tinbin

I think you have hit the nail in the head, I had moments when I questioned if I was doing the right thing playing hard ball. Mrs.Tinbin nearly dropped on the spot when she overheard me reducing the offer by 5%!! I can laugh about it now but it was anything but funny at the time. If I had got a £1 for everytime I told her to trust me I would be a millionaire! My advice to anyone in a similar situation is just stick to your guns. I have taken many a piece of advice from posters on here which helped me along the way. Doccyboy sums it up in a nut shell for me though ... there will always be another house, thats what I told myself the whole way through the process so if it happened it happened, if it didnt it didnt. I thought of it like a business transaction ... I accept and understand that it is easier said than done but its the only way you can stop the heart ruling the head in these situations.

cheers 2buyornot2buy I bought close to the Newtownabbey area

Rateable Value

Sorry that I haven't been posting as regularly as I would have liked for a while ... but I have only been busy buying a new home!! I decided to take the plunge again into home ownership because this particular house simply just ticked more boxes than it didn't and it represented good value for my money IMO, or in simple terms ... The right house at the right time. To give you a bit of background for those who are familiar with my situation, it is a 4 bedroom, semi detached property with a garage and a reasonable amount of land around it. The back garden is very private and the property it is in cul-de-sac location. It is in the same area as where I was renting so apart from the move itself, it has brought no disruption to my way of life/schools/ etc at all. The living space is fantastic - not too big but certainly a lot bigger than we are used to and it is the perfect family home for us at this time. It is not a new build property but was built in the 90's (back when it wasn't just all about developers greed!!) and the house has been well maintained. So all in all ... a good result for me. The whole process of buying this property has been a roller-coaster ride from start to finish, it went on for approx 2 months so it may interest some of you to hear about the background to this. It was a repossessed property that came onto the market a few months ago. I went to view it after watching it for a few weeks and got the usual sales dribble from the EA about how the market is on the up ... best time to buy ... better hurry up if I am interested as it wont sit ... and all that usual nonsense. After a while I couldn't listen to it anymore and told the EA exactly where I thought the market was going. Unsurprisingly he took an instant dislike to me and boy did that set the tone for any future dealings we would have. I watched the property for a further week after my viewing and then made my offer ... I offered the Rateable value of the property which was approx £20k below the asking price. This was instantly dismissed with an air of arrogance by the EA, his response was something like, 'this property will NEVER sell for that price' followed by a comical snigger as if I was some sort of school child who didn't know his ass from his elbow. I advised that I would leave my offer on the table for 1 week after which point it would be withdrawn and I asked to be kept informed of any further bidders. 2 days later the good old phantom bidder raised his head!!! ... unsurprisingly along came a phone call from the EA saying that someone had offered the full asking price ... followed up I should add by asking me what do I wanted to do about it ... The silence from him on the phone was quite something when I told him that I wanted to withdraw my offer completely. So off he went probably dumfounded that I didn't do what probably 90% of ppl do and raise my offer accordingly to suit him. It couldn't have been more than a few days after this when I got my next phone call telling me that the other party had dropped out... surprise, surprise. If anyone had any doubts about why EA's get slagged off then look no further??? If I had have reacted to this mystery bidder then I would have just done myself out of £20k. :angry: This was when I got played (frustratingly!) ... I was informed that the Repossession Company were willing to consider my offer but wouldn't confirm acceptance due to the high interest that remained in the property. This bugged me no-end as they wanted to see my details of how much deposit I had, how much I needed to borrow etc but they were not prepared to offer any sort of commitment that they would accept my offer. Basically they wanted me to show my hand without them showing theirs, physcologically this seemed to give the EA some sort of misguided ego. It was at this point that I realised that this was turning into a game of cat and mouse. I reluctantly provided them with the information they needed and gave a deadline of 1 week for response. The EA made several phone calls to me during the course of that week and each time was making more and more noises that things where progressing it my favour but me being cynical its just seemed like there was more to it. Then all of sudden another party seemed to come out of nowhere, I could be forgiven on reflection for thinking that this other party was in the background the whole time and was also in the process of showing their hand, or validating their credentials if you like at the same time as me. To cut a very long story short they tried to trigger a bidding war. Again, I pulled out straight away and stood firm on my original offer. During my conversation with the EA he told me what the other party offer was and asked me to beat it. Going by what was then accepted and then updated on the public notice less than a hour after my conversation with him regarding their bid it is obvious as hell that the EA went back to the other party, told them I bid up and got them bidding against themselves, which increased their offer by a nice tidy sum of £5k from what he had told me. Any shred of credibility the EA had got blown to bits in my eyes after this. I must admit at this point I thought it was a done deal and pretty much just forgot all about the property but to my surprise I received a call from the EA several weeks after this episode, it went along the lines of ... good news for you, bad news for me.. yada, yada, yada. The other party couldn't get a Mortgage so your offer is back on if you are willing to proceed and the Repossession Company are happy to go with you. As far as he was concerned I was just going to go .. 'no bother thanks for the call. Can we call it a deal then??' ... I had a different ideas and told him I was still interested but my offer was now 5% less. Probably in hindsight I should have dropped it by 10% as things had shifted massively in my favour. Once again the silence on the phone spoke for itself... I will not bore you with the rest of the intricate details, cat and mouse games readily resumed and reluctantly they accepted my offer through gritted teeth. I read on this forum before that you need to have nerves of steel when buying a repossession and this turned out to be true to the mark. Even though an offer is accepted on the property it is not yours until the contract for the property has been countersigned by the solicitor acting on behalf of the Repossession company. Believe it or, less than 48 hrs before I was due to complete everything nearly fell through as another offer was received. Only for the fact that the contract had been countersigned that day and my solicitor leaned very heavily on them regarding them acting in bad faith they where going to pull the plug on the whole lot and leave me high and dry, and they wouldn't have cared less either. After 400 posts on this forum I suppose now I can move on with the Housing part of my life for now. I was able to buy a house at RV -5% and for me it did represent good value for money. Interestingly, with regards to RV. I know we use it as guide on this forum, and I for one am a fan and like to use it but I must admit that I compared the RV of the property I bought to a similar property that was on the market around the corner from me (genuinely) and the house around the corner was valued at £15k more than the one I bought. I couldn't for the life of me work out why as the houses where exactly the same in terms of size. I then checked my next door neighbours (attached) and they matched the house around the corner!! Assuming mine was calculated incorrectly then I would have to assume that I managed to get it for more like RV-20/25%. The house itself was in good condition, no physical damage or concrete down the toilet (thankfully). There was some childish sabotage to the property but nothing major thankfully. I have been in it for a few weeks now so hopefully nothing else raises it head. I still think that there is another 10-15% to go in house prices, perhaps more, but I think that they will stick for a while at this level if/when they do reach it. Some may ask why did you buy now then? I sold my house for RV+25/30% a couple of years ago so I have done ok in terms of the property market. Considering the price I ended up paying for my house compared to the asking price I wasn't convinced that if I waited another 1/2 years that financially it would be worth the wait. It was six to one, half a dozen to another for me in this case. I have saved myself in the region of £60k by renting for almost 2 years. Part of that is down to my own perseverance and views, but I also would personally like to thank the posters on this forum for their advice over the past few years as it has proved invaluable for me.

