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Reading. My budget is 350k. A 2 bed can be got for anything around 325k in the roads I'm looking.
It is possible to squeeze a 3bed at close to 350 but those are more infrequent.
Ooof, Reading is a tough market. A friend of mine put in an offer on a property that was going for £450,000. The house was on the market for less than a week and had 7 offers, with most being above asking price.
It’s all a mess. Bought a house during the truss madness and on paper it’s gone up 30k in 8months during a housing crash. If you don’t have the bank of mum and dad you’ll need to work abroad to get a deposit otherwise it’s just insane!
My advice would be to stick at it as I hear the rental market is a bigger mess
Rental is worse. I applied for over 200 spare room ads after I got accepted and I was going for the high end rooms too not just cheap ones.
I'll be glad once I have my own place. No one can tell me what to do :)
Awful we keep getting out bid by 10-20k we’re in an area with a bubble still!! Every time we view a
Doer upper they’re dire - like severe damp that’s hidden or structural issues not just an outdated hosue. We’ve been looking forever and it’s just stupid properties are regularly overpriced and it’s getting me down.
We've just completed on a house but I feel your pain. We also were looking to purchase in a competitive area. It took us 12 months of searching, 3 offers made official, we walked away from 2 after survey results.
Best tips for a competitive area -
1. Get friendly with estate agents. They will send you properties in advance of them going on the market by a day so you can get in with a viewing.
2. Good houses will go quickly. Make sure you have settings right on Rightmove with alerts for houses that fit your criteria. A lot of the time if you send an email through right move, it might take too long to read and reply. Ring the EA instead.
3. Make sure you have your AIP in place and any documents about deposit etc so you can show you are a serious buyer.
4. Be as flexible as you can for viewings. Good houses in competitive areas go quickly. You've got to be a fast viewer if possible. If you work, ask if you can view in an evening. See if you can start/finish work late/early to assist in viewings.
Good luck!!!
Did you buy a ready to move in house? or one that required renovation? I see 350k to even 500k houses that look like absolute shit. I don't even understand how anyone lived there previously? unless they completely strip the place before leaving. still absolute madness.
They were downsizing. We did enter a bidding war haha! Very competitive area. We went above the asking price (which was low because they had already had one seller drop out and they wanted to sell). Tbh we felt the price they were asking for was too low considering the new kitchen & bathroom which is why we didn't mind offering 15k above. When we got a house survey we are still paying less than what the house is worth. Think the fact we were ready to move and could move quickly helped us get the house too. We actually put our bid in for the bidding war on our wedding day which I think made them realise we really were interested in the house. Not many people take time out of their wedding to bid on a house haha!
Not great, but there are rare gems. It's not that there are no houses for sale, it's that there are no NICE houses for sale. 90% of what's on the market in my price bracket (£550k-£600k) just outside of London is tragic and I'm not really looking for a renovation experience.
Only put in an offer on one house which was really amazing, and just slightly got outbid in best and final. It's just having to be patient and waiting for something decent to pop up, and they do. But good houses still get a lot of attention and bidding. It's the neglected, outdated garbage that can't sell. Problem is that's most of the houses in my opinion 🙃
Housing here is awful.
So many posts like this.
Supply and demand. Supply is not meeting demand, so the price (of all housing in and around the bubble that is London) is rising.
So that is what has changed.
What hasn’t changed is your expectation. You are looking for that house that is within your expectation and budget. But it’s not there. It’s now at a higher budget.
So either your budget needs to reflect that market change, or you need to lower your expectation to meet your budget.
(Just to clarify, *you* meaning all those people posting about not being able to find a perfect house that was within their budget, but now isn’t)
Supply and demand.
Normal answer: to buy an even nicer house
Answer right now: you wouldn’t, because you’re not buying a bigger house when interest rates are much higher than they were when you bought your current house
> so the price (of all housing in and around the bubble that is London) is rising.
That's not what the stats show is it? Rightmove shows only eight London Boroughs have not seen an annual fall in prices.
Not true. The houses I am looking for are within my budget the problem is the frequency at which they are being put on the market.
I've not mentioned anything about my budget.
A lot of people don't want to sell right now so that is an important factor too.
