Hi all,

Looks like that 250k offer on a property (275k asking price) may finally be accepted after about 5 weeks of being on the table.

Now I appreciate you will say...wait, wait...but let me put these points to you (the very criteria that have given me the dilemma).

1) Property was bought for 234k 2 1/2 years ago
2) Owners have spent at least 6k on improvements - new bathroom
3) Whitegoods (value of 1k) included
4) Lease is unusually high for a flat (over 150 years)
5) Overheads (no maintenance fees/managaing agent) are unusually low (approx £600-700 cheaper per annum than other flats.)
6) Downstairs flat (less desirable - lease of 84 years) sold 1 year ago for 250k.

The dilemma is that I appreciate it is not the best time to buy (far from it some would argue) but the flat is a very high spec, has very few strings attached and given the figures I have found does not seem to have a hugely inflated price.

My thoughts are that if I don't buy this one I will have to wait for a further adjustment in prices to get something of the same standard. ie. sit it out for another 6 months.

Bearing in mind the above...any opinions?

Today's bargain is tomorrows price level. If you are already securing what you perceive to be a bargain then imagine what you'll think when they fall further!

Even 2.5 yrs ago properties were way overpriced, so that is not a good indiaction to today's value.

wait till the deal is almost complete......

THEN GUZUNDER...!!!!!

the crash will have gained even more pace in the next 4-6 weeks.
you will have them over a barrel. and why not. they tried to do you for £270k

hit em' right in the overdraft.
its not your fault they have to sell up and panic.

Expect it to lose a further 30%+ from that £250K sale price in the next few years. The HPC bear is only just starting to awake from hibernation....

IMO £275 looks like an asking price that was above the peak prices attained therefore £250K actually represents what is probably the peak price for this property therefore this better represents the top - the bottom, well who knows

I'd say buy subject to your answers to the questions below

How well does it meet the very strict criteria you originally set out to find?

Can you afford to over-repay to drive down the debt?

Are you in a stable career?

Would your career need a relocation in the next 5 years?

If your answers weren't:

Perfectly
Yes
Yes
No

Then don't buy.

Some advice:

Chose a repayment mortgage where interest is calculated daily and there are no penalties for over-repayment. (Check out Yorkshire Building Society - I use them and am mightily impressed).

Don't gazunder.

Thanks all for your honest and forthright opinions.

I shall have to ponder further.

Why not?

If you state at the last minute that you believe the value of the property has gone down then why aren't you entitled to change your offer? By stating that you believe the property value has gone down you are not being dishonest, simply saying that you aren't prepared to pay the previously agreed price and as they say it's not sold until the money is in the bank so what's the problem?

The offer you put in should reflect your market valuation. If you believe the market will fall 2% before completing this should be reflected in the offer.

Anything else is unethical and unprofessional.

P1ss off you overbearing twit. The above is a legal fact; an EA cannot force a vendor to lower their asking price against their will. They can try and persuade the vendor that it is in their best interests to do so, but the final decision lies with the vendor at what price to market THEIR property. Your campaign of sniping at me continues.

Also, given a straight choice between lowering their price or the current EA they have instructed going out of business, of course the vendor will choose the latter. Why the **** should the vendor give a toss about the EA going out of business or not? The only risible thing is that you continue to try to have a pop at me on the flimsiest of pretexts.

ZZG113 - my silence on your post above will be eloquent.

Your silence on just about any subject will be a welcome relief.


Remove that quote from your signature. Signatures that are derogatory to other posters are not allowed.

Says who - the sellers? Well they have a choice to accept or decline don't they? If it's legal then it just makes financial sense to try and save yourself money so why shouldn't you do it?

You can't be expected to know what house prices are going to do so if at the time of completion you believe that they've fallen why the hell shouldn't you say so and revise your offer?

To the contrary you are expected to have done your research and put in a meaningful offer. A house purchase is, after all, a fairly significant decision.

It may not be illegal but that doesn't mean it should be done.

Of course, silly me, research on the housing market is always conclusive isn't it and clearly indicates the direction of the market.

In which case, why would your research be any better a few weeks after you make your offer than it is before?

Duhhhh

IS was stating that you should research what the market is doing at the time of making the offer i.e. predict the future market direction.

I'm talking about reducing the offer at the point of compeletion which would be in the present so if you could see that prices had come down from when you made the offer why shouldn't you put in a lower offer?

Would you put in a higher offer just before completion if you considered that the price had gone up since you made your original offer?

ignorant steve is this guy a pi55 take?

Which guy are you refering to?

There are many taking the mickey on here.

Now you're just being stupid.

The reason I'd offer less is for my personal financial benefit, why would I offer more?

He is here as the HPC fool!!

