Anyone else waiting to buy?

[Freetodowhatiwant]

As in title, anyone else waiting to buy and wondering when might be the right time? I am aware it is a funny time to be buying, at the start of a potential slow down/price correction/outright crash (depending who you talk to) and also when interest rates are high BUT some of us still 'have to' buy or think about buying.

My position is I have been renting for a couple of years and can only now move forward due to having sold a property. I have bought and sold several before over the years so have a fair bit of experience but at the moment it's all so variable.

Personally I am thinking it is probably best to wait a few months and see what the market does but can't help looking now. There seems to be a slight slow down in my area - popular seaside city in the South - but prices are still way above what they were when I was browsing just pre-pandemic in January/February 2020. As an example, the sort of house I want to buy was around £550k at that time and is now hitting the £650-700k mark. I THINK people will soon realise that the 700k mark is not going to happen but we will see. I would like to get one around the 600k mark but that might be too much of a fall in price for some to sell at,

Here are my thoughts about the pros and cons of buying soonish/in the next few months:

Cons:

High interest rates
Might be harder to get a mortgage
Prices still haven't yet gone down as much as they might do
As above it would be annoying to buy and then watch prices sink (although I HAVE done this before in 2007 in London and of course values eventually went up a lot)
There might not be a lot on the market as people stay put
Having to rent has been expensive - but of course interest rates now mean the mortgage will be more expensive than renting whether just a few months ago the mortgage would have been cheaper

Pros:

A downturn might help get a bargain
Hopefully someone will realise that it's an ideal time to size up and therefore vacate a property I would like
Might be an ideal time to get a tracker mortgage so don't get suck on a high rate
I will stop paying rent to pay of someone else's mortgage
I really want to be in our own home, one we own, again

Just me... or anyone else waiting with bated breath to see what move they make next and when?

Funnily enough I sold in Europe (Spain) to be able to buy this one! Well, the one I am hoping to find and buy. Divorce and other reasons.

the houses that have gone on in my area are staying on for a while then reducing and still not selling! It seems a very stagnant market here, partly, I think, because they are still pricing them a little high. But also interest rates are making it that much harder. Whilst I was in the middle of writing this I got a call from an estate agent from someone rejecting my offer of 625k on a house. It has recently been reduced from 700 to 650 and the vendor wants 650. In old days I probably would have met her closer to the 650
mark but with these interest rates it means the difference of a few hundred pounds more a month and I just can’t stretch to that.

Houses are not perishable ... but your remaining working life is, and it runs out at the rate of one year of work lost per year's delay. That's actually quite rapid - it may not seem so in your twenties, but by the time you are the wrong side of forty it gets ever more significant.

Every year's delay in buying caps your potential lifetime cumulative property wealth. Not a problem if you are simultaneously investing hard in ISAs and pensions, but for many people their house is their most valuable physical asset when they retire. If you first buy age 21, you can broadly speaking pay off two mortgages back to back over a working lifetime. Or, as many people do, re-mortgage every 5-10 years and 'move up another rung on the property ladder'. But once you are past 45, the term of any new mortgage you might need reduces, and the monthly repayments needed to afford it spiral upwards massively. If you thought rising interest rates were bad ... try putting a term of 15 years into a mortgage calculator!

This will have a far bigger impact on your overall lifetime housing affordability than waiting a further year or two now just to try and time it right in a potentially falling market. If you see a house you like and think it would make you happy - I'd buy it as soon as you can afford to.

I AM trying to buy a house @Mark19735 but there’s nothing suitable on the market and yes as I am over 40 I can only get a 22 year mortgage. It’s not my first mortgage and I have two others elsewhere and I would love to buy as soon as possible.

I'm in a similar position, just waiting it out, the houses I was looking at just before the pandemic are now 50% more expensive, in the space of a few years for a, house to go up in value by 50% is just unsustainable and greedy by Estate agents and sellers, they are slowly starting to be reduced as they have been sitting in rightmove now for a couple of months, but will have to wait a while until they reduce them to a sensible price unfortunately

Exactly the same situation here for me @jimmyjammy001. I understand values have gone up in a couple of years but the amount they have gone up is ridiculous! You can see this slowly dawning on estate agents with the amount of reductions going on. But yes they absolutely have further to go down.

I've seen a couple of houses in the area I'm looking in (although not what I'm actually after) that have reduced their asking prices by over 20% today 😮

Lots of other reductions too, but not sure what their original prices were.

Wow 20% reduction is pretty massive! What price were they on at?

One was £450k reduced to £350k (reduced in 1 day)

Other one I think was £380k to £300k (reduced over a few weeks)

I just got a bacon roll for an 80% reduction. Went to the burger van, ordered a bacon roll. Had a tenner in my hand. The bloke said "that'll do" and chuckled. I said "you're having a laugh mate" and he said "OK, worth a try - that'll be £2 please".

Quick - someone tell Greggs that the market for bacon rolls has just dropped by 80% and they better reduce their prices quick or they'll look really stupid!

??????

@Fedupofdiets don't worry, A Man has arrived to Explain. Never mind the fact that most of the posters on this thread have properties to sell/already sold, so aren't FTB, and that the second post bore no relevance to PP's post.

I'm not waiting, we reserved a house in June and aim to move in next month. We've sold our current property and move out in a few weeks. I totally see the logic in waiting and I don't know that I've done the right thing, but this is my home, not an investment. So I've just done what suits my family for now, while bearing in mind plans for the long-term. We're upsizing and this house gives us lots of options - big enough to stay there forever, or alternatively build some equity and use it to move again in X years. 10 year fixed rate so we have some peace of mind.

I have finally saved enough for a deposit (solo first time buyer).
I'm keen to buy as soon as I can. Currently working full time in a very stressful job just so that I can secure a mortgage based on my earnings. Desperate to drop to 4 days for my own mental health but can't do it until I have a property in the bag. Mortgage repayments will be cheaper than rent even with the high mortgage rates so my outgoings will be lower. Hoping to buy somewhere that doesn't need much work.

So very little on the market at the moment! Whenever I look it's just the same houses. Luckily many are being reduced. When I spoke to an Estate Agent yesterday he said that they've received lots of requests for valuations so they're expecting a lot more to come onto the market in the coming weeks. I can hold on til then but I really don't want to stay in my current role for much longer and I'm approaching 40. It really has to happen this spring for me.

The price that a seller demands does not determine the value of that item to a buyer.

A change in the price demanded for an item sells does not determine the price at which the next item will change hands.

Applies to houses. Applies to bacon sarnies.

I think that's a good idea to proceed for you @KimmySchmitt you want the house and can afford the repayments and it makes sense.

Well done for being ready to buy @Hollyhocksauce owning your own property for the first time definitely feels a lot better than renting.

@Mark19735 with your bacon sandwich analogy, no-one is disputing that prices shot up and are now going down. We are just here to talk, as the title suggests, about waiting to buy. I am ready and willing to buy (this will be my 9th purchase overall so I am not a newbie) and just waiting for the right property to come along at a price I am happy with.