The housing market...

LaCathedrale_UK

There were many houses for sale on my street at the start of the year - the house we bought in December was on the market for 9mo - but now they've all been snapped up; the estate agent has been sending out leaflets asking if we want to sell because the demand is so high.

I've heard awful things about the next few years (as one tends to do), so I'm glad we got in ahead of time. Trying to save against the rising cost of housing is not practical -  3% inflation on your 200k house will mean you need to save an extra 6k per year just to stay even.

randella

menamestom said:

 South Manchester is very bouyant, probably due to things like the airport expansion, Media City and general migration from the south. Also lack of housing stock and the constant battle to get schemes though planning in greenbelt sites.

Yeah I'll second that.  I don't know if this year's as bad but last year was insane in the areas we were looking around the south of the city.  Our house sold within 10 hours of the photos appearing on Rightmove, the first buyer bid the asking price on the spot.  We looked at our new one on Sunday night and bid the asking price at 9:03am Monday, apparently we got in just in time.

The one we sold was a 3-bed 60's end mews, the one we bought is a 4-bed 30's semi.

I suspect both sales would have cheerfully gone to a bidding war over the asking but we got a fair price and couldn't be bothered, and the couple we bought from had the previous buyer pull out at the eleventh hour and just wanted it done.  Very lucky all round really.

Snap

The problem with talk of the "housing market" is that it is a blanket term that takes no account of your local market. For example, where we live, house prices have risen as long as I can remember, and even through the crisis of 2008, they didn't drop much and continued to rise steadily since.

A major thing to think about is the prospect of interest rises over the next few years, and what mortgage deal you can get and afford. Rates are likely to go up a couple of percent in the next couple of years (probably, though tbh the fallout from Brexit may change that, who knows?) so I would be looking to get as good a fixed rate as you can. At least you know where you are in terms of payments. 3 years is a good term to fix. DOn't forget that you will have to pay a penalty to get out of a fixed term before it ends, should you want to change to a better rate. 5 years might be too long a fixed term. All depends on the interest rate on offer though. Money section of Sunday Times has the weekly best deals, comparison sites are good too.

don't pay too much attention to Zoopla valuations - they valued ours recently at 140k more than the local estate agents and what we eventually sold for.

Always think about how sellable it will be in the future and don't compromise on this. If its in a crap area, or has crap schools or has some significant compromise to it (like a poor garden, or busy road, etc etc), then this will affect the appeal of it in the future too.

Don;'t underestimate the cost of doing something up. Add on 20% at least to your estimate, maybe more. Do it right do it once. Kitchens and bathrooms aren't; cheap. Howdens is a good port of call though. AS has been said, boilers and electrics can be a nasty surprise, and are expensive to refit.

3 bed semis are prime properties for a reason - they are affordable and lots of people want them, particularly young families or people starting families. Schools will affect prices too, pushing them up if the school is half decent, more so if it's good.

Lastly, don't go over the top with what you can afford. You will be a long time skint, unless you are confident that your earning potential will increase. Better to walk away than to get yourself in over your head having being ruled by emotion. Buying a house is exciting but stressful and takes most people way out of their comfort zones: you are dealing with stuff most don't know a thing about - spending massive amounts of money, lawyers, agents and negotiations. Take your time.

You will find a house. Always keep thinking that, when you are seemingly desperate to get one, and the one you want seems to be going out of reach.

slacker

Houses prices have been mental since I got on the market in 1983. Here's what happened when I bought and sold. 

1983 bought a 2 bed split maisonette for 16K sold in 1986 for 31k
1986 bought a 3 bed conversion ie a two bed with a wall because prices were still going up for 36k. By 1989/90 it was worth 60k. We sold for 50k in 1991 as prices plummeted. 
1991 bought a large 3 bed for 62k with a 15% mortgage. By 1994 it was worth 45k, so we didnt sell. It's now worth 300k. 

So to repeat other advice, by want you want, pay what you can afford and live in it a long time and forget the prices, they just scare you. 

BRISTOL86

House prices here in Bristol are mental but it’s definitely stagnating a bit. There are reasonably nice properties on the market that have been on since before Xmas.