Just think about the implications of the question and examine the logic.

Gazunder him mate, he would have gazumped you on the first opportunity to get a few quid more if the market was going the other way. However, don't bluff, if your lower offer is declined pull out. Ethics whats that? normally advocated by the losing party, the winning party will smugly tell his pals how he fleeced you out of your money.

I appreciate that the implications aren't particularly good for the sellers but they do have a choice - accept or decline the offer.

Anyway, I'm not on my own - recent survey showed that a large proportion of FTBs would consider gazundering. As a home owner I can appreciate that this means something very different for you than it does to me and other FTBs.

If the markets weren't falling nobody would get away with this practice because sellers would tell the buyers to get on their bikes but if the market is falling I reckon it's fair play, surely it's just a symptom of the market and the process of selling a home in the UK.

Exactly

Cheering on the Sideline - Excellent signature!

And for the record I hate the practice of accepting a gazumping offer - also unethical and unprofessional.

It's a symptom of the complete lack of integrity of ftbs. And, as I've said several times, the one who tried it with me was swiftly put back in his box. If you really want to risk losing your survey and solicitors' fees, as well as possibly a mortgage arrangement fee, by all means do it, but don't expect any sympathy when you do.

I would have to say GAZUNDER HIM aswell, "its the polite thing to do" these days!!

In fact maybe the vendor could pay him a few grand not to gazunder? nah!! that would take the fun out of it.

FTBs completely priced out of a housing market, most feeling they will never have a chance to own their homes and yet they're still expected to have integrity. Well at least you're OK BL, you're one of those that comes to this site to gloat I would guess, gives you some kind of feeling of superiority over the less fortunate does it?

Integrity is always scorned by those who have none and prized by those who do. I'm a great believer in karma, if you do something shabby to someone else, you can expect it come back and bite you on the bum at some point.

Why should I feel any kind of superiority? I'm no more fortunate than you are - I'm simply older. And I've never gloated. I do find it very sad that owning a house seems to be such a holy grail, though, and that it makes people who haven't yet taken the step of buying, for whatever reason, so bitter.

In the late 80s, I was in the same position as you with the difference that I was in my late 30s and a single parent. Not being able to buy was the reality for me then but I can't say that it made me as angry and bitter as you seem to be. I accepted my fate and was able to buy in 1991 when prices had fallen, a bit of patience saved me a lot of heart ache,

Back to the original dilemma...

Consider these 2 scenarios:

1) You buy for £250K and find it's worth £100K less in 2008.
2) You pull out of the deal, rent for 3 years, then find it's worth £100K more in 2008.

If 1) would make you feel worse, don't buy now.
If 2) would make you feel worse, buy now.

This type of analysis is known as the Minimax Regret Criterion. You choose the option that minimises the maximum regret you will have if your current decision turns out to be the wrong one.

This type of analysis is known as the Minimax Regret Criterion. You choose the option that minimises the maximum regret you will have if your current decision turns out to be the wrong one.

[/quote]


Thanks very much for that.....learnt something new today.

And then wonder why you just lost £1000 paying a solicitor, paying for a survey,and paying a mortgage application fee all for nothing as the vendor sells to someone else. Sickening thats how I would find it.

You didnt get that far?.

I would root you out as a non serious buyer immediately and drop you in the second week. If I dont see a surveyor within three weeks I drop the time waster immediately.

That is so very true.

I'd quite like to hear more from zzg.

This one's still ticking away...fine by me...I'm saving money whilst their impending deadline approaches.

On the subject of gazundering I don't consider myself exploitive enough to actually do this to someone UNLESS they had already tried to pull a fast one on me. Gazundering = bad karma.

And in this particular circumstance it is not even an option as they are chain free too.

Ive said before, you arent ready to buy, stop wasting so many vendors time. What is this, offer number 6?

Cant you see you are a waster? Who spends 5 weeks negotiating in the knowledge they arent sure its the right time to buy. Make youre mind up weedy.

You're the time waster.

Are you even trying to buy at the moment? Even talking to vendors?

If you were you would realise that in the vast majority of cases it is the vendors who are testing the makret and wastnig everyone's time. Most have no desire or inclination to move at the moment.

By the way it is still no.5.

Now, go play on a motorway.

Donnie, Ive run my own business for some time, and what Im trying to give u is a sense of how others may percieve you.
I may have gotten you all wrong in which case I apologise but from reading your postings I have the sense of a serial time - waster and someone who goes off at tangents. I find people exibiting these traits are far less sucesful at achieving desired outcomes than they could otherwise be.

My business is located in a smallish Town and all of us traders know who the local time - wasters are. They always ask a lot more questions than the average person and tend to get fixated on irrelevant points when it comes to buying decisions.
In the end they get ignored and side - lined. They often find it difficult to employ builders etc due thier dithering overly complex demanding nature.