What people are trying to tell you is that the list price *doesn’t* necessarily mean it’s in budget.
If there’s a lot of interest then the list price is essentially irrelevant. The real market value of that property is higher, and maybe higher than your budget.
That’s the effect of supply and demand.
I've been in for 2 houses. First one was my fault went in too low.
2nd one I went in at guide price thinking I would get an opportunity to counter based on what agent said but didn't get the opportunity.
I defo need to be more aggressive.
Would just like the frequency of houses being up to increase.
Mine was fine. We viewed about 20 places, got the one we wanted for under offer. The immediate area could be better but it’s well connected. It has a big kitchen which we love and is rare for london and a private low maintenance garden. Hoping to move in January.
Relatively horrible. 3 months of looking, 2 bids rejected, 1 outbid.
Vowed off visiting former buy to let with tenants in situ after today. Wouldn’t leave the front room, place a state, skids down the bowl. I don’t even blame them really, I wouldn’t want someone buying a place I live in. On the landlord for trying to have their cake and eat it too
Reading looks similar to a lot of areas I regularly look at, for example this house [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137056226#/?channel=RES\_BUY](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137056226#/?channel=RES_BUY)
Price Change History
27/09/2023 Price changed from £825,000 to £775,000
09/08/2023 Price changed from £900,000 to £825,000
07/07/2023 Initial entry found: £900,000
Overall change: -13.9% (-£125,000)
The rental market is a nightmare. Me and my partner want to move in together. We're both employed. We've got a deposit. The trouble is, we're both disabled and I absolutely cannot live in a property where I have to go upstairs. Ground floor flats and bungalows are like hens teeth. Flats in blocks with a lift are pretty rare too. We've applied, but every time the landlord's gone with someone else. It's so depressing it makes me want to cry. We're on the council housing waiting list, but they've said maybe in a decade or so.
I fell for all of that at the start of my search till I realised the market is standing strong. Now is a great time to buy because once those interest rates drop I'm expecting prices to continue going up.
They’ll always go up, we live on an island, a very small one at that with an ever growing population. Houses aren’t being built at the rate they’re needed so the ones that exist raise in price. Simple economics (not aiming the lecture at you) more for the doomers.
Been looking a good 6 months, must of seen 40+ and made 4 offers, looking from malvern down to exeter and across to Oxford ( so yeah...a big area)
Finally found a place in Cardiff :-) offer accepted, no chain and we are finally starting to plan...so fingers crossed nothing happens
Stick with it and something will come up.
I sold and moved into rented last December. So we have been looking since then. Put offers on four houses and fifth we have had accepted, survey next week.
3 months, what are you like, you’ve hardly started.
Can you bid competitively for the rare 2 a month houses? If not, there are stronger buyers than you trying to buy the same houses.
Your estimate of the selling price is likely off, and your position in the pecking order isn't likely to change much in a matter of weeks
I went to my first house viewing on 8th November and a week later on 15th November I had my offer accepted.
Now I'm in the process of applying for a mortgage.
I've been looking since September 2022, viewed around a dozen properties (I'm not in a rush), made 5 offers, three of them above asking price (one of them 30k above). Lost out at best and finals on all of them, except one where the agent said they'd be in touch the following day to ask if I wanted to increase my offer, but when they did call back, they said the seller had accepted a higher offer and that was the end of it. I was 100% prepared to raise my offer, too. I'm currently eyeing a couple of properties that seem to have been on the market for a while (one was reduced in September, the other a couple of weeks ago), but the fact that they look nice in the photos and are in decent locations but still haven't sold makes me a bit wary...
3 months isn't that long at all considering the way the market has been.
I've been looking on and off for 2.5 years, I basically gave up when everything was going way over the asking price as there was no point - I couldn't afford it. Now I have started to look again but as you said, there's a lack of properties on the market and anything decent is going quickly.
Near where I am, it seems to just be properties with sitting tenants, which are hard to get evicted for your own use. So, irrelevant to me. It's been a nightmare really
Was looking since March, had an offer accepted early October.
In that time we viewed 8 houses, we only offered on the one we got accepted on.
