we looking at.
We currently rent so in no chain and onky have give 1 months notice.

What I'm confused about is local market as different agents Zoopla and right move tell conflicting stories.

We are Bristol so many Londoners are moving to bristol.
However we not looking at expensive well known areas of Clifton/ southville bishopston/ henleaze, westbury on trym we looking at outer suburbs which has a mix of brand new builds/ older 1930s properties/ Victorian and ex local authority.
It's a postcode popular with families due to schools and people being priced out of central areas.

I know the market in South east and London is falling how did I know true picture in Bristol.

1 agent has said some agents valuing at last year's prices.
Few roads in Zoopla say value has fallen but their estimated value for some houses in those roads seems way out.

Much of what we have seen so far seems over priced.

We started looking in July and hardly much came to market.

Many properties have been reduced by 5 or 10k after many months on market and they still not selling.

A couple we were interested in dropped 10k and sold quick.

I was told much more come to market in September when kids go back but really it hasent picked up that much.

We saw a house yesterday that the agent cheerfully says its priced to sell fast and seller wants to move she might knock off a few grand.

But the house needs total renovation
New flooring through out
New kitchen and bathroom
The cracks in the wall
Dodgy extension
Exposed pipes
Awful decor made me want to run for the hills.

It basically needs 20k maybe more of work for it.
But once spent that and added that to purchase price its unlikely we ever get much increase especially in falling market if we had that sort of money we choose nicer area.

I think we been too honest with agents and our budget as they don't seem exited by us with low budget 240 to 260k at all.

Agents have asked to see proof of mortage and deposit when we made last offer.

Yet read on here first time buyers are as rare as unicorn poo.

I'm So fed up of looking.

Others have said we in strong position and start offers 10%under and work up.

I dont want to seem a cheeky fucker
We are procedable as have finance on place subject valuation/survey and no chain.

But 10% offer under on 250k house is 25k seems unimaginable.

Husband says people must mean London/ South east Market or very high end price brackets not an average priced suburban family home.

We have kids so need 3bed min
We so want to buy and worried about brexit.
It's our forever long term home not an investment we can ride the fall and afford interest rises.

I dont want to lose current mortgage offer as whos knows what banks will lend next year.

A 10k under offer is 5% is that cheeky on a 250 or 260k house thats been on the market for a while?

Should we be vague on budget with agents we not yet dealt with.
Maybe we could look ever so slightly above our budget not because we cheeky tickets but because hardly anything local within our current bracket.

A lot of what we seen online and some we veiwed seem massively over priced.
We want to stay in specific but wise postcode due to kids schools.

When you make offers do you give reasons.

Our last offer 5k under that was accepted we just said to the agents we on strong position and the house needed new electrics and kitchen.

What other factors can help with offers

When you make an offer do you give reasons why

Examples

Lack off street parking
Busy main road
Catchment area for failing schools as we have a small baby
Zoopla says that road has decreased in value.
Crime rates

Alongside obvious things with house off or needs some work ?

I'm not totally against some renovation but we can't afford rent and own so we would have to live and work around it.
Problem is the current prices mean we can't afford to do the work.

Our dream house thats fallen through needed new kitchen bathroom but structurally was sound ticked so many boxes

Location
Garden size
3beds
Room to extend when we had the money
It was clean and tidy unlike yesterday's house.
We could replace things in time

I'm just feeling totally fed up and deflated.
There's 5 I want to see next week 2 within budget and 3 slightly above but been on market for a while least month some more.

I get impression from right move and Zoopla market has cooled due to reductions houses on market longer and less houses on the market.

I completely understand this, as we have been going through the same thing.

A lot of the issue in my area is the unrealistic pricing. People want the top figure despite their properties needing thousands to put right.

FTB, also in rented, everything on standby (mortgage, solicitors etc) but doesn't seem to mean anything here. We've put in lower offers but have always spoke to the EA in person and put in writing for our reasons why. Sadly none have been accepted as they will only accept full asking or offers over. Those properties are still on the market now.

Berimbolo so frustrating feel your pain.

We have mortgage approved
Solicitor
Paid valuation fees and survey luckily tgat had bit gone ahead before vendors decided they wanted to withdraw from market.

They were old couple
Mortage free
Looking to downsize to retirement flat which actually had apartments availiable as we got chatting to when veiwed and they mentioned the complex they liked.

