Is now a good time to buy a house?

[N Dentressangle]

Don't need to move, but a bigger garden and a garage would be nice and good for sanity and domestic bliss. Looking at slightly larger houses in a different area of the same town, and keeping and renting out the existing house. We'd probably stay in the new house for 3-5 years.

Move or tough it out?

[Tampon]

One of the main things stopping me buying now before i go traveling as opposed to after ( despite the estate aganets all telling me the market is rising and properties are selling ) is the very obvisous fact that interest rates have to go up a some point and when they do a section of people will struggle again to make payments and it will affect the market.

I am lucky I have a decent deposit so interest rates won;t affect me that much ( no plans to get the biggest mrogage I can ) compared to people with bare minimum deposits and full loans, so I figure it is worth the punt waiting it out to see if it has a negetive effect on prices, worst case is I have a house and the mrogage has gone up and the values have dropped again, best case my money has earned some interest ( not a lot ) prices have dropped due to morgages going up, slowing down the market agian, repossesions, restricting the amount of buyers and I am sitting pretty with a 30-40% deposit and asking for 2 times income form the bank.

Now this is only my opinion and it is based on my financial curcumstances, some might say take the punt now whilst you can get acheap morgage ( if you have the captial ) but that is not for me.

To be honest for mear mortals it is alwasy a bit of a guess, but if your buying a home it never really a bad time to buy

Edited by Tampon on Thursday 11th February 18:37

[Wings]

If you can find a property on the market long enough to make an offer, then Yes. But in Bristol there does not seem to be much out there, and what is soon sales, and at a premium price. I went to an auction last night, one property with a guide price of £500k went for £600k+

[N Dentressangle]

Wings said:

If you can find a property on the market long enough to make an offer, then Yes. But in Bristol there does not seem to be much out there, and what is soon sales, and at a premium price. I went to an auction last night, one property with a guide price of £500k went for £600k+

Interesting. As you can see from my profile, Bristol's the town in question.

Someone obviously thinks property's a good bet then?

[B17NNS]

Wings said:

one property with a guide price of £500k went for £600k+

Guide prices are always set very low.

Attracts interest and bids.

[Merlot]

How do you think of property? As a building full of ££, or as a home for you and your family?

[anonymous-user]

The fact is, decent, realistically priced property is selling very well at the moment.

Still a lot of overpriced crap out there ala Countrywide which is not selling.

Even though i'm in the industry i really have no clue where it's going as there are far wider influences at work than i am qualified to comment on.

All i can say is that i've sold 4 in the last 2 weeks, 2 of which had 3 and 4 offers on respectively within two days of coming to market and both sold for full asking price.

I truly don't believe prices are rising in real terms, this has been influenced heavily by a shortage of properties on the market and the "fat tie" brigade (corporates} over valuing what is around to justify a high fee on their "sliding scale fixed fee" which means they give people a silly sale price to justify the fee that is then fixed regardless of actual sale price, which also gives a false impression of the market and largely contributed to the ridiculous rise in prices especially in 05-07

Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 11th February 19:17

[Engineer1]

I'd have thought now could be a good time but with the continued shakeyness of peoples jobs I can see that now is probably not a good time to be in a long chain.

[N Dentressangle]

Merlot said:

How do you think of property? As a building full of ££, or as a home for you and your family?

Oh, as a home. I'm happy to hang on to the current house because it's close to the city centre, will rent out easily, has no mortgage on it currently and we don't need to sell it.

My only real anxiety is being left 'holding the baby' if we decide to trade up to a larger house outside town in 3-5 years time.

[Wings]

N Dentressangle said:

Don't need to move, but a bigger garden and a garage would be nice and good for sanity and domestic bliss. Looking at slightly larger houses in a different area of the same town, and keeping and renting out the existing house. We'd probably stay in the new house for 3-5 years.

Move or tough it out?

Much depends on your circumstances, where you live, work, children re schooling, where you would like to live, and the commuting to work etc. that invariably will follow.

I have been living in the country for the past 30 years, so plenty of space, but I still remember the rat runs taking the children to school at Clifton College, would not want to go back to those days.

[Turbo cab]

If you find the right home at the right price go for it.

