Advice on houses - to pull out or not

[iLikeToRockNotRoll]

Advice please from those with more experience in buying houses than us. We have been accepted on a detached 4 bed - this was in November last year. It’s got great potential but we will need to do an extension and put in new kitchen etc. We are at the survey stage, there are a few flags but nothing huge and out of the ordinary for a house it’s ages.

We have just seen that a semi-detached 4 bed house round the corner has gone on the market for exactly the same price as the house we are buying. It’s beautiful, all done up and has had the extension with a new kitchen and a new bedroom (the 4th one) and benefits from a bigger garden. We haven’t viewed yet but plan to.

Should we jump from the house we are buying for the other one or use it as an opportunity to renegotiate the price (prices have fallen loads in recent months)? It will cost a couple of £100k to extend the house we are buying and get the new fittings, and it all looks like the only real big pro of the one we are buying now seems to be that it is detached rather than semi. The mortgage valuation also came in tens of thousands under the asking price too (but we were told by our mortgage broker that the valuation was done by algorithms so it’s not actually being undervalued).

What would you do? We don’t want to cause heartache and distress to the vendors of the house we are buying but we are also worried about paying significantly over market odds…

A detached is always going to be worth more than a semi. You just have to do a bit of research on sold prices in the area and decide whether this detached house is worth what you are paying plus the cost of extension and renovations. House sales do fall through that's life. No point in being stuck in negative equity if you overpay.

More than one issue I think. It's a bit rubbish for the current sellers but it is a business transaction so you need to make the right decision for you and your family.
Go and view the semi and see if you like it first. You may well get a strong feeling one way or the other.
Detached houses usually carry a premium and the majority find them more desirable. Does a detached carry a premium for you or not?
Do you have a lot of extra money for the necessary work on the detached? Work is always more expensive than the estimates and prices have risen a lot.
If you do stick with the current house you should definitely renegotiate as you say prices have fallen 'loads'. Negative equity may be a significant risk depending on your circumstances. Of course, you do need to bear in mind that there is a chance you might lose it so you need to be prepared for that.

Yes but you can't hear their tv, music, parties, arguments, plugs going in and out of sockets, dog barking at home alone all day, drilling or hammering into the party wall.

@donttellmehesalive I've never heard tvs, radios, plugs etc in all my yrs of semis & terraces. Does property age make a difference? Have had some annoying barking dogs but they were always in the garden. Occasional hammering & drilling over the years but I've never had neighbours who do that regularly & if someone is having an extension etc you hear that noise even if they are on the opposite side of the street or 6 houses down anyway.

It's worth looking at the floor plans of the house, and if possible the one next door to see whether the party wall has things like stairs and downstairs corridor, as opposed to TV room and bedrooms. Then you can make a more informed decision about living next to potentially noisy neighbours..
May actually be worth going round there and knocking on their door and trying to assess what kind of people they are? However one never knows who may move in after them.

Interesting. I've never not heard them.

I’ve lived in 3 semis that I’ve owned. A newish build that sounded like the walls must be made just of cardboard, a 1910 terrace which I mistakenly thought would be pretty sound proof (we lived in one when I was a teen and we never heard neighbours) but I could hear the neighbours tv word for word, their phone ringing, every conversation etc. Final semi was a 1960’s house where we could even hear them pee in the toilet -even though the bathrooms weren’t on the adjoining wall-lay the table, have sex, use the hairdryer etc and we couldn’t ever go to sleep until the tv was turned off.

Now in a detached, the neighbours barking dog in the garden is annoying, but not nearly annoying as having the neighbours dictate my bedtime with their noise.

The "youngest" house I have lived in was one of my parents 1930s arts & crafts semi but it was the stairs that were attached & not many rooms so perhaps that makes a difference.

Detached - always, if it’s an option. You can improve a house but never make a detached from a semi

A thought from a different angle.... the mortgage under valuation. We were in similar position last year, it came back over £30k under the price we'd agreed. We renegotiated and settled on a price much closer to mortgage valuation. I posted about it on here at the time and lots of people shared stories of successful renegotiation. Always worth asking in my view.

The garden on the detached is currently bigger because it hasn’t been extended yet. On a like-for-like basis, once it’s been extended, I think the semi will likely have the bigger garden

That’s a similar gap to what we have between agreed and valuation price. Do you have any advice on how to approach a renegotiation please?

I think a detached house will rightly always be more sought after in most situations. You’ve got more flexibility, potential and less of a chance of having your life ruined by nightmare neighbours. Whether you buy the semi or the detached seems more to be a question of personal choice- do you want to do the DIY and potentially end up with a better/ more expensive house or would you prefer a slightly easier time of it? How would you feel if you went for the semi but then someone else bought the detached and did an amazing job?

Personally I would ignore the mortgage valuation (they are super cautious at the moment) and compare the detached to other things on the market at the moment to work out if it’s overpriced. If the survey throws up anything big, like roof/ boiler/ structural issues I’d negotiate. But overall think of this as your home/ life, not a money making exercise.

