zeddy Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 This is my first post so go easy. I would like some advice on my current situation. I am a flat owner in North London (Finchley). I put my flat on the market to buy a house that I really wanted, we secured a buyer willing to pay over the asking price, but the house we wanted fell through due to a "cash buyer" trumping us!! So here's my position. We can't find a house we like yet, but we would hate to loose out on the great price for our flat. Do we:- A. Sell and rent to become more attractive buyers, and just hope house prices dont rocket! B. Hold out till I find a house we like and hope our flat will sell just as easy again. Knowing the impending interest rate hike I am unsure as what to do. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voidal Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 This is my first post so go easy. I would like some advice on my current situation. I am a flat owner in North London (Finchley). I put my flat on the market to buy a house that I really wanted, we secured a buyer willing to pay over the asking price, but the house we wanted fell through due to a "cash buyer" trumping us!! So here's my position. We can't find a house we like yet, but we would hate to loose out on the great price for our flat. Do we:- A. Sell and rent to become more attractive buyers, and just hope house prices dont rocket! B. Hold out till I find a house we like and hope our flat will sell just as easy again. Knowing the impending interest rate hike I am unsure as what to do. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you Difficult to 'call' where you live. I'm in a similar situation, so I'm going to rent a town house and enjoy 6 months of different style living, why not, it could be fun, no ties and If I dont like it, I can walk away. But I live in the north where prices 'seem' to be crashing in pockets. London is still doing well, so I believe, but will fall if other areas around you do? So do you research and be careful. Still, its will scare me having money in the bank..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PbroAgent Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 This is my first post so go easy. I would like some advice on my current situation. I am a flat owner in North London (Finchley). I put my flat on the market to buy a house that I really wanted, we secured a buyer willing to pay over the asking price, but the house we wanted fell through due to a "cash buyer" trumping us!! So here's my position. We can't find a house we like yet, but we would hate to loose out on the great price for our flat. Do we:- A. Sell and rent to become more attractive buyers, and just hope house prices dont rocket! B. Hold out till I find a house we like and hope our flat will sell just as easy again. Knowing the impending interest rate hike I am unsure as what to do. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you In my experience, when vendors sell quickly or get a very good price as you seem to have done, they automatically assume it will happen again. It very rarely does. I'd advise you to rent for 6 months. You can take your time to find, take advantages of the predicted falls in house prices and you will also be under less pressure to buy and pay over the odds when you do find. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brotherjoe Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 I agree with the poster above Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicker Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 This is my first post so go easy. I would like some advice on my current situation. I am a flat owner in North London (Finchley). I put my flat on the market to buy a house that I really wanted, we secured a buyer willing to pay over the asking price, but the house we wanted fell through due to a "cash buyer" trumping us!! So here's my position. We can't find a house we like yet, but we would hate to loose out on the great price for our flat. Do we:- A. Sell and rent to become more attractive buyers, and just hope house prices dont rocket! B. Hold out till I find a house we like and hope our flat will sell just as easy again. Knowing the impending interest rate hike I am unsure as what to do. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you Are there lots of similar flats to yours on the market? Was there a bidding war on your place? Flats are very sticky in N London at the moment, so I'm trying to work out how yours achieved above asking, before I can add my tuppence worth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeddy Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 Are there lots of similar flats to yours on the market? Was there a bidding war on your place? Flats are very sticky in N London at the moment, so I'm trying to work out how yours achieved above asking, before I can add my tuppence worth. Our flat isn't unique by any means, although it has been finished to a high standard. There was a bidding war between 3 couples which pushed the price 5k over asking, which in turn was 20k over EA original valuation. I think the plan for now is to try and find a place between now and completion of our flat, as I would like to fix a good mortgage rate before they rise. If we can't find anything by then we will rent for 6-12 months and see if the prices fall. Thank you for your responses, really appreciate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shar46y Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 We are in a similar quandary. Need to relocate to another city for work reasons, start date sometime in the summer. So we put our flat on the market last week thinking it would take months to sell. Much to our surprise, we got a buyer very quickly and being a FTB (I thought they were extinct ) they want to complete quickly. Assuming it all goes through, we could be done and dusted within a couple of months. But then we are not ready to relocate and anyway haven't found anywhere to buy (plus hoping the market will fall further in our new location ). So it looks like we will be STR. The only downside is that we are dreading the hassle of moving twice with two toddlers and a cat. How do people do it? Do you put all your stuff into storage and pay for removals twice? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spangled Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 The only downside is that we are dreading the hassle of moving twice with two toddlers and a cat. How do people do it? Do you put all your stuff into storage and pay for removals twice? Can you put your toddlers into storage? We faced a similar situation in the summer of 2009. We'd agreed a sale on our flat in a semi-shoite part of SE London but couldn't find a suitable property in our desired go-to location (Hitchin, Herts). For us, making sure our sale went through was paramount. The housing market picked up briefly in our area in spring/summer 2009 and we saw that as our brief window of opportunity to escape. So we were fully prepared to move into rented accommodation to ensure the sale went through and even viewed a few rental properties in Hitchin. We had one toddler ourselves at the time. As luck would have it, a property for sale came up in Hitchin which ticked all the right boxes for us, and we were able to buy that. But ensuring the sale of our London flat was always first priority. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrismar Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 (edited) Back in 2009 we were in a job related position. We agreed a sale in March 2009 at below the value we really wanted, and then were faced with a job redundancy situation which at the time changed our position overnight. We pulled out from that sale and stayed put. A few months later in 2009 we remarketed (as we were still thinking of moving 15-20 miles away) - and as it was the market picked up late that year and we agreed another sale - we were lucky that 3 people were after 2 identical layout properties only yards apart - and the other one went for 10K over the asking price, which was the one with the bidding war on it, and the other 2 people then fought it out for ours, and we got our full asking price. We put out effects into storage (with brother in his large house) and started looking, but we were keen to let that sale go through for various reasons. We were then all set to move away. A family member (my partner) then was taken ill, shortly after and we have stayed lodging with brother for past 12 months now - and in past 4 months have realised now we know extent of illness that we cannot move away as we have got so much at stake now with regular weekly hospital appointments/treatments etc. We are now offering again on properties in the area where we want to be and one agent has actually said to us "you could afford to pay X because of what you achieved on your sale" now we are aghast that attitude, because the market has fallen in past 15 months, and as everyone (including 2 other local agents who are helpful to us - you cannot say to someone what they must or should pay because of what they achieved 15 months ago. The market has moved on - downwards as we all know. All we know is that these properties that we have viewed and offered on recently were all on market before we sold and are still waiting to sell. Edited January 25, 2011 by chrismar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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