There's an irony about those folk who won't sell their own house at a reasonable price ... but look at potential houses they would like to buy an make a judgement that they are over priced!! The market seems virtually non existent ... repo's are selling, Bugger all else is. Confirmation that the housing market is a farce. Sellers don't actually realise that they are in a standoff with themselves.

I was thinking that myself. Imagine being in a rush to complete on a property with this carry on? It just goes to show how dependant all businesses are on computers, not just banks. However in this day and age you would expect the Bank would have a back up system for this sort of fiasco

This forum has been a good source of entertainment as well ... I still chuckle to myself about the .. Deploy the blamethrower ... comment a while back.

Most of the EA's I have dealt with have an arrogance about them. There doesn't seem to be any common ground between a buyer and an EA at the minute because most buyers are trying to drive a hard bargain (rightly so I should add) and this is not welcomed in any shape or form. EA's seem to have this misplaced idea that the buck stops with them ... i.e 'the value is correct because they said so ... disagree at your peril' If EA's got marks out of ten for their service then i'm afraid the average mark I would give would be minus 5. I know it is a cliche but they really do need to wake up and recognise that the buyers are the lifeblood of their business. A reality check towards this would see a big change in pricing in the market. It is hard to have respect for someone who tries to con you out of thousands of £££'s by inventing phantom bidders and many other underhand tactics.

50,000 posts ... and countless amounts of anoanymous readers who no doubt have benefited from the forum.

+1

It depends, every situation is different ... If you are a FTBer and have never been on the market before then I would recommend continuing to rent as opposed to buying as the market is still in decline. I would imagine that it would take the average FTBer a period of years to save a deposit themselves, how disappointing would it be to put that down on a house only to find that it disappears down a black hole as 10% is wiped off the value of the property in the next year or so. For me, perhaps things are different to a FTBer. I was a previous home owner and I sold up almost 2 years ago. I didn't get off the market during the peak but was fortunate in the sense that I was able to sell at approx RV+35%. I have rented ever since and I have unquestionably saved myself a lot of money by doing so as I could pick up the type of house that I am interested in buying for approx £30k+ cheaper than I could have done when I sold. I have not paid anywhere near this level on rent so no matter what argument anybody comes up with I clearly have saved by not buying. What is often overlooked with a Mortgage is that you have to pay interest on top of the amount borrowed. Even based at a low interest rate of 4% this would effectively double over a 25 year period. i.e to keep things simple, if you borrowed £100k @ 4% over 25 years you would pay back £200k. I could make a valid argument that I have saved myself £60k minus the cost of renting by not buying. Having said all of that, if I could pick up a house for around RV level and it was the right house for me, I would be happy to jump back onto the market again taking all things into consideration. Ultimately there is a lot more to it, but I think Belfast Boy summed it up well somewhere ... if house prices are dropping annually at a faster pace that what you are paying in annual rent then financially it makes sense to continue to rent.