Perhaps not. But the thought of saving 200k and not having building work going on for several months is definitely something to consider.

I prefer detached. But go and see the semi and find out why they are moving. Talk to neighbors.

Don't worry about upsetting your vendors. This is about you!

Thank you all so much for your valued insights! We are viewing the semi tomorrow with the mindset that we talk ourselves out of it (remembering that we can tailor the house to our own tastes rather than have someone else’s, that the semi is already maxed out whereas the detached holds more potential even beyond replicating the extension already in place on the semi etc etc).

You’ve all made me realise that the main reason for wondering if we bail and buy the ready done up semi is that it’s daunting to imagine managing the normal stresses of moving and then to have to do building work thereafter with our 3 young children! Then add in the extra worries about doing it in a time where the costs of material and labour are escalating and hoping we don’t max out our budget and the fears about paying too much for the detached (which as some of you have pointed out is actually a different issue).

I do think the detached is the better buy and we just need to put together a compelling case for renegotiating the price so we have some more headroom for the works later. Any advice on renegotiating from those who have done it before would be much appreciated!

Bought. Not brought!

Do have a look at the extension/renovation threads on here. We're nearly at the end of a five month renovation of a semi and it has been extremely stressful and expensive. It means we've got the house we want in a fantastic location but it has meant a lot of upheaval (we've been in rented throughout the work). In some ways our decision was easier - there was no detached house other option (well, not within our price range, if we'd had more than £1 million then yes!) and we now know that nothing else suitable has come on the market since.

Renovation and extension costs are very high at the moment so it ended up costing more than we'd imagined. It's also been hard work with just one child to manage - a lot of weekends in kitchen, bathroom showrooms and DIY stores with whingeing child in tow!

'Any advice on renegotiating from those who have done it before would be much appreciated!'
I'm no expert on this at all. We did successfully renegotiate a purchase but it was many years ago now.
I think you need to think carefully about what figure you think is reasonable given your mortgage valuation and falling house prices in your area. If you saw the house today, what would be your max offer that you would be happy to walk away at rather than feeling regretful? What you don't want to do is stretch yourself massively financially/ end up in negative equity as prices as likely to fall more.
I think you then stick to this figure, giving your reasons. It may be better to put this all in an email.
As I said earlier, you do need to be prepared to lose the purchase if the sellers do not want to renegotiate.

Our last semi-detached... could hear the neighbour having a coughing fit on a morning (huge smoker), music (faintly and not intolerable) and fucking hell if he was drilling anything it sounded like a Rhino having a farting attack while shagging in the corner of your room. That wasn't a new build either by any stretch of the imagination - it was a mid 1920s semi.

This one I've not heard a peep from the neighbours yet - again a mid 20s semi - but a huge difference is that the joined part is the two properties stairwells so we've not got living areas adjoining living areas.

As for renegotiating - be prepared to lose the house if they don't want to play ball and just don't be a knob about it (by which I mean that trying it on the day before exchange of contracts like our bloody buyers did - they got fuck all achieved from it apart from pissing us off, pissing off lots of our now-former neighbours who we got on well with who saw how stressed they got us, and not endearing themselves to the solicitors and estate agents working on the sale).

Actually we went on the market then a house a few doors down in better decorative order went on cheaper the same week - we sold first and completed through, for a higher price because although our decor was looking rather timeworn by then, the house itself was a better prospect in terms of having a conservatory on for additional space (really made a difference in those properties as they were small but hard to extend any other way really).

You haven’t exchanged contracts yet so it’s not legally binding and any party can pull out. You’d just loose the funds you’ve paid for surveys etc.

I would view the house first then decide what to do - it could be the dream house you think it is - or they could be photo shopped and the house looks awful.
Personally, I’d opt for the house that requires minimal work - you can set aside a budget but this can be blown out the water during the work completion.

You’ve got to do what’s right for you. Yes it would be crap for the vendors if you pulled out but you don’t want to regret your decision.

did you go for the viewing?

interestingly we’ve moved recently from a 3 bed link detached to a 4 bed mid terraced and I really started to wonder whether we were making a mistake after reading some posts on noisy neighbours but the only noise I’ve heard is stomping up the stairs when I’ve been by our stairs (the stairs to next door are next to our stairs) but that’s it. Heard no music, tv, conversations or any other noise. Conversely the large dog that my neighbour had at our old place used to bark all the time and was very audible in our house!
good luck whatever you decide

Is it worth getting your own independent survey done? The mortgage valuation I guess is for your lender, but an independent surveyor would work for you. We're currently buying and had a homebuyers report prepared by a local surveyor who we contacted. This did include a valuation which he had included not based on an algorithm. It wasn't cheap but it was worthwhile for us. ( He confirmed our offer was the correct value at the moment.)

Through the estate agents. We just didn't feel comfortable paying so much over the odds, we could have got a mortgage for the full amount but seemed silly not to try. It all feel through for unrelated reasons but that house is now for sale again for £65 k less than when it was originally on the market........

That's a pretty big drop 😯
65k must be at least 20 to 40% of the original asking price?