If you actually read what I wrote rather than inferring what you want to see written then that would help.

I'll humour you this once and for the benefit of others go to bullet-point mode:

- Spent 8 months looking, bid on 5 properties.

- Of the 5, 1 is under offer, 3 are still on the maket and 1 am am negotiating on.

- The 3 still on the market were vendors who are not motivated to move (time wasters).

- The 1 under offer is has been under offer once before and will no doubt collapse again. This is because they have an illegal basement that they are not forthcomnig about when questioned. Instead they let some poor sucker pay a surveyor to tell them it is illegal. ie. This vendor is also time waster.

- The 1 I am bidding on. The only reason the vendor is motivated to move is because they are leaving the country.

Therefore in my survey 80% of vendors are time wasters. The same may be true of buyers. I am not one of them.

In fact I resent being called a time waster given the amount of bull I have had to put up with Estate Agents in the area.

Update:

vendor is going to sit on our offer for another 4-5 weeks...that is what you call time wasting!

Oh well,

Donnie shall revert back to his bearishness now.

BRING ON THE INTEREST RATE RISES! Hope I get on Question Time in 2 weeks.

Indeed - I once completely lost my temper with an estate agent when he suggested I was a time waster for putting in a low offer on a property when just a month earlier I had put in an offer at the full asking price on a property (can't believe I did it now thank god it didn't go through) and was told I "had to be patient" because the vendor was hoping for an above asking price!

I was also ar*ed about endlessly on another prospective purchase which eventually fell through. There are a large number greedy stupid people out there who think you should be honoured that they are prepared to sell their house to you.

Hopefully when the time comes for me to look again the situation will be different. Incidentally your average buyer doesn't waste more than a few moments of anyones time. They look at the house, decide what they are prepared to pay for it and make the offer (no one suggests someone who goes to a view a house, dislikes it and decides not to make an offer is a time waster).

"Time waster" = person who isn't prepared to pay what a vendor in their own private dream world hopes their house is worth.

Do yourself a favour and save yourself some stress and worry. If you haven't already done so send the agent a fax setting out your offer (marked subject to contract obviously) including the time period in which you would be prepared to exchange (4 weeks is easily achievable with a decent solicitor and a mortgage offer already in place). Make it plain that the offer is on the table for a fixed period of time only say 5 working days. If you really want the property you might up the offer a couple of grand as well.

Taking this approach puts pressure on the agent who can see his commission going up in smoke as well as the vendor (particuarly if the property has been on the market a while).

At the moment they have no incentive to accept your offer as in their heads it is now the worst possible outcome and they may as well hold out for a better offer.

This is something I had considered doing. We have already been very forward at telling the agent that we will be looking at other property in the meantime and pursuing any opportunities.

I'll bear this in mind though.

Still no movement here...although it's now been long enough for any emotional attachment to the prospective flat to be severed.

Not much going on in the market again here in North London.

VERY LITTLE coming onto the market in the last month: I really think that (potential) vendors have been put right off because of the increasing negativity in the market.

In the meantime, I've had to find other things to do such as devising new ways to save money.

Another observation from my area...I have noticed that 2 bed flats prices around 235k are shifting pretty quickly.

It's the ones that are prices at 250k+ which are sticking.

I reckon the market needs to readjust down 5% before we see serious volumes start selling again.

Regarding being called a "time waster"

Why don't you refuse to deal with RE agents who "waste" your time? It's becoming more and more a buyers market. If the agent gives you the run around or is rude you can talk to his mate about the property. If the agency is the problem go to another agency and get their agent to go to the seller and tell them they have a buyer who won't deal with "their" agent.

At the end of the day agents get paid to sell properties. If sellers are in short supply then they get treated well, conversly if buyers are in short supply then expect to be treated like gold ........ i don't mean put into a safe

yes, it may be ''reasonably'' priced compared to other properties but when we get the 20% falls you'll feel like you paid too much........

Integrity, professional conduct, honesty, good will
I’ve never experienced these things selling or buying homes

If you gazunder because the house prices have fallen then that is fair enough (i know people who have been taken the other way round and gazumped). But whats the point in making these people suffer by thinking that they have a sale and then pulling out last minute, they are just doing what they *think* is a market rate. Letting them know is both fair and honest and society works better that way.

You shouldn't personify the incredible madness that is in the housing market, or try to take it out on anyone intentionally.

With regards to the sale of the house then if you are happy with it then you should go for it. I will carry on waiting but this could go on for the rest of my life. I had a good friend tell me to buy a house 5 years ago and didn't listen (as I was just out of uni and wanted to have some fun and buy toys).