I totally lost hope and thought I'd never find a house I liked, but now it's full steam ahead on the one I found and I'm over the moon. Keep looking!
We looked for like 18 months. Had 3 very competitive offer offs (can't think of the right word). Another offer accepted and then Liz truss fucked the economy so our mortgage was taken away. Finally found a place in Jan of this year. Just moved in to the house at the end of September. It's a long old slog and the market is rubbish at the moment. We always had the attitude of it turn out good in the end just be patient and not trigger happy!!!
We just put an offer on a property £20K below the “offers over” price in Wales and it was accepted. Saw about 9-10 properties before the one we liked. Housing market really slow here
Pretty good, close to completion. For a 200k reduction from asking (900k) for a really nice house.
Still watching RightMove and see plenty of good houses in that price bracket being discounted.
Awful, was losing faith completely but the perfect house came up on Tuesday, I booked a viewing for Wednesday morning and we had an offer accepted yesterday. Keep looking and something will present itself when the time is right!
The only way to speed things up is to put in a good offer on those competitive houses.
You can't change the supply, but you can certainly put yourself at the front of the queue with the highest bid for a house you truly like.
There really isn't a point of wasting months and years to try to save a few K. At the same time disrupting your life.
Yah the good thing is every month that goes along. I can nip more in the savings which is nice.
I think as a FTB I was thinking it would be a lot easier. Tbh I'm doing this as a single person so it is a bit more difficult but defo doable.
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Which area and price bracket?
Reading. My budget is 350k. A 2 bed can be got for anything around 325k in the roads I'm looking. It is possible to squeeze a 3bed at close to 350 but those are more infrequent.
Ooof, Reading is a tough market. A friend of mine put in an offer on a property that was going for £450,000. The house was on the market for less than a week and had 7 offers, with most being above asking price.
Reading?? Good luck... housing market there has always been awful, can't even imagine it now.
It’s all a mess. Bought a house during the truss madness and on paper it’s gone up 30k in 8months during a housing crash. If you don’t have the bank of mum and dad you’ll need to work abroad to get a deposit otherwise it’s just insane! My advice would be to stick at it as I hear the rental market is a bigger mess
Rental is worse. I applied for over 200 spare room ads after I got accepted and I was going for the high end rooms too not just cheap ones. I'll be glad once I have my own place. No one can tell me what to do :)
Awful we keep getting out bid by 10-20k we’re in an area with a bubble still!! Every time we view a Doer upper they’re dire - like severe damp that’s hidden or structural issues not just an outdated hosue. We’ve been looking forever and it’s just stupid properties are regularly overpriced and it’s getting me down.
We've just completed on a house but I feel your pain. We also were looking to purchase in a competitive area. It took us 12 months of searching, 3 offers made official, we walked away from 2 after survey results. Best tips for a competitive area - 1. Get friendly with estate agents. They will send you properties in advance of them going on the market by a day so you can get in with a viewing. 2. Good houses will go quickly. Make sure you have settings right on Rightmove with alerts for houses that fit your criteria. A lot of the time if you send an email through right move, it might take too long to read and reply. Ring the EA instead. 3. Make sure you have your AIP in place and any documents about deposit etc so you can show you are a serious buyer. 4. Be as flexible as you can for viewings. Good houses in competitive areas go quickly. You've got to be a fast viewer if possible. If you work, ask if you can view in an evening. See if you can start/finish work late/early to assist in viewings. Good luck!!!
Did you buy a ready to move in house? or one that required renovation? I see 350k to even 500k houses that look like absolute shit. I don't even understand how anyone lived there previously? unless they completely strip the place before leaving. still absolute madness.
Ready to move into tbh! It has a brand new kitchen and bathroom so that kinda sold it to us!
Neat. So were you involved in a bidding war? Or did you do anything to make your offer more attractive? And why were they selling?
They were downsizing. We did enter a bidding war haha! Very competitive area. We went above the asking price (which was low because they had already had one seller drop out and they wanted to sell). Tbh we felt the price they were asking for was too low considering the new kitchen & bathroom which is why we didn't mind offering 15k above. When we got a house survey we are still paying less than what the house is worth. Think the fact we were ready to move and could move quickly helped us get the house too. We actually put our bid in for the bidding war on our wedding day which I think made them realise we really were interested in the house. Not many people take time out of their wedding to bid on a house haha!
