Smousie

Of course I'd be happy to scrap a £20k diesel car and receive £2000... What planet is he living on?!

I don't foresee property prices crashing. The government will do everything possible to prevent it, as too many people (i.e. voters) would end up in significant amounts of negative equity. I've watched the housing market for a decade, waiting for a crash so I could buy. All I've seen is the government propping up property prices and bailing out homeowners and banks, because they have a vested interest in preventing a crash. In the long term they're probably aiming for house prices to stagnate until wages catch up. I'm now looking to buy a house myself - I want to be on the side of the people who are being propped up and bailed out!

The seller lives with a partner, I'd guess she's around 45-50 years old. She wants to move to a different style of house; her house is Victorian with period features (which I love) but she feels it's old fashioned and wants something more modern. So I think she wants to move but doesn't need to move. It sound like she wants a nice clean new build so isn't bothering to do anything to her current house, hence the dated decor and carpets soaked in dog urine. As a non-forced seller, I doubt if she'll accept less than the £190k she paid. To be honest, that would still be a good price for a house in that area (it should be worth at least another £50k or more). In fact, if I could afford the asking price I'd pay it. The house is a state and the price has obviously been discounted to reflect that. But I can't afford the asking price so I'm trying to figure out how much I could reasonably offer and what my strategy should be. What should be my first offer, how much should I increase it if rejected, etc. I don't know whether to offer less than she paid and let her bid me up a bit, or whether to start by offering what she paid?

The seller bought the house for £190k around 2002. It's been on the market for 3 years priced £211k but hasn't sold. I'm debating how low I can offer while still being reasonable enough so the seller might accept. What would be a reasonable offer considering the state of the house?

I'm interested in a house which is currently for sale in my local area. Originally priced at £235k, it went on the market in 2010 and didn't sell, so a year later the seller reduced the asking price by 10% to £211,500. The house has now sat on the market at this reduced asking price for the past three years with no further reductions. When I viewed the house, the seller said I was the only person to view it in over a year. She is keen to move, has a location in mind and her bedrooms are packed with stuff she's bought for her new house. She actually told me it's cruel to view someone's house and get their hopes up if you have no intention of making an offer. So I'm wondering if she's so keen to move, why hasn't she reduced her house price further in the last three years to secure a sale? I can see why her house hasn't sold - it hasn't been decorated since the 80s and is absolutely filthy (reeks of dog urine so bad I was nearly sick, while I was viewing the house I saw her dogs urinating on the carpet and walls). It needs to be gutted and needs new boiler and windows etc, and the partially collapsed conservatory is sealed due to being a death trap and needs to be demolished. The place is disgusting, but it's in a good location which has higher house prices - two houses in the same street are for sale at £280k each, and other larger houses nearby are priced up to £400k. So I can see an opportunity to cheaply acquire a house in a nice area and do it up over several years. I spoke to the EA and suggested an offer of around 75% of current asking price due to the amount of renovation required. The EA said the seller has already declined offers around that level and I shouldn't waste my time, so I didn't make a formal offer. I said the seller seems keen to move, and the EA said yes but the seller 'needs' a certain price to be able to buy another house, so she thought the seller probably wouldn't go below the current asking price as she's already knocked off 10% from her original price. Apparently the seller paid £190k for the house so is 'only' making £20k on the sale. I'd still like to make an offer on the house but I don't know how much. I can't afford the asking price but could probably stretch to 95% of asking, which would leave me with no money for renovations until I save up again. I'd prefer to pay 90% of asking price (roughly how much the seller paid) but don't know if the seller would accept, and I really want to secure this house as it's cheap for the location. On one hand, the seller seems keen to move, the house has been on the market for four years and the price hasn't been reduced recently. On the other hand, I'm wondering if perhaps the house hasn't sold because it's overpriced and the seller refuses to accept offers? (suggested by the fact that she seems keen to sell but hasn't reduced the price in the last three years). Advice? How much would you offer?

Mum is a disabled pensioner aged 68, so she doesn't work, and therefore she can't get a mortgage by herself. I want to buy a home for both of us so we have some security; Mum will live with me for the rest of her life, and then I'll continue living in the same house alone. The way that Right to Buy works is that only the tenant (i.e. Mum) will own the house, but anyone who lives with her can share the mortgage (although in practice I'd be the only one paying it). So I could pay the mortgage but she'd own the house. This seems like a very bad idea to me. If I bought another house instead, Mum could still live with me, but when she passes away I wouldn't lose the house. But Mum refuses to move; she wants be to purchase her house. Also I do have to pay council tax; as a pensioner Mum is exempt, but I am not. This is true regardless of whether I/we own the house that we live in or whether we rent.

Yeah, but my point is that I could make those repayments on another house instead (one that I own), and I could be on the housing ladder and not lose the money. Over a number of years it adds up to a sizeable chunk of cash that I would lose. The repayments would cost a lot more than the rent does; if I'm not going to own the house at the end of it then I might as well just continue renting as it's cheaper.