Inheritance tax ... whoo, now that is a complex issue. There probably is some loophole with this, similar to the news story I heard today regarding Jimmy Carr avoiding paying income tax by some scheme whereby a loan with no repayment date is somehow involved. It is a joke really when you think a loophole exists that means a millionaire only has to pay something like 1% tax... its no wonder our economy is in the state it is in. I would imagine that this particular method of avoiding Inheritance tax would probably be one element of a much larger combination of approaches. The most common mistake made with Inheritance tax planning is that generally speaking the vast majority of folk would not have any inheritance tax to pay or worry about as they would not have an estate that is worth more that the Inheritance thresholds. The gift element and the seven year rule therefore doesn't become an issue as they would not have any tax to pay in the first place. For those who do have an Inheritance issue then they probably don't have too many issues with affordability for Mortgages . The government are doing what they can to close down as many loopholes as possible to stop tax avoidance in all areas, including the avoidance of long term care costs etc. It has become such a grey area now that every case would prob have to be assessed on its own merit. For example, it has become much harder for 'investors' in the property market to hand down property to families etc as the government are looking for their pound of flesh in tax and have changed the rules regarding Capital Gains Tax etc over the past few years. I won't shed too many tears for these ppl. Most of them got rich on interest only loans (someone elses money) and rising property values anyway so the more tax they have to pay the better IMO.

Mortgage crisis reaches door of Bank of Mum and Dad Parents and grandparents who have borrowed to get their youngsters on to the housing ladder are themselves now falling into financial difficulties. Debt counsellors are reporting a surge of people in their sixties and older falling into mortgage arrears, with some eighty-year-olds behind on their payments. They fear that the spurt could be the start of a worrying trend in which many retired people, who, in the past, would long since have paid off the mortgage, are still on the hook for hundreds of thousands of pounds. One reason they remain in debt is because they have borrowed to help younger generations to find a mortgage deposit or are having to finance their adult children in other ways. Another is that the downturn has hit some of the elderly disproportionately, according to the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. [The Times page 31 - 19.6.12.]

Most have learned? ... This makes me laugh. Asking prices are shockingly out of kilter with reality? I would go as far to say that asking prices are now OFFENSIVE to buyers. Its interesting to hear an EA talk about credibility!!

Cost of new mortgages on the rise as lenders seek to shore up their own battered finances The cost of a new home loan has begun to creep up as mortgage lenders seek to shore up battered profit margins. Banks and building societies are also raising rates in a bid to avoid becoming the most competitive lender left in the market, and subsequently being swamped by demand from buyers. On top of this, the dire situation on the continent is pushing UK house prices down and making risk-averse banks demand larger deposits from buyers. Last week, Halifax, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, increased its fixed-rate mortgages by up to 0.3 percentage points, adding £27 a month to a typical £150,000 loan. The move came despite the Bank of England base rate being kept at its record low of 0.5 per cent for the 38th month in a row. Banks are now passing higher costs on to customers. The average two-year fixed-rate is now 4.49 per cent, the highest since August 2011, according to analyst Moneyfacts. Monthly repayments on a £150,000 home loan would be £833. Just five months ago, the average two-year fix was 4.10 per cent, with monthly repayments of £800 — £33 a month lower. Richard Sexton, director at chartered surveyor E.surv, says: ‘Until early spring, banks did a good job of coping with increasing funding costs. But we’ve reached a tipping point now. ‘Banks can’t afford to sustain their current levels of lending. They are concerned about their exposure to debt- ridden European countries, and the precarious state of borrower finances.’ This week, HSBC withdrew its popular lifetime tracker at 2.79 per cent and increased other tracker rates by 0.2 points. Yorkshire BS increased fixed-rates by up to 0.3 points, while Loughborough BS withdrew its best-buy three-year fixed deals. Lenders are competing not to compete. Mortgage brokers say that once big banks start to increase mortgage rates, others follow suit so they are not left as the only lender with competitive rates. Aaron Strutt, a mortgage expert at broker Trinity Financial, says: ‘Some lenders have become inundated with applications. This has led to processing delays and rate hikes.’ The average deposit on a house purchase loan has risen above 40 per cent for the first time since February 2011, according to E.surv. This is because economists are worried house prices will slide this year, leaving homeowners vulnerable to negative equity — where someone owes more on their mortgage than their house is worth. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors warned last week that prices were set to weaken again, and figures from Halifax showed house prices fell 2.4 per cent in April. Ed Stansfield, a property economist at Capital Economics, says: ‘Prices are still at high levels in relation to earnings and the economy is still very weak. ‘The outlook is, at best, a protracted period of slowly falling house prices http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2143091/New-mortgage-rates-rise-lenders-seek-shore-battered-finaances.html#ixzz1v21qvRmq