House hunting?

[bjoke]

House hunting is so stressful! On this side, Greater Manchester, it seems like houses going on the market has just dried up. I refresh rightmove a couple of times a day and just nothing.
So from people who have bought maybe not recently, what have to done when there seems to be nothing on? Waited it out or increase your budget even though it is at your highest end?

I haven't bought recently but in precious times when property supply was low and new houses on the market were snapped up almost the instant it appeared on the market.

Personally I would advise just wait, if you are in a position to. Unless you can comfortably increase your budget and really want to.

You can spend the time making sure you are in a position to move swiftly. Have a good clear out and sell unwanted stuff on eBay. Get your mortgage offer in place, identify a solicitor to act for you. Make yourself an attractive buyer so you can swoop in.

I sold a house in a period of property dearth, and I had 8 offers after the first weekend of viewing. I knew the house was priced reasonably high, but still i was offer £20k over the asking price. One couple actually waited outside my house and begged me to consider their offer out of pity (they couldnt afford to top the £20k offered by the other couple and were expecting a baby). I was very sorry but obviously I just accepted the best offer and sent them on their way.

My point is - you may end up finding it hard to get your offer accepted even if you do find a property you like. So be prepared for disappointment in a competitive market.

What part of Manchester are you looking in?
We recently sold our house after our onward purchase fell through and are now in rented. Since lockdown was lifted to roughly 2 weeks ago the market was CRAZY where we were looking (South Manchester). Houses were selling in a matter of days and some of the asking prices were a lot lot higher than pre-COVID. In the last 2 weeks everything seems to have slowed down dramatically and in our search area nothing of interest has really come up.

What's your buying position? Even if you find a property, there's a lot of competition about and if it's a popular house/area your buying position could be quite important. We are lucky as we've had an offer accepted on a "forever home" but it had a lot of interest; conservation area, character property, plenty of features + it's the only house to come up on the road in years. It had 10 offers and it went to best and final in the end. Luckily it was slightly under our budget so allowed us to offer over asking price. The agents told us on the phone that all the top offers were in the same region but our position helped secure it.

Have you thought about leaflet dropping in areas (pinpoint certain roads) that you're interested in? We've done it in the past and it's generated interested. Or even better post in the local area Facebook group. We did that and we got tons of interest from potential sellers. We've viewed quite a few through this way and we were even going to offer on one before the one we secured came up.

@FManc
We are looking at the Trafford area because of schools. We had an offer accepted for 10k less and we were happy with it, but got gazumped by another buyer willing to pay the full price.
We are putting our current property into buy to let to cut the chain on our end. We have our MIP and we are ready to move pronto.

We have had to increase our budget 3 times to be able to be in with a fighting chance but it's all CRAZY!

I thought things would be really busy at the moment with the cut on stamp duty but the market has fallen silent. in the last two weeks there's been one house on the market in our price bracket and it's awfully overpriced.

If you can I would wait. Better not to rush such a massive decision or stretch yourself too far.

Not in Manchester but we’re house hunting in a hot market and it’s just so stressful. We’ve seen 15 houses-4 we’ve offered on. The first one went to best and final (£22k over the asking price), the second one we only just lost out in a bidding war, again £20k over asking price. Third one, we bid mid guide price and couldn’t go any higher and now we’re on to our 4th one where we offered the asking price and it’s going to best and final. It’s so frustrating!