I would lose every penny I'd paid off the mortgage so far, plus my deposit. Let's say the house is worth 100k, and Mum gets 10k discount, so the house price is 90k. I put down the 5k deposit I've saved and get an 85k mortgage, then I pay £500 a month off the mortgage. Next year Mum goes in a home and the council takes the house (because she owns it), sells it for 100k, pays off the mortgage and has about 15k left. At this point I have spent 5k deposit, plus £500 a month for a year which is another 6k. For my investment of 11k I get absolutely nothing, plus I'm homeless. I could have invested that 11k into buying a different house which I own, then bring Mum to live with me, and I'd still have a roof over my head even if Mum has to go into a home. The longer I'm paying the mortgage on a house that Mum owns, the more money I'm throwing down the drain if Mum does eventually need to go into care. Mum seems to think she can buy her house and then transfer ownership to me because I'm paying the mortgage, but I'm not convinced that's possible. Unfortunately she is adamant that she isn't going to leave her home and move into another house with me, and it doesn't seem sensible for me to invest my money into a house that she owns!

I am currently living with my elderly mother and looking for an affordable house to buy. My mother has been a council tenant for thirty years, and I pay rent to the council while I'm living with her. Mum has suggested that she should apply to buy her house under the Right to Buy scheme, and I could pay the mortgage. While I don't have any objections about continuing to live with her, I am worried that I'd be throwing my money away. The problem is this: even if I pay the mortgage, Mum will still be the sole owner of the house, so I'm effectively paying for a house I don't own. If Mum gets ill and has to go in a nursing home, I assume the government would take the house (which I paid for) and sell it to pay for her care. So it doesn't seem like a good idea for me to invest my money in a house which could be taken away from me. I think I'd be better off buying a house elsewhere and taking Mum to live with me, so at least it's my house and I won't lose my investment if she has to go into care. Mum insists she would prefer to stay in her own home, and she doesn't see why I can't just buy her house rather than a different one. Am I correct in thinking that buying her house would be a very bad idea?

Smousie is still renting and waiting for a chance to buy As I said before, house prices in the area I want to live in seem to be stagnating at 2006 levels (around £100k). There were no sales for a couple of years, and then in 2009 houses started selling for 2006 prices again. In 2010, one house in the area did sell for £85k, but as of today (Jan 2011) a couple of other houses in the area are advertised for £100k. I don't understand how sellers can justify advertising their houses for £100k when a)That's what they were selling for in the 2006 boom years and it's now 2011, and b)An identical house sold for £85k last year. What's even more annoying is that stupid people will buy at that price! If buyers insisted on paying £85k (since that £85k sale last year set a precedent for houses to sell at that price) then the average house price in the area would effectively be £85k and I'd have a chance of buying one. But if even one person buys at £100k, then nobody else will accept less. I'm going to wait a few months, save aggressively to boost my deposit, and then offer £85k for one of the houses currently on the market; hopefully they will see sense and accept my offer, but I have a feeling that they might see the other houses advertised for £100k and refuse to accept my lower offer. The problem is that the houses in that area tend to be owned by older people who bought years ago and have no mortgage to pay, or families with stable jobs who can afford their mortgages - there are no forced sellers so people are unlikely to accept less than their asking price. On the plus side, I do have a boyfriend now However the relationship is too new for us to consider buying property together, and if I wait a few more years there's a chance that prices might start to rise again. I still need a house whether we're together or not, so if I get the opportunity to buy at £85k I'm going to go ahead and do it.

What annoys me is that I left university in 2003 after having spent a great deal of time and money on education (masters degree, because I couldn't get a job with a bachelors degree). The older generation had told me "Work hard, get an education, and you'll get a good job and be sorted for life"... but that didn't happen. I spent four years being broke and living in crappy halls, working a bar job to cover my rent, in the expectation that my hard work would pay off when I got a job. But when I graduated I couldn't get any job at all despite having two degrees (science and computing), and in the end I got a teaching job paying a pittance. By that point house prices were already on the rise; I saved from my meagre salary in the hope that prices might fall, but they never did. So I waited, and in the meantime I paid rent to cover someone else's mortgage and dealt with an array of dreadful landlords who refused to repair things, kicked me out of my home at short notice because they wanted to sell up, and caused all other sorts of drama and difficulty. For seven years I lived in various rented flats which were just as crappy as my student accommodation, saving all my pennies instead of spending them on enjoying myself, and watching house prices recede further and further out of my reach, shooting up faster than I could save a deposit. 2010: I'm pushing thirty and have been left university for seven years. My meagre teaching salary hasn't increased a great deal, despite it being a supposedly vital job (although at least I HAVE a job). I'm still not in a position to have a family because I can't provide them with a home due to ridiculous house prices. So I hopefully check out house prices in the area I want to live in... and... they're the same as they were in 2006, and even beginning to rise again slightly The difference is that now I have a small deposit, so I could possibly stretch myself to pay a 100k mortgage. But it's terribly disappointing considering the sacrifice and hard work I've endured since the age of 18 on the promise that everything would work out and I could have a job, and a home, and a family if I just worked hard and followed the formula. Now I have a dilemma: do I stretch myself to pay that 100k and subject myself to even more years of financial struggle, or do I sit tight like I have been doing and continue to live in crappy rented flats while house prices once again soar out of my reach? I suppose if I buy a house, OK I'll be broke, but at least it'll be my own place to eventually raise a family in and there'll be no dreadful landlords hanging around... With all due respect to those who say they want to continue to wait for house prices to fall: I've been waiting for most of a decade, saving every penny and living in crappy rented flats, and it becomes annoying after a while, especially if your biological clock is ticking. In 2003 people were saying "Just wait, there'll be a house price crash", and seven years later I'm still waiting for my chance to buy my own home and have a family. The annoying thing is, my cousin is twenty and has never worked a day in her life; she got knocked up and the council gave her a house... pretty much permanent lease, no interfering landlord, plus money to live on. My other cousin got a job in a call centre right out of school and worked his way up into a management position before I even finished my education (receiving a salary all the time I was struggling to afford to study), bought a house before the prices rocketed too high, and is sitting pretty on several thousand more than I earn with all my degrees. Whereas I did what I was told I was SUPPOSED to do... worked hard and did without to get a good education, got a professional job, worked on my career instead of having illegitimate children and depending on the state... and I'm not as well off as either of my two cousins. I feel betrayed, and lied to, and ripped off

