First time buyers - are you waiting or viewing?

[79andnotout]

If you're a FTB are you out viewing houses at the moment or biding your time? If not, is that to do with the current interest rates or pre-election news? I'm selling a 2 bed terrace and the ones on our street are usually snapped up by first time buyers (as I was when I bought it) but I've had no FTBs express any interest, just people who need to sell. I'm wondering if it's a global issue or something particular to my property (I could ask my estate agent but it's like pulling teeth).

Have you priced to reflect the current, much higher, cost of borrowing ? Or are you pricing on previously achieved prices when mortgages were cheaper ?
There's plenty of activity from ftb out there but you need to priced right. Have a chat with your agent about where you need to be to start bringing them in.

FTB here. i've found my property to purchase now. so this is in retrospect:

interest rates are still high despite the "falling" rates. They are only slightly better if you have 40% deposit or own more of your house in a re-mortgage. Even then, it's still pretty much DOUBLE the mortgage people are paying previously. Eg if you were on 2% interest rate before and now on 4%, it's doubled. It's still high.

house prices are still very high. sellers are slowly now starting to get a reality check. this is not just affecting FTB but also people needing to look for more space. some of the issues are at the top of a chain.

I have found a house recently at significantly lower than asking price, purely because it is a huge reno for us and it did take some time to get it down, before and after survey. We are happy with this because the mortgage is manageable for us while we use some savings and save up in the long-term to do the house up.

in today's market, a buyer would be out of their mind to pay a high price on a house that needs a reno because costs are going through the roof: inflation, global issues, we live on an island that needs everything shipped to it, EU/Brexit rules... the list goes on.

If I did not find this house, we'd be looking but know fully well houses need further reductions and would never pay more than we need to. it is a buyer's market.

Hi we are FTBs still looking. We only have 10-15% deposit so the rates we can get is around 4-5% now so if we are to try to buy something around 700k (which is the price for a small flat in zone 2-3 London), we will need to pay about 3500 per month. We have been talking to the estate agents and they have told us FTB market is pretty dead in London, and we found ourselves competing with downsizers (old people) or people who were upsizing from their 1 bed flat to bigger flat (as they had a baby). The only exception we saw was in Fulham where apparently there were a lot of FTB with parents funding the purchase (and the parents live in Fulham)

One thing to think about is whether your home is good enough for medium long term or just a FTB place. I and my partner are both well paid professionals but we are feeling the increased cost of living in London, and at first we were going to look for a short term FTB flat (to live 2-3 years) now we are thinking if we should find one to live 5+ years because it's a cost to move etc. It's changed our criteria in searching a bit (to must have an outside space, big second bedroom, bigger kitchen etc)

Another thing is we no longer want to do any work. We got some quotes for doing bathroom and small renovations here and there for a small flat, and bathroom alone costs 15-20k, and that wasn't even high quality. We also looked into buying a doer upper that will be nice with a small side extension (adding 10sqmish), that side extension only was like 100k so we gave up. so if your place requires ANY work, that should be reflected in the price

Yeah it's priced to sell and needs no work, and I have offers on the table and more viewings lined up. I just felt a bit sad there were no FTBers as the street has lots of young couples on it and everyone gels together very well. But your explanations make sense, thanks.

I'm in the NW, 3 bed cottage for £260k in a desirable area.

We're FTB's and are still viewing. Like pp we wouldn't consider anything that needs any work doing but it sounds like yours doesn't. Really we need a 3-bed but we'd take a 2-bed if the bedrooms are good sized doubles.