Will we ever find somewhere to buy?

[GreatWestRoad]

Feeling a bit depressed this morning as just found out that, after to going to best and final offers, our offer on a house has not been accepted.

We moved out of London in August and are currently living in a rented house.

The plan to move out of London has been in the works for a while, and we started looking for houses in our new area in May last year. At first, we were quite tentative in looking but ramped that up at the start of this year as we found out that our son had a place in the school we wanted to send him too. Our son started at the school in September and so we ended up having to rent as we hadn't managed to buy anything in time.

Since the start of the year, we have made offers on 4 properties and have not been successful. It's starting to get me down because I feel like we are never going to get there!

A part of it is made more frustrating by the fact that I feel my husband and I have different ideas about how to approach things. I feel like he is happy to be in rented accommodation for as long as it takes to find the right property at the right price. He feels like in a buyers' market we should be getting a bit of a bargain. Of course that would be great, but we are looking for a "forever home" in an area that is pretty affluent so any houses we really like, we do end up competing for.

On this most recent house we could have offered a bit more to secure it, but my husband didn't want to because it needs a lot of work and he wanted to get it for as little as possible. We won't know until the sale completes how far away we were, but I will kick myself if it was for an amount we could have afforded.

Our rental house is fine, but it is not ours and of course we see it as a stop gap. It also has no spare bedroom, so we can't have people to stay.

I think I'm finding the move a bit tough at the moment because things seem hard work right now. I miss walking the nursery / school run and knowing lots of other parents to chat to. I miss the convenience of Uber and Deliveroo and shops nearby and the commute into London is harder work. Our new area is lovely, it is nice being more in the countryside and my son loves his new school. I know my kids will love growing up in this area. I'm just hoping things will get better as I meet more people locally. At the moment it all feels like a bit of a slog and we are living here but not reaping the benefits of it (e.g. bigger house and garden).

Anyone had a similar experience and come out the other side?!

Hang in there, prices will likley fall and availability increase over the next 12 months.

Feel sure if you ask the estate agent if your offer was way way below the accepted offer they would give you some feedback. I think it’s easier to get a blouse at a bargain price when you are very flexible in what you want to buy. For example a forever home is likely to attractive a lot of buyers as it’s obviously a nice home in a nice area which is what most people are after.

It sounds like the area you are trying to buy in is an unusually desirable one hence properties are still going to “best and final prices” and achieving high prices even in this market which is generally stagnant or falling.

It’s vital to understand your own market, you can’t rely on media headlines about what property prices are doing because all areas are different as you’ve found. Maybe your husband is too heavily influenced by what he reads but you’ve been trying to buy for 1.5 years now.

I think you should start keeping records of what has happened and is happening to all the nice properties that sold in the last year or so in your area, the sold property information is on Rightmove. See whether they achieve their asking prices or how much under they actually sell for. Then you will be in a stronger position to make the right sort of offer next time a house comes up that you really like. Even in a falling market some properties remain very desirable and are fought over because there aren’t enough of them for everyone who wants one. Maybe your husband needs convincing on that point.