paul65

Hi Telford and welcome to the forum. In your particular case the lower the loan to value (LTV) for the property the better (anything below 75% may be ok in all probability but do your own research) in getting your mortgage approved. Your deposit is vitally important to the mortgage company - and here's why: Irrespective of if you pay RV +10% for the property the mortgage lender will want to know that if they repossess the house (for whatever reason) they will get all their loan money back at auction/forced sale. In its simplest form you will lose some or all of your mortgage deposit. Your deposit is the mortgage lenders safety net / insurance policy should the worst happen. So say the house has an RV of £135k but you agree to buy at £150k (RV +10%) and you are putting in £50k of your own money so your LTV is 66%. The lender therefore has the security that if the property is repo'd then it's value at auction/forced sale could drop to £100k and they still won't have incurred any losses and in this instance the lender is likely to approve the mortgage. Should the worst happen however you should know that some or all of your money (£50k) could be lost. Just make sure you do your sums and factor in risk/what if's to all your calculations.

Thanks BB & Mrs BB (I know the pair of you aren't far away from me!) To give everyone some hope that there will eventually be a place for them at an affordable price when the time is right I can tell you that via the Property-Bee tool the house that I've bought was previously on the market in 2009 for £340,000 Clearly it was never worth that value and without going into specifics too much my agreed purchase price is less than half of that figure. Realistic pricing is slowly but surely hitting home (if you pardon the pun) and motivated sellers are becoming more obvious. It took me over 4 years of living up on the North Coast before I found what I wanted ... but the wait was definitely worth it.

Hi T&T, My approach has always been to forget about vendors asking price and to approach my offer price as a percentage of RV assessed in 2005. It may annoy some sellers but realism is gradually hitting the market. I personally did not consider co-ownership with my purchase. My view is that I don't see the benefit of owning a percentage of a home and renting the other percentage. I would sooner consider renting for a while longer until prices came to the point when co-ownership would not be necessary.

Thanks Doccy! Contracts have been signed by both sides and I officially get the keys in 19 days time. All in all the transaction has taken around 6-8 weeks from initial offer to completion. I'm guessing that I just got lucky with a motivated vendor and the fact that I was buying over the typically quiet Christmas period when purchasing priorities lie elsewhere. I do think though that the sensible pricing message (on the North Coast at least) is finally getting through with vendors via EA's who's income depends on the fees. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that you find some sensible, motivated vendors.

I can only speak from personal experience. My recent offer on a 12 'ish year old 2,500 square foot 4 bed detached property with seperate garage in Coleraine was accepted by the vendors 4 weeks ago. I offered 21.25% below Rateable Value (assessed in 2005). The vendors had priced this property for sale sensibly (15% below 2005 Rateable Value). Even at that I capitalised upon my First Time Buyer status and was able to agree a purchase price that was 7% below the vendors asking price. There were no other bidders for the property. In the current market I would consider offers of 15-20% below 2005 Rateable Value to be sensible. We are now back to pre-2005 prices.

When I heard the news for some reason this advert from their marketing sprung to mind ... Obel Marketing

Link to the report is http://rpp.ulster.ac.uk/research/housing-index/q3-2012.pdf

This may be worthy of a thread off of its own. If you are looking for details about the new Residental Property Price Index here's the press release:

Newry haircut: (Lot 10) 9 Tullydonnell, Newry BT35 9NA 4 Bed Detached house For Sale by auction - Guide price £130k Capital rateable value: £225k

Dunno - maybe the data is for sale? The seach function still works though. http://irishhousehunter.com/search/

Sad news folks - this is the last available report. It was good while it lasted.

Always worth keeping an eye on what Richard says on twitter account too, https://twitter.com/#!/ramseconomics His profile pic of a bear in the woods might give you a hint to economic leanings.

Richard Ramsey, Ulster Bank’s Chief Economist gave a guest lecture recently. It was entitled: 2012 – The Year of the Dragon: Will we get caught in the fire? The lecture provided an overview of what's happening within financial markets and various economies and gave an assessment of the economic challenges faced at a global, international, national and regional level. I thought the presentation would be worth sharing: You will find it at: http://www.business.ulster.ac.uk/courses/BusinessManagement/210212Presentation.pdf

Yay! Thanks Doccyboy!

Cheers Doccyboy. Appreciate it.

Can anyone else access http://irishhousehunter.com/? The site appears to be down. Anyone have a direct line into Not Swimming Naked? Doccyboy?

No sign of the report on http://irishhousehunter.com/ yet. Does anyone know if the weekly report is coming out?

Greater efficiencies within the department, reducing operational expenditure within Roads Service and reducttion in subsidy to Translink - it all points to one thing as far as I'm concerned .... Thinly veiled mass job losses - and the responsibility for actioning the redundancy will be passed on to someone else to do it - making Stormont look squeaky clean. At least we'll all be able to park cars in our towns for nothing - whether we can actually afford to own and run a car on unemployment benefit is another thing entirely. At least there's still a service provided by Translink .... Oh hold on a minute.

Yup - Here you are (in PDF format): http://www.bankofireland.co.uk/fs/doc/house-price-index/boi-qhpi-aug11-v4.pdf I'm loving the graph toward the back of the report.

Yup - It is front page news on todays Irish News. Reckon the reporter, James Stinson, must spend some time looking around here once in a while.

Yep - I'm afraid that with moving to the N Coast and with work pressures and other time commitments it wasn't possible to continue to attend the Wilson's auctions in Mallusk. Sorry. I do miss going to the auctions though as it has been a year and a bit since I was at the last one. If anyone reading this forum does go along and record the results I'll happily post them again up on the site that holds the older auction data collected up to 2009. Just get in touch.

I'm going for 645 this week - I feel it in my water

My vote is now in as well Subby. Fingers crossed she wins. Let us know how you get on. When's the winner announced?

Great article - thanks for signposting me to it. Have now shared it with others via Facebook and twitter. The more people that know about this index the better IMO.

I see this has now hit the news. Collapse of Portrush property costs Ulster Bank £10m It thought I'd post it in here in order to keep things filed properly. (My OCD is wild bad today )