It's a Buyer's Market: experiences in 2023/2024 ?

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Just wondering what other buyer's experiences have been like on this side of 2023? Any horror stories? Issues with sellers? Guzumping? Guzundering? Problems with EA?

There's a few threads with Seller's experiences on MN (many saying their buyer can't afford the mortgage for their (overpriced?) property and so re marketing them).

What good and bad experiences have you had as a buyer?

Hope this thread will be useful to the buyers of 2023 and 2024!

But that has no relevance to todays market for this couple saving thousands on mortgage debt payments while paying £500 per month rent.

Crashy - they are living in a parents back bedroom stuffed in for years on end but no worries they have stacks of savings!

Not really, that is just something you made up if we are being really honest? I know that people made money from property and don`t have any emotions about this, good luck to them, many asset classes makes money if you get the timing right.

My point is that this speculation isn`t something the general public should be involved in by being forced to borrow massively and game interest rates to get themselves a basic shelter, basic shelter needs to be affordable to people who work and contribute, that is the mark of a decent society.

I am angry at the way cheap debt for property was forced into people`s belief systems by endless media articles and programmes on TV, it really only benefitted bankers and people who downsized at the right time.

The great news though is that the cheap debt era is finally over!

The bad news is that lots of people with mortgage debt are going to suffer.

However even you can`t dispute that I was right when I said that if rates rise people with mortgage debt from the last few years are not going to be making money out of property?

<br<br Crashy calm down

I don’t think I can read this post and make sense of it. Literally. I never say that.

Still better than overstretching at zero rates, not being able to pay the mortgage debt at normal rates, losing the house and still having to pay the difference after the bank auctions it to a landlord cash investor? They have CHOICE, you dont have choice if you are locked into a 30 year mortgage debt. As I always say, you can walk away from a tenancy but you cant walk away from a mortgage debt.

I will summarise - It was a Ponzi scheme based on cheap debt, the cheap debt is over therefore the bubble has to pop. People selling will need to take a lot less for their house, people with borrowings will need to pay a lot more for their debt.

@threefiftysix just tell the landlord you can't move out until the end of October, if what your solicitors are telling you is true and your purchase is still going ahead. Your landlord would have to take you to court to get you out, which would take months. Don't go to the upheaval of moving twice, storage etc for the sake of a couple of weeks.

If, however, you feel the purchase might not happen you could start sounding out alternative rentals in preparation. And viewing other potential purchases too, especially with no chain.

@Pemba

The problem is that he served us notice as his friend wants to move in! And they have young kids and have booked their removers etc so I would be really screwing them over

I do think the purchase will go through though and we should complete by end Oct.

Crashy - are you a landlord looking for tenants?? You sound most miffed that generally people especially with children would like to buy something.

They arent at the mercy of the landlord, increasing rents or the owner wanting to sell or who doesnt repair the property well. My parents made a couple of million on buying two houses and then having to sell many many years later to fund a very comfortable retirement. They outlived the mortgage ups and downs rather than wait, wait wait.

PS The equity was also tax free as you well know yet you seem to have a real downer on people who want to buy.

Yes, the housing market is difficult at present but someone with a big deposit might be tempted otherwise I suppose there is always your Mum's back bedroom

You are not saying that someone buying now will repeat your parents good luck in buying property before the biggest debt Ponzi scheme in history happened are you? I would be interested in the economic thinking behind that if so! Of course people want to buy, but they cant buy at these prices with borrowing rates returning to normal, that is why the media are reporting these massive drops in buyer applications. All I have said is that buying at todays prices would lead to tears before bedtime when rates were forced back up, and so far I have been proved correct on that.

In your opinion when in the past 30years would have been a good time to buy?

Whenever the individual wanted to buy. The point I am making is that you need to be prepared to lose money on the house AND pay much more for the debt to live in the house, too many people in recent years have ignored these points in their buying decisions.

I put in an offer on a small 2 bedroom terraced of £75k in Hull 3k under asking price. My offer was rejected. I looked and found another 3 bedroom terrace and put in an offer of £4.5 under the asking price of £85k. Offer was accepted. After 4 weeks the original EA phoned me and said the vendor of the 2 bedroom house had reconsidered and would now accept my offer. I told him my offer was no longer on the table as I was buying a different house. 3 months later I noticed the first house now advertised for £2k less than my original offer, so £5k less than it was originally advertised for and it has been up now for that price for over 3 weeks. I think prices are slowly coming down.