When we first bought 3 years ago they were selling same day! 

We want to upsize but there’s absolutely no value in doing so. For what we’d have to borrow extra on top of our current mortgage it’s insane how little extra we’d get for a colossal amount of extra borrowing, due to the rise since we purchased. 

Market is very uncertain. If you are buying somewhere you’ll be happy for 20 years then great, you’re not going to lose. But if you move in with the intention of upsizing a few years down the line you may be in for a shock as we were!

AdamHarkusBlog

I'm not a first-time buyer, but we found ourselves in the situation of having 3 kids in a 2 bedroom flat. We needed to move and fast!

There really wasn't much we could afford in the location we wanted. So I was very VERY dubious when we found a place in the right location and of the right size, just with a list of red marks as long as your arm on the Survey.

We went for it because we had to, only just scraping through with a Mortgage.

6 months on. We've replaced the bathroom, have felled a nightmare 50 ft tree in the back garden. Problems can be fixed!

We're skint for now,  but this is a house for life, in the place we wanted and enough room for the kids to grow.

The important thing is we're in and the house is ours, things will improve as the debts get paid off.

I'd say get on the housing ladder as soon as you can, renting is burning money. Owning gives you flexibility, options and a huge asset to your name.  

Also, I would have had no chance of owning this house in the first place if I hadn't jumped on the ladder early, I sold my flat for 60k profit which made a hefty deposit!

hywelg

boogieman said:

@hywelg ;I’m actually amazed you can still get scumble. What about the combs? Are they still available or are you using old gear? 

Yes you can still get oil based scumble but there are  also acrylic versions too and they work well with acrylic artist paints. Tools such as combs, dragging and flogging brushes, softeners, rollers etc are all still available.  I'm doing architrave, skirting and dado rails so combs don't work so I'm using old stiff bristle brushes and just dragging and the results look good. Need to have a strong coloured undercoat to get the most dramatic effects, I'm using an orange with a dark reddy brown scumble to emulate red mahogany.

boogieman

hywelg said:

boogieman said:

@hywelg ;I’m actually amazed you can still get scumble. What about the combs? Are they still available or are you using old gear? 

Yes you can still get oil based scumble but there are  also acrylic versions too and they work well with acrylic artist paints. Tools such as combs, dragging and flogging brushes, softeners, rollers etc are all still available.  I'm doing architrave, skirting and dado rails so combs don't work so I'm using old stiff bristle brushes and just dragging and the results look good. Need to have a strong coloured undercoat to get the most dramatic effects, I'm using an orange with a dark reddy brown scumble to emulate red mahogany.

Cool, I had no idea this stuff was still all available. Not a job I’d want to tackle myself, but best of luck with the project, it should look amazing when it’s done.

 I’d love an Edwardian place, it’s always been my favourite type of house. Our current place is a 1920’s build: it’s nice enough but it’s hardly got any character, I’d love some stained glass windows and Minton tile floors. 

DrJazzTap

We've just managed to buy a 3 bedroom in the south west. We must have looked at 20-30 properties. And been on it since November last year. We put the offer in around march.

I found house hunting quite soul destroying, you start looking for what is not wrong. It's deeply frustrating. You have to move fast, but not pay over the odds. 
Ours is going to be a doer upper but it's long-term thing. 
I don't earn great money, my partner earns far more than me. But even so if we had left it for another year or two we definitely couldn't afford to live in the south west. 

quarky

Ultimately, like a lot of issues in the UK, it comes down to supply and demand. In a lot of areas, supply cannot keep up with demand due to rising population and changing demographics. 

That is an issue whether you are talking abot housing, doctors, dentists, school places, etc. Successive governments have failed to do anything significant to tackle the issue for decades (maybe because GDP is typically NOT per capita).

Nitefly

Good poibt, @quarky - round here they're building hundreds of houses.

What they aren't building is new roads, schools, and doctors' practises for all these new people who are going to buy these houses...

Phil_aka_Pip

Nitefly said:

Good poibt, @quarky - round here they're building hundreds of houses.