At the end of the day it is your home and if your looking to live in it for a good few years then it doesnt really matter as the end result will be the same - even if house prices do take a double dip they will go up again, History tells us that.

As far as pedicting the market goes even the supposed "experts" say one thing one week only to say another the next- nobody has a clue where its going.

[robsartain]

Personally I don`t think anyone expert or not really knows what will happen.

There has been some freek events in the financial markets over the few years and this recession doesn`t seem to follow the pattern of other recessions.

IMO : I think if you are in it for 5 years you won`t lose any money, I don`t think you will gain a lot of money either, but it does mean for 5 years you and your family enjoy a nice house. Of course on your current property you won`t gain money either.

and as regards to interest rates, I think the safest way is to fix in for 5 years. You may win or you may lose, but your outgoing mortgage payment every month is guarenteed and you avoid any uncertainty of not being able to afford it. In reality over 25 years any loss if rates don`t go up won`t effect your standard of living massivily.

[Soir]

sounds like you don't plan on returning to the existing house in the future..just renting it out

why not sell it and use all the capital to have a much smaller mortgage on the new property?
Rented one may not go up in value, so money could be used on new house and save you a ton of interest (with less hassle and risk).

[SGirl]

To answer the OP's question: it better had be, because I just did.

[Wings]

Soir said:

sounds like you don't plan on returning to the existing house in the future..just renting it out

why not sell it and use all the capital to have a much smaller mortgage on the new property?
Rented one may not go up in value, so money could be used on new house and save you a ton of interest (with less hassle and risk).

Selling would be possibly one way of avoiding future CGT, but there again depending on who owns the home, could also possibly help to reduce future IHT.
Rental today must be for the long term, for certainly today many rentals do not even cover the mortgage repayments, add on repairs, insurance, stress etc. etc., the OP might be better taking your sound advice.

[Turbo cab]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I beg to differ.

The banks are having it off in a big way, most homeowners with typically 25% deposits are being offered rates of around 4.5 - 5% which is round about where they were before the st hit the fan.

The cost of borrowing in the good times was always around the boe base rate and for some instances slightly lower.

When rates do inevitably rise as they will the banks will no other option than to reduce there margins, They know this is going to happen so are clearly making the most of the low interest rate's whilst they can.

I cant see the boe base rate as an example going to say 4.5% and then the cheapest deal with a 25% deposit being nearly 9% as that would cripple the market in a big way and there's no way in hell that those with the powers above would let that happen. no one would take new mortgages and people would be reposessed left right and centre, more so than at the moment. Banks are not stupid and as with anyone in buisness realise that some profit however small is better than none or even worse a loss.

Lets be honest the thing that royally fked all of this up is toxic debt from sub prime mortgages purchased by the banks, not the normal run of the mill mortgages that were slightly above boe base rate - this was clearly good business for them and a platform that had been used for years without unafordable big margins.

As already stated my view is the banks are trying to claw back some of there losses whilst they can and when rates do rise they will have no other option than to cut there margins keeping the cost of lending fairly simililar to what it is now.

Edited by Turbo cab on Friday 12th February 19:45

[Turbo cab]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Im a bit confused on the point your trying to make?

So what was your rate before? 5% ish?

You was able to pay it then as others were too were you not?

So when it returns to what it should have been you'll be in exactly the same place you were before all this st started as will others?

Or have I missed the point?

[L1OFF]

SGirl said:

To answer the OP's question: it better had be, because I just did.

+1 I complete on the 19th Feb.

Alan

[thebullettrain]

N Dentressangle said:

Don't need to move...and keeping and renting out the existing house. We'd probably stay in the new house for 3-5 years.

Move or tough it out?

It is simple really-you either so need to move or you do not. If you do you you take itbon chin that home ownership is more expensive now then in the past i.e. bills, interest rates etc.

Have you consider the fact that you'll have to account for income tax and CGT on your current primary residence once you decide to sell that? Personally, Treasury policy aside, it's seems a ripe area to tax higher than the current 18% and possibly the removal of principal private residence.

Finally why move for three years only to move again? Surely that's disruptive? Remember that a home move is up there with death and divorce in the stress league.