Agents rang Friday no apology
Just we ringing to inform you we cannot proceed with house sale.

We widened our search to nearby provide even different council as we live close to county border which may impacts on some ehcp plan as he has sen and catchment for baby.
Also a much longer commute to school.

Agents just are not that into us
We specify our budget and they say that will be tough in our area or show us complete shit houses.

We tried getting on mailing lists

1 tries ringing with inappropriate houses and do we want to see their mortgage advisor they relentless.

Another we used to rent with dire and dident even know boundary when we veiwed 1 house.

Another we seen 2 houses with different branches turned up late veiwings no apology and the house thats just fallen through no apology.

We really only have 5 to see next week then that's it unless new ones come up.

Do lots come up in October as imagine December and jan are dead.

By which time current mortgage offer willl expire.

Lots of houses coming on where I am, but hardly any of them are suitable. We are looking for a couple of specific things, but mainly it's price/condition of the property and we just refuse to get involved now.

We've been in 2 house purchases that failed. The first kept us in the chain for 6 months. Only 3 of us in the chain, but the people at the top kept changing their minds. They'd find a property, put off offer in, have survey, change mind - they were on to the 10th house when we said enough is enough. Funnily enough they never ended up moving. Sadly in that 6 months, the house prices rocketed and people were asking 100k extra! We had to stay put to save extra deposit and recoup the thousands lost on fees/our survey etc

We were in the same situation! Everywhere was over priced, we eventually had an offer accepted on a lovely house for only 2k over the offers only price. Everytime we gave an offer we explained our reasoning and calculated it's value due to inflation too! We signed up to all the EA and rightmove alerts and so did family members so any likely ones we could get a booking ASAP we ended up viewing ours the day after it went up and then again 4 days later. We agree on a price exactly a week after it went up and they already had another offer on it (they went with us as the other buyers were bidding on a second property and there was the risk they would pull out)

Gosh your situation sounds worse than ours.

We were just over a month after when sellers pulled out.

We missed a couple of potential in that time.

It's just rough be back to square 1.

Looking at things we don't really want
As a buyer we making compromises
Local sellers seem to be living in a different reality.

Inferior lovely to read about happy ending.

I feel we In strong position to buy and move.

Any tips to make agents treat us better.

Maybe we seem like green inexperienced newbies so they try take advantage or dont even treat us with any respect or courtesy.

I know we have to forget about dream house.

Sellers were within legal rights

I won't get emotionally attached next house.

We may be need to be more assertive play hardball and be prepared to walk away.

You have to always been able to walk away unfortunately, its so hard though. As much as we love this one we know that we need to stay rational just in case!

We were looking for 1+ years in our area. I got to know the pricing strategies of our local EA‘s quite well - i.e. two of them are pricing fairly high (possibly to the expectation of the vendors?) and do not go much lower than asking price - hence the properties on their books are sitting on the market for years! One EA is always pricing 10% above what he thinks he will archieve (but takes much lower offers, too) and another EA is staying at a reasonable market value, but is known to be a tough negotiator, so he often gets the price he asked. We had a limited budget and knew we would need to look for a doer-upper. The main points for us were : Detached, 4-Bed, walking distance to kids school, no estate, bigger garden. When a property finally came to the market that met our requirements we didn’t hesitate and offered asking price after the first viewing, as it was on at a very reasonable market value ! We will need to spend approximately 30- 40k to upgrade the house over the next years, but we will not exceed the market price that 4-Bed detached houses in good condition can archieve in our area - and prices here were more or less stable over the last years. It will be our forever-home, too (we are FTB and waited a longe time to buy). The house itself is structurally sound and not damp - but rather neglected and dated. However, we can move in straight away and do the necessary upgrades over time. Which is why we didn’t hesitate to offer the asking price immediately, as these kind of properties are hard to find. Good luck with your search!

3asAbird I am also in the process of buying in Bristol. And we roughly have the same budget! Bristol central location does not make sense to me in my personal circumstance; so I am mostly looking at North and Northeast areas. Do you mind telling me roughly which area you are looking? Maybe we can share information.

House price in Bristol has definitely cooled, though 90% of vendors are not aware it.

Maybe the dynamics of the London market might be being replicated in some form in Bristol ? -- so market booms, over heats etc then during this correction phase there is a time lag and a stand off as sellers hold out for highest price (more than others on their road sold for) but buyers wont offer for fear of negative equity......this has been going on for a least 2 years in London. Or maybe it is a very different dynamic.