You have written down my exact thoughts. I’m fairly certain that there’s quite few of us in this similar position at the moment. I think boomers can’t comprehend that younger generations have completely different standards nowadays. And even though prices did go up with inflation, many of the properties that on the market right now are not even suitable for standard living. To bring them up to today’s standards will cost 100k and up for a regular victorian terraces. I don’t mind getting it done, but I will not be sacrificing my youth and lifestyle to entertain their wants and needs.

Rental market regulations were put in place for a reason, and properties must be at a certain standard. Can’t say the same about selling market though. It’s a lala land at the moment. Full of delusional people who are trying to get wealthy by sheer luck, zero achievements, credited up to eyeballs, cash poor and their only hope is a house sale. This is a recipe for recession which we’re entering now. People managed to afford a lot more than they can with cheap debt, and it was inevitable that this will happen.

Are you saying someone should continue entertaining the purchase for a full price even if the market dropped by 10-20-30%? Interested to hear why?

Wouldn't you buy same hoover from argos for 30% less, even if you promised sales assistant from Currys?

I'm a cash buyer (downsized). I found a house I liked and have paid what I think it's worth. Might be a few k over but it's more realistic than it was and I think it's fair.

My experience was that the vendors were incredibly jittery- they had a sale fall through 9 months ago at 10% more because of mortgage issues. They took my offer over a higher one that needed a mortgage. But they have been super anxious throughout the process.

I suspect I could have beaten them down a few k at the last minute but I couldn't live with the bad karma! I have a house I like, we have a chain that works and will complete on Friday.

Fwiw two houses were up on that street - both nicely done, both under offer pretty fast and both now nearly done. What I hear from most agents is that people who don't need to sell are not, so actually decent properties that are sensibly (not fire sale but not Covid madness either) prices are attracting lots of viewings and bids

Well done for actually getting to Completion @grosslyunfair

Yes, maybe you could have got it for a bit cheaper but the main thing is you got the house you wanted. Sometimes when people try to play games and knock money down at the last minute that is when deals fail.

Thanks @Twiglets1 yeah I'm pleased we have made it.

I was lucky- sold last year and pissed my buyers about a bit- was due to a bereavement and they had to wait longer than they wanted and they played it straight with me. And as you say I didn't want to risk a collapse for what was a small part of the value of the house. I hope to live there a long time, I hope my vendors are happy in their new home and I feel we have done a fair deal with all eyes open.

I don't think necessarily people should stick to offers at any cost- if you've been hanging around a long time and the market is moving then it's fair enough if you think that's ok, as long as you don't whinge when it happens to you on the other side! But waiting till just before exchange and threatening to collapse everything is just shitty....

Many of the ‘boomers’ that are getting slated got on the property ladder with a run down one bed flat or equivalent and saved hard to get that first deposit too. I get that house prices are now a higher multiple of earnings but when I bought in the 90s lending criteria was strict and interest rates were high. It took 10 years of working in a reasonably paid job to save a deposit and I had to make a lot of compromises on size and area just to buy something.
I empathise with anyone trying to buy for the first time, prices are crazy money, especially in most of the south, but it’s not solely the fault of existing home owners who are trying to move on.

Yes I agree @grosslyunfair

Sometimes it’s the right thing to do to negotiate a reduction if the whole thing has been dragging on a long time or if the survey reveals something bad & expensive to put right. But I don’t agree with last minute reductions just before Exchange.

Although I am an agent in Portugal not in the UK, I am assisting my son in selling his property in the UK and buying another one.

In Portugal, properties are valued at a certain amount per square metre depending on the area. Then a bit more is added or subtracted for specific location in a town/village, garage, views, heating, new bathrooms and kitchens, solar panels, swimming pool, EPC rating, etc etc.

The properties where he is viewing differ wildly (totally wildly) on price per square metre. And I cannot see how two houses in the same street, with slightly differing style but exactly the same foot print) can be priced with such a variation.

The way they are advertised as well is interesting. On our adverts, we have to specify exact square metre of the footprint of the house, the covered area of the house and size of the plot. At the end of each page on the website, it provides the average price per square metre of all the properties in that area on that page.

On many adverts in the UK, the size of the property is not noted - even when there are floor plans (obviously with no room sizes otherwise I can calculate it myself!) It does make knowing whether something is outrageously overpriced or good value very quickly. I believe it is useful to know that a property in the same postcode is selling at £3500 per square metre for one property and £6500 per square metre for the other property.

For example :

Exactly, the market changes you change your offer, very simple, if they can get a higher offer let them get on with it.

I agree. Completely bizarre in UK. I have lived abroad and never heard of anywhere but UK doing this. I ask the EA the size of the house and they are "not sure" or often the floor plans are not accurate. So what happens is people have a tiny 1000 square foot house and put 4 bedrooms so they can charge more. Weird.