Any ideas when viewings will start happening?

[istheresomethingwrongwithme]

Just that really. No need to reply now one knows' - I realise that, just wondered what people's thoughts are.

I think we'll have another 3 week lockdown from the 7th May, then hopefully we might be allowed to view houses after that.

I guess as soon as we are permitted to leave our houses for reasons other than work, exercise, supplies or to help others, then we could view houses.

Are you just buying or selling as well though? As FTBs we’re not sure we need to/should be steaming ahead immediately if prices are probably going to drop as predicted in some places for various reasons....we could end up in negative equity, which I know isn’t an absolute disaster if we can afford repayments and are staying put for a long time but still, why would we pay more than we need to. We feel really uncertain about going ahead immediately whereas in Feb I was raring to go. I get if you’re both buying & selling then it doesn’t really matter as much because prices will change the same both ends.

I just feel the urgency/enthusiasm has gone for us with everything that’s happening. I think we will go and view a few of the properties we really love from online listings at the moment but perhaps we’ll be less happy to compromise on anything on our wish list to proceed quickly.

Do people think we will get an influx of properties coming to the market after lockdown though? I’m wondering if a lot of potential sellers might be delaying as well due to all the uncertainty.

Hi @OpthalmosVerde.

No, we're not selling. We bought this house (first house) in 2012 and will keep it as a rental investment. We agreed to buy a property just before lockdown but that sale has fallen through. We wanted to negotiate a reduction due to economic uncertainty following coronavirus, vendor didn't want to and has had a change of heart himself about selling due to coronavirus. Also, the house he was buying has fallen through.

That one was at the very top of our budget, hence our nervousness. Another property came onto the market just after we'd had our offer accepted, so we didn't view it at the time but said that it would be one to look at if anything went wrong with the first house. Obviously now that's fallen through I'm itching to have a look. It's more affordable for us and we'd be negotiating 'post coronavirus', so I think we'd be happy to proceed if we could agree a price we felt comfortable with. Our deposit is about 60% of the guide so Loan To Value is relatively low and we plan to be there long term.

The second house is also 'done', whereas the other one needed about £200k spending on it to extend and refurbish. We had considered this in our offer/budgeting, but only based on our estimations and we were nervous about costs escalating and ending up living in a building site we can't afford to finish. The second house is more of a known entity and there is about £10k leftover after moving costs for a rainy day.

Regarding your situation, I think it depends whether you are renting now, what your deposit/LTV looks like and how long you plan to be in the house. Renting is expensive too. I'm kind of in the same mind as you - should we wait it out and see if something better comes along that we might not have been able to afford before. Or will the market just stay stagnant and we won't see the crash that we are all nervous about.

My personal opinion is that there will be a short dip, then prices will revert to where they are now and the market will stagnate. Ultimately any market is driven by supply and demand, so maybe it won't be as bad as people think. We were balancing a number of expensive risks with the first house and my husband runs his own business (I'm a SAHM) so of course our income may take a hit, although we will have the rent from our current house too. That's more why we were nervous, rather than house prices alone.