We have been house hunting now for a few months, but have only viewed a couple of propertys.
I dont think I am going to like this bit of the search, I allways feel very akward looking round peoples homes and today we looked round the home of a total loon cake :bigsmile:
One of the strangest experiences of my life !
So how many propertys do you think it is avarage to view before finding the right one?

I don't know, but we looked at 52 before we bought in Peterborough. I didn't count this time but I suspect it was between 20 & 30

I usually only look at one or two, but my wife looks at a lot more than that.

The place we are in at the moment, we bought more-or-less on the basis of a photo of the living room which appeared in the Telegraph property guide. We saw the photo, the house was way over our budget but we thought "we can't pass by the opportunity to at least look inside a house like that". So we did, and we fell in love. Fortunately we knocked the sellers down a bit on the price, but we still ended up spending far more than we'd hoped to, but we now have our dream home (as long as we can keep up the mortgage repayments).

When I was looking for a house i was only 18 and so didn't really know what I was supposed to be looking for at all, I knew what my limit price wise was and so was prepared to look at anything within my price range.
As the years have passed I have come to rrealise just some of the things I didn't even consider are really quite important but if nothing else I had the first bachelor pad amongst my friends and was in high demand come party season.

We're due to exchange contracts this week having found exactly the kind of house we wanted.

We looked at over 30 houses, but as we got more used to sifting through the details and had more of an idea of what represented good value and had a better idea of what we wanted we became more particular.

Don't worry about going round people's houses. Most of them are nice and trying to make a good impression. It's not rude to have a good nose around if you're serious about finding a place.

We looked at around 10 properties (we were out-bid on three of them) and decided to jack it in and go for a new-build instead! (fixed-price and no competing buyers!)

Did anyone else suffer from gazumping and sealed bids? On our teeny-tiny budget we were contunually being 'priced-out' of the market!

Lib1

I looked at 2, both for about 10 seconds, then I spent about 5 mins in this one, mostly chatting to the owner.. People kept asking me what it was like and I really could not tell them very much! It's a house, I needed a house. It fitted my criteria of having walls and a roof and stuff so I bought it!

We looked around 20 houses, and I looked at the outside of countless others and dismissed them for various reasons. We were out bid on about six houses and were actually gazzumped on 'the one'. It was an awful process and I'm not in any rush to go through that again. The pricing system in Sheffield is so unfair- one of the houses we liked was on the market for £57,000 and sold for £105,000! I really wanted an old house with character, so new build was out of the question (and we couldn't have afforded new build anyway).

Being totally new to all this house buying malarky theres loads I am not sure about,
Whats gazumping? and sealed bids. and if anyone has any usefull hints and tips I would really appriciate them.
We looked round loads this weekend and only found one we like but it needs a bit doing to it. What is the usuall way to bid is it acceptable to go under the asking price for property that needs upgrading. its all very exciting and I am quite enjoying the hunt now, but I can see if it becomes a drawn out affair I may become a bit dishartend

Gazumping: You put in an offer on a house, the vendor accepts it, but then another potential buyer offers more than your price, so the vendor drops you and goes with the new buyer!

Sealed-bids: Rather than just going for the first offer which is at or just over the asking price, under the advice of greedy, greedy estate agents, when vendors have more than one offer on their house, all of the potential buyers are asked to state the highest amount that they are willing to pay for the house. These amounts are secret (henced 'sealed'-bids) and have to be stated to the estage agent by a certain time and date. The vendor usually chooses that potential buyer that has offered the most for their house.

It's a hard, cut-throat property buying world out there!

Lib1

Probably viewed around 50 houses

Originally posted by Lib1
Gazumping: You put in an offer on a house, the vendor accepts it, but then another potential buyer offers more than your price, so the vendor drops you and goes with the new buyer!

Lib1

doesn't always stop this, but always make taking the house off the market a condition in having your offer accepted. After that the buyers would have to approach the vendor direct, and it would be (IMO) slightly amoral for the vendor to then accept this, although could still happen.

looked round about 12-15 houses... must've looked at over 100 on the internet and on borchures, and as all the houses we were looking at were 2/3 bedroom terraced houses, you can know everything you need just reading the descriptions.

The market has slowed down loads and loads, though it's still faster in Sheffield than in most places around the country I'm told.

Definitely go in well under the asking price at the moment. And unless you think you've got competition, hold out for a bit before upping your offer. Especially if the vendor is in a hurry.

I know it's difficult to play it hard when you've found a house you really like, but it could save you a lot of cash.

Well we have decided to go for a second look around later this week, there are some issues over boundrys.
Will try and play it cool with the agent who will be attending the viewing(but will probably end up looking like an arse) :hihi:

Originally posted by theadore
doesn't always stop this, but always make taking the house off the market a condition in having your offer accepted. After that the buyers would have to approach the vendor direct, and it would be (IMO) slightly amoral for the vendor to then accept this, although could still happen.

Not completely true. Estate agents are legally obliged to pass any offers made to the vendors until contracts have been signed.
My advice is if you really like a property, get to know the vendors and talk to them direct without being pushy. Once they get to know you even slightly, there is a much stronger chance they won't accept any other offers. ;)

hehe... no stamp duty at last the gods are smiling on us :banana: :clap: :clap: :thumbsup: as you can tell am very pleased