Are reposessions bad luck, would you 'overstretch' in this market, how far can I haggle down before I'm in LaLa land...and should I just put up with cruddy rentals with their falling apart furniture?

[kif]

Phew - feel better to get of my chest.

Are reposessions bad luck?

Would you 'over-stretch' in this market?

and the rest.

Heeeelllpppp

I should be asleep and I'm awake fretting

Repossessions can be a way of getting a great sized house you'd otherwise not be able to afford.
Wouldn't over stretch yourself, not worth the sleepless nights (if you're fretting now, just think how you'll be if things take more of a nosedive)
As far as offering low, this is the time to try - everything is negotiable!
Good luck - happy househunting!

Thank you Frank.

I'm tempted to stick to something small and affordable - but we'll presumably want to live there for a long time - and DH doesn't really thrive in cramped. He's going a bit dewy eyed at the floor plans of the 'just beyond our budget' big houses.

I fell in love with a reposession today - but it's not awfully cheap - and I'd be in competition with two investors... and I feel a bit bad since google gave me information about the woman that used to live there. It's on a cross roads on a relatively busy road... must awfully bad Feng Pui.

We seem to have got fed up of renting all of a sudden. I'm offering very low since I think the market still has a long way to fall. My heart might yet run away with my head, though.

I think offereing low is a good idea not so much in terms of thinking the market might fall further but simply because a lot of houses on the market have been on the market a LONG time and so sellers would be foolish to hold out for full asking TBH.
Make sure you don't go for something just because it's a good price without also making sure it's got good resale potential - even if you want to be there a long time, you never know what the future holds and it's always worth buying somewhere that doesn't have a great big obstacle to selling on at a later date....
good luck!

thank you frank.

Signed:

Long time fed up bear

Repossessions are very rarely a bargain, if somebody has already over stretched themselves to that point for the house do you not think they tried to sell it first and couldn't rather than do all that damage to their credit record ?
Also if I was facing repossession I might sell the house to you for a £10k loss just to get myself out of trouble, the banks can''t and won't, they will want the outstanding balance on the mortgage. Have you checked on propertybee, our property to get an idea of what that is ?
If it's the right house put in a sensible offer, take out mortgage protection insurance and be repaying the mortgage, if you can't do that then walk away, there will be another house (and lots of them).

I wouldn't overstretch right now, simply because interest rates WILL rise in the next 2-4 years (maybe sooner), and looking at the history of recessions, they are likely to go quite high (I've heard 10-12%). So stretching yourself with a mortgage now, at miniscule rates, is likely to get you in trouble in the medium term.

When the rates rise, property prices are likely to drop a bit more too.

Oh, you're all so right! And I know it...

... it's a position borne out of frustration with getting kicked from pillar to post as tenants.

I do feel your pain, I bought in 2007 after waiting for 4 years in rented and although I don't regret it, I look now at what I could have had if we'd waited and it does grate.
Hang on in there and at least your chain free when the dream house comes along, which it will.

All that said, a house is to make a HOME in, and if you want your own house (I'm sure I'd hate renting now with a family), and you can afford to buy something you like, then buy it.

You can spend sooo much time wondering and waiting for 'the right time' to do something like this, as your life drips away.

If you can find a suitable house, and you would feel happier in your own home, then do it. Just stay within manageable limits.
Life is about more than just money. It's about emotional health too.

This is our circs.

We have 3 kids. All our savings - plus my dad chipping in - we have enough to be able to aspire.

At the 'affordable' end of our budget, we can bid aggressively for run down 2/3 bed cottages (around 300K). It would be extremely cramped - but we could keep up with it even if our circs changed - and we could even afford to renovate to make it 'nice'.

Then you get the good sized 3 beds or even 4 beds. Because the market around here is driven by sharers and buy-to-let opportunists investors, these are pricier and not really so open to offers (400K+) . They are just rolling the unsold stock onto the rental market. I think we could (just about maybe) persuade our bank to back us on it, but it would be a stretch.

I don't know what's worse - being squeezed for money - or being strangled for space.

Dh thinks a house shouldn't be 'mean'.... I think a too big house might be a trap for us financially.

We rented my DH's dream barn conversion for 12 months, it was beautiful everything I'd imagined my Boden clad children would grow up in and I would happily rent that kind of place again.
However the council tax was over £2500 a year, the gardens cost over £100 a month to maintain, the electricity bill made your eyes water and in all honesty he was delighted he could walk away from it when I wanted a break ie more affordability and some holidays.
Have you considered buying the smaller property so you are on the ladder and renting that out and renting yourself something huge ?
I'm giving that a lot of thought as there will only really be 10 years where I want a big house and I think the timing will be all wrong for us.

Ah - you hit the nail on the head there.

We're currently renting something 'huge' (at least, a generous 3 bed that DH likes). What's triggered this bout of house-hunting is a childish spat with the landlord. The bed broke - and we tried to sort out some way of upgrading a King Size, with a mattress that doesn't flop limply.

Apparently it's not an option - the contract said a double and a double was provided - end of discussion (despite the fact that we had specifically requested a King size at the outset - so a penny pinching decision was made back then too).

With a rent of 1700p.c.m. it's a bit disappointing to be forced to sleep on a nasty £199 bed and mattress combo. Feels like there's a certain lack of respect towards us - the subtext is 'we've half an eye on the four students we'll replace you with when you move out at the end of the year'. I've three small children to interfere with my quality of sleep, without a horrid bed to tolerate.

We could swallow our ire and stay - or put up with the hassle of finding a new place (we'd deffo get a rent discount with a new place) - but I wonder if all places are the same. I really had high hopes for staying in this rental for a while.

Also, we looove this area for now - but we'll probably need to move for secondary schools. The local ones are beyond dire. I've thought about 'buy to rent', but it doesn't get over the issue of feeling settled. We just want to buy a snuggly chocolate brown leather sofa of our own sigh.

wail!

Christ I'd just buy your own bed
The removal costs alone to move to another place would cover the cost of an argos kingsize divan (I just bought one for £300).
Honestly snuggling on the sofa is massively over rated, I prefer the £500 a month I saved whilst renting, that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling .....sigh (not to mention when the boiler broke on NYE and the LL was given the £1,000 bill not me )

yeah - we offered to get our own bed - but apparently no-can-do. Won't remove the double from the inventory or allow us to even dismantle it...

Anyway, like I said, rents have crashed round here (cos of vendors renting rather than selling - natch), so not really that motivated to stay over-pay and spend weeks haggling over tatty furniture.

the helpless-lady act when anything breaks is fun though... when we had our own place, it was always me scrabbling under the sink fixing the drip.