What they aren't building is new roads, schools, and doctors' practises for all these new people who are going to buy these houses...

but the only people who will afford these new houses will be the doctors who won't have a job in a non-existent new practice; people who work on building roads or schools, or who would be teaching in those non-existent new schools wouldn't afford them. And presumably the doctors wouldn't want a jerry-built architect-designed new house the size of a shoebox anyway they'd rather have something with a bit of character and without a snag list as long as both legs

LuttiS

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Nitefly said:

Good poibt, @quarky - round here they're building hundreds of houses.

What they aren't building is new roads, schools, and doctors' practises for all these new people who are going to buy these houses...

but the only people who will afford these new houses will be the doctors who won't have a job in a non-existent new practice; people who work on building roads or schools, or who would be teaching in those non-existent new schools wouldn't afford them. And presumably the doctors wouldn't want a jerry-built architect-designed new house the size of a shoebox anyway they'd rather have something with a bit of character and without a snag list as long as both legs

Yep.. all this "affordable housing" based on average London doctors wages doesn't mean jack up here!




(Before anyone corrects me, i am being facesious)

Limehouse_Blues

Housing in the U.K. is a nightmare and one the most important and chronic problems facing the U.K. economy. It’s an odd kind of bubble as well because often real estate booms are characterised by a surfeit of development. I remember seeing completely empty vast, new housing estates on the outskirts of Madrid while living there in 2007 just before things burst.

The U.K. has managed to achieve a combination of enormous under-supply of suitable dwellings with unsustainable levels of personal and household debt. The artificial scarcity driven by the UK’s planning regime probably means the U.K.’s real estate bubble will continue to inflate for a good while yet - albeit perhaps at a slower rate than in the past.

AdamHarkusBlog

I really feel sorry for the youth of today. 

Nitefly

@LuttiS I guess you missed my earlier comment - there are new-build houses here for ~ £200k, and 70's-built semis for much less!

My daughter and her husband (she's low-level manager in NHS, he's a trainer for the water board) just bought one of the former for £195k; my pal's daughter and her partner (she's an area manager for a supermarket chain, he's a mechanic in an Audi dealership) have bought a 70's-built 3-bed detached for £192k.

Both were able to take advantage of the help-to-buy schemes, being first-time buyers, and also didn't have to pay any stamp duty.

There are also lots of "doer-uppers", e.g. 2 bed terraced houses around 80-100 years old that you can get for £70 k or less, depending on what needs doing up...

strtdv

I live in a 20 year old house and tbh I wouldn't want anything newer, having seen the new build my sister in law and her husband have moved into. Snagging and poor workmanship doesn't begin to describe it, it's definitely not a house for life as it won't be standing in 50 years without major work.

Ours isn't perfect either but in comparison it's very good, but the next house I buy will be much older. It may not have the energy efficiency but they built them to last 80 years ago.

viz

LuttiS said:

Thanks y'all

lovestrat74 said:

Sounds to me like a moneypit. Be careful because what you might think will take a few mates, a few weekends to "fix up" will more than likely take a good few months and a good few grand!

Sounds like you need, new kitchen, new windows, new flooring. Bathroom? What's the boiler like? Condition of wiring, roof etc??? Then there is all the paint, filler, sandpaper, soft furnishings, not to mention all the tools to do the job.

I know it is difficult, but try not to rush in, head over heart

Good Luck!

Kitchen has shitty cupboards 


 

We just replaced all our kitchen cupboard doors (not the carcasses) with solid oak doors from b and q, plus added some new units. It’s like we’ve now got a brand new oak kitchen with 18 cupboards and it cost like £1700. 

olafgarten

Our old house that we are currently renting out is worth 4x the amount it was when we bought it in 1998 even when you disregard inflation. 

It's not worth waiting because the prices won't drop significantly. 

JAYJO

Any Mortgage advice appreciated!.
Ive been sent a renewal pack and there is a mortgage fixed for 10 years 2.79% no fees  as its my existing lender ltv 43.46%. I was on 5yr fixed 3.06 offset mortgage. 
I need a fixed rate im not a big earner and will not be paying off chunks early etc . Is a 10yr fixed rate a good idea in your opinion. Many thanks for any advice.