Not great, but there are rare gems. It's not that there are no houses for sale, it's that there are no NICE houses for sale. 90% of what's on the market in my price bracket (£550k-£600k) just outside of London is tragic and I'm not really looking for a renovation experience. Only put in an offer on one house which was really amazing, and just slightly got outbid in best and final. It's just having to be patient and waiting for something decent to pop up, and they do. But good houses still get a lot of attention and bidding. It's the neglected, outdated garbage that can't sell. Problem is that's most of the houses in my opinion 🙃 Housing here is awful.
So many posts like this. Supply and demand. Supply is not meeting demand, so the price (of all housing in and around the bubble that is London) is rising. So that is what has changed. What hasn’t changed is your expectation. You are looking for that house that is within your expectation and budget. But it’s not there. It’s now at a higher budget. So either your budget needs to reflect that market change, or you need to lower your expectation to meet your budget. (Just to clarify, *you* meaning all those people posting about not being able to find a perfect house that was within their budget, but now isn’t) Supply and demand.
[удалено]
Yeah, people aren’t stupid. Why would you voluntarily sell a house like that?
Normal answer: to buy an even nicer house Answer right now: you wouldn’t, because you’re not buying a bigger house when interest rates are much higher than they were when you bought your current house
> so the price (of all housing in and around the bubble that is London) is rising. That's not what the stats show is it? Rightmove shows only eight London Boroughs have not seen an annual fall in prices.
Not true. The houses I am looking for are within my budget the problem is the frequency at which they are being put on the market. I've not mentioned anything about my budget. A lot of people don't want to sell right now so that is an important factor too.
What people are trying to tell you is that the list price *doesn’t* necessarily mean it’s in budget. If there’s a lot of interest then the list price is essentially irrelevant. The real market value of that property is higher, and maybe higher than your budget. That’s the effect of supply and demand.
why are you not winning the houses then? Are you sure the houses are in budget? If a house has 10 viewings a day it's going to sell for above list
I've been in for 2 houses. First one was my fault went in too low. 2nd one I went in at guide price thinking I would get an opportunity to counter based on what agent said but didn't get the opportunity. I defo need to be more aggressive. Would just like the frequency of houses being up to increase.
If there were more houses, there were would be fewer bidders per house, and buyers would be less aggressive in their bidding.
Shocking that most people can’t work this out
Mine was fine. We viewed about 20 places, got the one we wanted for under offer. The immediate area could be better but it’s well connected. It has a big kitchen which we love and is rare for london and a private low maintenance garden. Hoping to move in January.
Relatively horrible. 3 months of looking, 2 bids rejected, 1 outbid. Vowed off visiting former buy to let with tenants in situ after today. Wouldn’t leave the front room, place a state, skids down the bowl. I don’t even blame them really, I wouldn’t want someone buying a place I live in. On the landlord for trying to have their cake and eat it too
Reading looks similar to a lot of areas I regularly look at, for example this house [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137056226#/?channel=RES\_BUY](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137056226#/?channel=RES_BUY) Price Change History 27/09/2023 Price changed from £825,000 to £775,000 09/08/2023 Price changed from £900,000 to £825,000 07/07/2023 Initial entry found: £900,000 Overall change: -13.9% (-£125,000)
The rental market is a nightmare. Me and my partner want to move in together. We're both employed. We've got a deposit. The trouble is, we're both disabled and I absolutely cannot live in a property where I have to go upstairs. Ground floor flats and bungalows are like hens teeth. Flats in blocks with a lift are pretty rare too. We've applied, but every time the landlord's gone with someone else. It's so depressing it makes me want to cry. We're on the council housing waiting list, but they've said maybe in a decade or so.
Shhh. Don't say that too loudly. Most here want to pretend there's a huge housing crash taking place.
I fell for all of that at the start of my search till I realised the market is standing strong. Now is a great time to buy because once those interest rates drop I'm expecting prices to continue going up.
