First Home

[Cav]

We viewed an amazing property this Saturday and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

We've made an offer £6,000 short of the asking price (offers over £180k) and the estate agent said there have been 2 higher offers from people who are also first time buyers. Not sure if it's bull or not but it's not likely we're get it anyway.

Not sure how I feel now. It's the first house we put an offer on but it's also the first house that ticks every single box....

...How did you guys feel when you were looking to buy your first home?

[Monty]

...How did you guys feel when you were looking to buy your first home?

Something like this!

[Monty]

Don't get emotionally attached to any house and be prepared to walk away if the deal is not right.

[Kwacky]

I wasn't in any rush. Although I had left home and then returned home, living with my mum wasn't too bad.

House hunting took a while. We saw a range of houses. One was a 3 bedroom detached with a massive garden. It was on the market for £50k which was around our budget, we could have gone to 60k but we wanted to be comfortable with cash. That sold 2 years ago for £475k!

We saw a few houses closer to the city centre, but some had shared gardens due to an old right of way going through them, or were simply too small.

When we found this house we knew straight away we wanted it and I put an offer on my second viewing.

The plan was to be here for 5 years and to move every 5 years to ride with house price increases. That was 20 years ago.

Buying and moving into a house felt natural for me. It was a big step for my other half and her parents, as she came from a council housing. They had bought their house in the early 90s for £13k. They sold it 10 years later for ten times that.

We did put our house on the market about 12 years ago and we found a really nice 3 bed detached in a cul de sac but it didn't go through.

[C00kiemonster]

I don't think you will ever regret buying a house in the UK if you can afford it - financially it makes more sense than anything else.

I've bought and sold quite a few houses, both to live in and as investments and they have looked after me each time.

Houses are relatively expensive these days but housing stock is getting rarer - they will never keep up with demand.

As long as you can afford for the mortgage to go up (as interest rates WILL go up soon enough) then it should be affordable (in my humble opinion).

Investments can go down as well as up - i am not a financial advisor or able to give such advice professionally and this is only an opinion. The decision is yours and yours alone

[StMarks]

Similar to Cookie, I've dabbled with property & it's not done me any harm (yet).
Fwiw my first house I brought with a Bank loan, because it was utterly un-mortgageable. £2,000 I paid for it, and my repayments were about half what my peers were paying to rent their accommodation., I literally camped in it initially as I did it up, learning how to plumb, plaster, bricklay, etc.. from books. Sold it a few years later for £ 25,000.
After doing up a number of properties someone told me it was easier to build a house than renovate them.
Stupidly I believed that "urban myth", and my next purchase was a 1950's prefab with an acre of garden in a rural location. I built my existing home, but it took me a long long time, and every available weekend, evening and holiday for many years.


Regards your offer, it's well within -10% of the asking price, so fwiw that's closer than I've ever offered. If it really fits all your requirements, & you can afford the repayments , then the asking price is of little relevance IMHO, just go for it..
FYI "someone I know" has successfully employed a little trick (scam?) to secure a property in a high demand market.: Engineer a way to meet the vendors, as a young couple. Show them how keen you are to "take over their home", learn and adopt their preferences. The vendors can choose whoever they want, to sell their house to, so make them want it to be you & you are more than halfway there.
By taking an elderly downsizing couple, I have avoided gazumping & bidding wars very successfully ( to the intense frustration of the Estate Agents)

Good luck mate.

[kiwikrasher]

Montys first pic says it all Cav!

If the agents in U.K. are anything like here those two higher offers could quite well be BS. But you offer what you think it's worth to you and within your budget. If it gets through, good, if it doesn't, something else will turn up. You will adjust your expectations and budget along the way till what's available and what you want intersect.

I'm on my 4th house and have a investment property as well. My first mortgage back in 1998 was $70K and I was freaking out as it was my first real debt I'd had. After paying out the ex for both properties I'm in for just short of 7 figures.

As long as you don't extend yourself and as Cookie says, have room for interest rises, it only gets easier as time goes on.

Good luck with it all mate!

[D41]

...How did you guys feel when you were looking to buy your first home?

I didn't really look, Cav.......I was given a few addresses by a friend who helped me get the loan....drove by one and didn't care for the location, although the house was fairly decent. Second one was much smaller, but well maintained, and with a really good location....it sold itself, in other words.

It's how you feel AFTER you buy it that really counts. It's a warm fuzzy feeling that takes a long time to wear off. Plus, a house is the best long-term investment you can ever make.

[Blade]

Buy a defibrillator, get your lass on a CPR course and make sure you have plenty of alcohol in the house would be my advise

[D41]

Lololz!!

[Cav]

This was a pleasant read first thing in the morning! haha..

Well, the offer has been placed so we will see where it gets us. Maybe we should have gone lower, who knows

[Monty]

Good luck Dude!

[duke63]

Hope it all works out for you, cav.

Be prepared however for the most shambolic system of legal bullshit, excuses and laziness by so called professionals that will be part of the buying system.

[StMarks]

Hope it all works out for you, cav.

Be prepared however for the most shambolic system of legal bullshit, excuses and laziness by so called professionals that will be part of the buying system.

Perfectly put Duke.

Fwiw I will be doing my own conveyancing next time. I've been told it's straightforward, and the only real problem you encounter is the protectionism from the other party's solicitors,

[Cav]

I've come to the realisation that there is not always going to be professionalism.. I learned that fast enough in my day job! haha.

What will be will be - I'm a believer in "everything happens for a reason" so if something better comes along and I don't get this house I will be glad

[Monty]

What will be will be - I'm a believer in "everything happens for a reason" so if something better comes along and I don't get this house I will be glad

^That!

"Well what an amazingly pleasant house transaction" Said nobody EVER!

[Kwacky]

Ours sailed through, no issues at all

[Monty]

Ours sailed through, no issues at all

Fecking Lawyers!

[duke63]

Hope it all works out for you, cav.

Be prepared however for the most shambolic system of legal bullshit, excuses and laziness by so called professionals that will be part of the buying system.

Perfectly put Duke.

Fwiw I will be doing my own conveyancing next time. I've been told it's straightforward, and the only real problem you encounter is the protectionism from the other party's solicitors,

I forgot arsehole buyers who thinks it clever to threaten to pull out of the deal just as contracts are about to be exchanged, unless they are given more money or concessions in the deal.

A friend has just helped sell his deceased father in laws house and also help his elderley parents move. He and the buyers ended up doing the searches in both cases as despite having two months to do them, the solicitors could not be arsed. It took them less than an afternoon to sort.

He also has documents showing his father as deceased (evne though he as alive and well), when it should have been the sellers father who was deceased. Unbelievable.

[Kwacky]

The estate agents my wife works for has a list of those types of muppets. They like to get involved in chains as they know that'll cause the most pain if the deal doesn't get through. They tend to be male, middle aged, Indian and own several houses for renting out.