Have you ever bought a house you weren’t sure of? How did it work out?

[hungry123]

We’ve been house hunting for a few years as where we live, it’s a slow market and you don’t get much bang for your buck. We’ve been spoilt in our rectal but there’s no chance of buying it, so we know we’ll have to compromise if we want to be owners.

We’ve had an offer accepted (all verbal, nothing in writing so we’re not fully committed yet) but we’ve got cold feet.

There’s a lot of positives about the house but quite a few negatives too. So it feels like it’s the “best of a bad bunch”, and it will take a lot expensive renovations to get it more how we want it… We can just about manage this financially, and if we did the work, it could be stunning.

The kids are late primary / early secondary so we are aware that the time ahead of us for a family house is getting shorter so spending a couple of years focused on doing it up is daunting.

We could wait for something else to come up but it might take another couple years and who knows what renovations will be needed plus the kids will be older again!

For other big decisions we’ve felt excited and nervous but sure. This feels unsure and quite overwhelming. Maybe it’ll be fine. But we’ve never gone into something this big feeling this unsure.

WWYD?

Spoilt in our rental obviously 😂😂😂 and we live abroad btw.

I did wonder about this ha ha

Do you plan to stay in your current location for long enough that the expense and effort/disruption of doing work would be worthwhile?

I would say trust your gut. Can you stay where you are and improve?
Im about to move but had an offer accepted on another b4 and couldn't sleep for a week. I pulled out and this new one came up.

I would wait….we’ve had a long search this time and had a couple which nearly fit the bill (in fact we offered on one and were on the verge of doing with another) but pulled out because of not feeling quite sure. Felt bad at the time especially thinking ‘nothing else will come along’ but we have now had an offer accepted on somewhere I feel quite different about. Like you say, excited and though in some ways nervous, basically sure it’s right. Not having sleepless nights, not feeling cold feet, excited when I see solicitors emails coming in. I’d try and stick it out - I’m a great believer that we do know deep down when something is or isn’t right.

I think it depends if you can actually afford what you're looking for. Can you afford the type of property that would make you fall in love?

Most people have to compromise somewhere.

Moving is a massive deal and a huge expense- we’ve had the usual buyers remorse after moving in when it looks all sad and tired and ‘not yours’ but have always felt positive during the moving process so I’d see that as a sign. If you’re really unsure I’d pull out- more houses will come up. The market is v v slow atm.

The second it took me to figure it out was a funny one😅

We bought a house last summer that was not at all what we‘d been looking for. Too big, needs renovations. There were quiet a few additional things that needed repairing, which we discovered after buying. My husband loved it and really wanted it and wanted to do the renovations hinself. i love the (field) view and garden, too, but we‘re spending almost every weekend and vacation day and all our money on renovations and i‘m starting to think that it‘ll be an endless project. It also caused quiet a few arguments because everything takes longer than we thought and we have different priorities..

i think if it doesn’t have a certain „love it“ part that stands out like our view, you might be better of in your „rectal“.

Just about every house I've moved into!

But that's because I'm very fussy on one aspect (I need a lot of land) and houses like that are hard to come by without a budget $$$$ unless you are willing to make some very serious compromises on the house itself.

And I love building /renovating. I don't feel like a house is mine until I've done it top to bottom.

Honestly, I would pull out.

The one time we proceeded on a property we had doubts about, my feet were getting colder & colder the closer we moved towards Exchange of contracts.

We ended up pulling out later than we should have done and I still feel guilty about it. If you know it’s not right it’s better to pull out early. Maybe you need to widen your search area also or compromise on something else. But despite compromises, you should still feel excited about buying a property.