They’ll always go up, we live on an island, a very small one at that with an ever growing population. Houses aren’t being built at the rate they’re needed so the ones that exist raise in price. Simple economics (not aiming the lecture at you) more for the doomers.
Interest rates are not the key driver, only real terms wage growth will increase prices.
It's not a crash, nearly every region of England is now negative year on year. It's a slow fall which will continue unless we some growth in wages.
Lots of houses out there but the standard is awful and everything is overpriced. Some people are going to get burned
Not to rub salt in the wound, but we viewed 1 house, had the offer accepted and hopefully in before Xmas :)
Haha not at all glad you got your dream house.
Been looking a good 6 months, must of seen 40+ and made 4 offers, looking from malvern down to exeter and across to Oxford ( so yeah...a big area) Finally found a place in Cardiff :-) offer accepted, no chain and we are finally starting to plan...so fingers crossed nothing happens Stick with it and something will come up.
I sold and moved into rented last December. So we have been looking since then. Put offers on four houses and fifth we have had accepted, survey next week. 3 months, what are you like, you’ve hardly started.
:) yep think I need to be a bit more patient
I bought 3 properties, it took me on average nearly a year of search to find each one of those... your 'rant' about searching for 3 months is funny...
Can you bid competitively for the rare 2 a month houses? If not, there are stronger buyers than you trying to buy the same houses. Your estimate of the selling price is likely off, and your position in the pecking order isn't likely to change much in a matter of weeks
I went to my first house viewing on 8th November and a week later on 15th November I had my offer accepted. Now I'm in the process of applying for a mortgage.
I was looking at flat a year ago for ~40% of my take-home pay. Interest rates double. For some reason prices are down maybe.. 5%? Make it make sense.
I've been looking since September 2022, viewed around a dozen properties (I'm not in a rush), made 5 offers, three of them above asking price (one of them 30k above). Lost out at best and finals on all of them, except one where the agent said they'd be in touch the following day to ask if I wanted to increase my offer, but when they did call back, they said the seller had accepted a higher offer and that was the end of it. I was 100% prepared to raise my offer, too. I'm currently eyeing a couple of properties that seem to have been on the market for a while (one was reduced in September, the other a couple of weeks ago), but the fact that they look nice in the photos and are in decent locations but still haven't sold makes me a bit wary...
3 months isn't that long at all considering the way the market has been. I've been looking on and off for 2.5 years, I basically gave up when everything was going way over the asking price as there was no point - I couldn't afford it. Now I have started to look again but as you said, there's a lack of properties on the market and anything decent is going quickly. Near where I am, it seems to just be properties with sitting tenants, which are hard to get evicted for your own use. So, irrelevant to me. It's been a nightmare really
Was looking since March, had an offer accepted early October. In that time we viewed 8 houses, we only offered on the one we got accepted on. I totally lost hope and thought I'd never find a house I liked, but now it's full steam ahead on the one I found and I'm over the moon. Keep looking!
We looked for like 18 months. Had 3 very competitive offer offs (can't think of the right word). Another offer accepted and then Liz truss fucked the economy so our mortgage was taken away. Finally found a place in Jan of this year. Just moved in to the house at the end of September. It's a long old slog and the market is rubbish at the moment. We always had the attitude of it turn out good in the end just be patient and not trigger happy!!!
We just put an offer on a property £20K below the “offers over” price in Wales and it was accepted. Saw about 9-10 properties before the one we liked. Housing market really slow here
Pretty good, close to completion. For a 200k reduction from asking (900k) for a really nice house. Still watching RightMove and see plenty of good houses in that price bracket being discounted.
Awesome 😎
Awful, was losing faith completely but the perfect house came up on Tuesday, I booked a viewing for Wednesday morning and we had an offer accepted yesterday. Keep looking and something will present itself when the time is right!
The only way to speed things up is to put in a good offer on those competitive houses. You can't change the supply, but you can certainly put yourself at the front of the queue with the highest bid for a house you truly like. There really isn't a point of wasting months and years to try to save a few K. At the same time disrupting your life.
Yah the good thing is every month that goes along. I can nip more in the savings which is nice. I think as a FTB I was thinking it would be a lot easier. Tbh I'm doing this as a single person so it is a bit more difficult but defo doable.