A few weeks ago I tried to buy a house. I wasn’t particularly looking, I just so happened to notice that the one a few doors down was for sale, and as I’m renting it seemed like an idea. A mortgage would be cheaper than my rent currently, and the house was something of a bargain.
In fact the house was a serious bargain. I checked the land registry and found that the most expensive house in our close was over £180,000, sold in the last 18 months, and is the one I’m living in right now! The house for sale is identical, except that’s it the other end of the row, so it’s in reverse, if you get the drift. It last sold for around £146,000 18 months ago (quite a price difference).
Now, it was up for sale a few months ago for £120,000 – the housing market has caused a serious problem in prices, as you can see. However it was then reduced again, to £99,950.
Ruddy hell, that’s a loss of £46,000 for the vendor. As it turns out though, they sold it to the housing builder, in exchange for a larger property, so they probably did OK as the larger property would have come down in price too, probably by more than this one. No doubt they did OK, whoever buys this house would also do OK, the only loser would be the house builders… a plan with no drawbacks then!
To be cheeky, I offered £89,950 – some £56,000 less than it sold for 18 months ago. It wasn’t accepted, but they did accept my next offer of £91,500. Great I thought, that’s a real bargain. Then I heard someone had bid more than me and they’d accepted that offer too, could I increase my bid? No, I couldn’t. I was sure they were having me on and trying to get some more cash out of me.
I stood my ground, and now, some five weeks later, the house still has ‘for sale’ on it, even though it says ‘under offer’ on Right Move.
So has the house sold? Has the new seller pulled out? Did the new seller exist in the first place?
I wonder, but I’ll try the estate agent again in a week or so and see how things are progressing. It’s a good buy, if you can get a mortgage, so I wouldn’t mind owning it… We’ll see what happens. As I didn’t have any problems with the mortgage when I spoke to my mortgage advisor, who’d completed his CeMAP training years ago, I could go higher in price, I just didn’t want to.