We have been looking to buy for almost a year.... We are both FTB’ers and Covid has kept pushing the goalposts back.
Now that we have made it into the position to buy (again).... there is absolutely nothing on the market that suits us! We live and work in a rural area and prices have skyrocketed. We don’t want to waste our FTB status on a “starter home” that we would be itching to move from in a year or two anyways. We are in our 30’s a d want to buy our forever home.
Am I alone in having soooo many tabs open of STC houses that would suit us but that had ‘sold’ before we were in the position to really compete in this market?
.... Just in case they miss this stamp duty deadline and their chains end up callapsing? I don’t usually hope for others misfortune but by damn has this year of constantly having the rug pulled out from under us made me pray to the house gods for a little break.
Just over a year ago, we were a few K away from our 5% deposit, then all the 95 LTV mortgages got pulled, almost overnight.
We did our best to raise it to a 10% but by then the 90 LTV mortgages had also mostly disappeared and then the Stamp duty holiday came and removed what felt like the only advantage we had as FTB’ers.
We literally got our 10% deposit and the government re-introduced those 5% mortgages..... fuelling the competition again.
We finally got an offer accepted on a house in March... That the sale had fallen through on due to the perceived miss of the SD deadline.... The the holiday got extended, the buyers and their chain came back and the sellers decided to carry on and proceed with the previous buyers.
Feels like every “incentive” the government has offered house-buyers has actually just hindered our chances.
Obviously throughout every setback, prices and asking prices have kept rising.
Anyone else waiting in the wings for a bone.... just one little scrap please!