To buy / sell or not to buy

[kirinm]

We made an offer on a house a few weeks back / maybe a month or so. Offer was rejected and as we hadn't sold our place we weren't particularly surprised.

That was about a week before the mini-budget fiasco so since then mortgage rates have increased substantially and everything is much more uncertain. (Not that it wasn't uncertain at the time but is even more uncertain now).

EA has called and said that the house is almost certainly going to come back on the market. I haven't asked why yet but would definitely be looking at a price reduction due to the fact it needs a lot of work.

Would you buy now if you thought what you were going to buy was something you'd live in for a long time? (i.e. 10 years or so).

I should have added, we'd probably be borrowing at a 60/40 LTV so we have a sizeable deposit so we'd probably be able to access reasonable mortgage products but even those sorts of mortgages have very high rates.

Yes I would if it's the right house. We're selling now and looking to buy. There's no perfect time. If you're going to do it up, you can remortgage in a few years and you'll have a higher LTV as the house value should have increased due to the renovations. These interest rates are going back to historical average.

Yes I would buy if I got it at a price I thought was reasonable.

Have you sold yours now?

No we've not sold because we decided to hold off once everything kicked off. We have a very small mortgage on our current place so can weather out any economic storm (even if one of us lost our job). But the EA does know our situation so I have assumed that he thinks an offer from us would be accepted. Although now typing that out, I've realised that waving the house at us as a possibility is a pretty easy way of getting us to sell via them.

Another bonus is that another house on the same street has come up that doesn't need as much work but is on for only £25k more than this was on for. I suspect that price is a bit low for the road and will probably go for more but it gives us something to refer to when trying to get the price down (as well as the work that needs doing). I think we could probably get ourselves a reasonable deal.

If you love it, I would buy. The property market will bounce back in time and you will add value from your renovations too.

You'll have to sell your own house first before you know how much you have to play with — and certainly in my area prices have frozen or are beginning to drop. Put yours on the market and see what happens. No point in thinking of moving if you can't sell.

I've just had ours valued by a surveyor as we were going to move from a variable mortgage to a fixed so we've got an idea of value. Whether we can sell or not is another matter.

It's seems a bit academic till you have a buyer. Have you put yours on the market?

You'll find a surveyor's assessment of the value of your house will vary greatly from an estate agent's. Surveyors are always pessimistic and many a house sale has been scuppered when a buyer offers £400k and the surveyor values it at significantly lower.

Why not prove you can sell your house, before making an offer?