2015? I'm pushing thirty already - if I wait till 2015 I'll be in my mid-thirties and still living in crappy rented accommodation like a student, paying somebody else's mortgage with my rent money. What a depressing prospect. At this point in my life I want to buy a home, and maybe get married and have children... I want a home of our own that I can decorate and make nice, somewhere permanent that a landlord won't kick us out of on a whim. Waiting until 2015 is kind of pushing it in terms of how long I can expect my fertility to last!

I don't necessarily foresee massive pay rises - if anything I think that salaries will stagnate (or even decline). Unemployment results in more competition and it's an employer's market; it's so competitive that people will accept lower wages just to have a job. Plus employers can't necessarily afford to pay higher wages anyway, given the recession. I can't afford higher interest rates though, not unless my mortgage is for a much smaller amount. On a 70-80k mortgage I could manage, and could probably cover an interest rate rise, but on a 100k mortgage I'd really be stretched and an interest rate rise would be problematic. In 2006 when house prices in that area were 100k, I assumed that by now they would have fallen to a more affordable 70-80k (which was what they cost in 2002-2003), which doesn't seem to have happened - they're still sticking at 2006 levels, and are selling at that price too. That's why I'm worried - when prices were stagnating and houses weren't selling in that area, there was every chance that prices would go down, but I'm worried now that houses have started selling again and they're still 100k. If houses are selling again, there's a risk that prices might start going UP, in which case I'd better grab a house at 100k before they become 110k-120k. It seems better to stretch myself at 100k than to be completely priced out at 120k Looking at house prices online, four houses in that area have sold in the last nine months; the first for 97k and the last for 105k, which is extremely worrying. That 8k represents something like a 7% increase in nine months! Maybe the 105k house was overpriced, because there are currently three on sale for 100k. But I'm extremely worried; I can't really afford to pay 100k, but I don't want to sit tight waiting for a price reduction (like I did for the last four years) and instead watch prices climb even further out of my reach, as happened in the last decade. I don't want to live my twenties all over again in my thirties, living in a crappy rented flat while trying to save an even bigger deposit and watching house prices zoom further and further out of my reach.

I want to buy a house in the area where my parents live, because it's a nice area with decent schools and amenities, and they're getting older so they need me around a bit more. I'm a woman aged 29, and I'm single so I can't afford a huge mortgage. In 2006 I priced houses in that area and they were going for roughly 100k, which was way more than I could afford, so I rented a place elsewhere and I waited. Four years passed. In 2010 I priced houses in that area again, only to discover that they were still 100k! WTF? Surely house prices must have dropped at least a little bit? There are currently three houses in that area up for sale, all for 100k. I thought perhaps it was a case of sellers being in denial, but a quick check of some online house price sites shows that there was a period of stagnation from around 2006 where no houses were sold, and then in 2009 houses in that area began to sell for 100k again - last year there were four houses in that area which all sold for 100k. So obviously a seller isn't going to drop their price because they know that houses around there ARE selling for 100k. What kind of idiots are buying houses at 2006 prices? I'm continuing to rent for the time being, but it's inconvenient because I have to rent in another area away from my parents; their area is solely comprised of owner-occupiers in semi-detached houses and none of them are ever up for rent. I'm kind of upset because I thought if I waited a few years the houses in that area might become more affordable, but the prices don't seem to be budging and I'm not getting any younger. So what do I do? Do I stretch myself and try to afford 100k under the assumption that interest rates will remain low and house prices won't drop in that area (as they haven't in the last few years)? Or do I continue to sit tight and wait, hoping for a crash?