Another maybe as this article says bristol 2nd most expensive after London

But unsure how accurate Zoopla is.

www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/londons-property-market-worth-twice-combined-value-nine-largest/

Local paper said 3 Londoners move to bristol every week.

I often see bristol threads on mumsnet but they want the hipper trendiest areas more central.

Semi detached house oposite sold way more than worth over 300k the previous owners flipped it made some improvement and added 100k to asking price.
A London couple brought it as weekend home they quite young.
Our rd area us very run down baffled why they brought here as they have no kids.

Tenapenny 18 we looking at bs16 which covers huge area of 10suburbs some nice and some dire.

We ruled out New build as too small so no to lyde/emersons green.

We looked at South glos and bristol council areas.

We looked at ex local on 2 infamous estates.

I dont really think bs16 is upmarket
Rubbish shops and amenities
Not a huge abundance of nice pubs and restaurants.
Rising crime rate anti-social behaviour as teenagers are so bored.
Real mix of schools

Some awful estate agents its very new money round here with lots of snobbery.

We widened search to parts of bs15. Husband dislikes bs5 I dont mind it but don't want to move their schools and bristol traffic is dire.

Husband works to east near bath.

Rent locally is very high.

We have lived in the area for 15 years kids are settled here.

Husband is native bristolian and grew up bs15.

Right move and Zoopla this year has told me properties take longer to sell, less on market, over priced with reductions whixh makes me think market is cooling but you try to discuss this with agents and they deny its cooling they say they as busy as ever and it's the low quarter of a million pound budget is the problem for a horrible ex local in rough council estate area!

How do you determine state of local market.

Tenapenny not keen on areas that end with feilds or green.
I would consider court,husband likes end/hill or ponds but price is crazy.
Now extended to well /causeway.

Freind wants to move in the 3 stokes area but they crazy prices too.

Bs15 and 30 are rising but lower.

3asAbird Looks like we are more or less looking at the same areas, though I have a bit more preference of the 3 Stokes over BS16, because of work. I would generally avoid BS5, too. BS16 is indeed a bit of hit and miss. Fishpond and Downend have some nice pockets, but not really up market areas as the EAs would have you believed.

I am not buying new built, but would consider recent built. Actually, not all of them are small. Some of them have 3 decent sized double bedrooms rather than what 99% of older 3 beds houses have, which is 2 double bedrooms and 1 tiny boxroom. I really hate old houses that cold, humid and mouldy (and people wonder why their children's asthma get worse)! I am not too picky about garden size, which gives me a bit more options

Not many sensible vendors out there, but I thought these are "maybe".

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67198426.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-73793681.html

And these have already been sold, which I think reflects that they are relatively good value for money.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-55553184.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56388240.html

Would you be able to offer £5k more on the one you were after - i wonder if the owners were just too disappointed not getting the asking price and decided to wait? Problem is prices are falling generally but if its your dream house and you are going to stay a long time it could be worth paying that bit extra to secure the house? Might be worth a try.

Bilbodog not sure money was the issue
They were mortage free and been in the house for 50 years.
It's more they changed mind about moving.

Tenapenny

I'm not keen on lyde green at all so many issues.

Mangotsfeild can be bit rough In parts .

We saw this yesterday but needs more work than we can afford.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67596688.html

Hanham is too far so looking at kingswood borders.

Bromley heath is mega prices
Emerson green is oddly high.

We used to live 80s built downend but was so small.

Love Victoria but none come with parking.

Not adverse to ex council as they fairly large.

Good luck with your search.
I quite like stoke gifford
Chiswick village is quite nice for new builds.
Old hospital site mega money high end.

I think so much buy to let bs16 including student houses for uwe has skewed the market.

Upper horfeild
Purdown by from tower
Stapleton nice but awful traffic.
Some parts filton ok too.

The surrounding villages used to be cheaper not so much these days.

Yea, I think too that BTL and Londoners really messed up the local Bristol market. The amount a BTL can borrow is probably about twice as much as a home owner, which is why the price became detached from local wages.

If you don't mind ex council properties, I think there may be a mini crash of BTL properties on the way, because the change in landlord taxes, which I think will really start to bite near January, because that's when the landlords have to pay tax.

I am not too keen on Kingswood, but did looked there as well and thought this one is a maybe
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66753745.html