Owning your own home

Wait. Is it actually a house?

As in a stand alone residence, not a play thing of the house next door?

(There’s loads of this kind of shit down the road from us where what were large gardens with an access road were converted in to new dwellings with duck all access and sold - presumably to idiots)

It's a really small house sandwiched between two others, it was one of those agent says you should see this as well - you arrive and le sigh

Hah amazing! We could’ve been bastard neighbours.

The worst example of this sort of thing I've seen was this in 2014 for £325k, didn't go inside and didn't bother viewing anything else with the same agent.

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Yep, because of the road layout it’s behind a terrace at the bottom, my house on one side and a garage on the other. Previous occupants of my house objected to the planning.

set in a TUCKED AWAY POSITION [sic]

Lol thread would have been amazing, both taking about a similar issue as if the other is the bastard neighbour!

Parking is a bunfight too, between that, the four flats on the left and the two flats on the right.

Today's fun house-hunting news:
Called Agent to say we're interested in property we saw yesterday afternoon.
They say we need to make offer by close of play today or seller will go with an existing offer.
After a 5min think, call EA back and make offer slightly higher than existing one.
Send confirmation by email pointing out our buyers are chain free and keen to move quickly.
An hour later EA's boss calls back and says there was a "mix up" (they didn't tell seller in time) and the seller has gone with the earlier lower offer...
Seller apparently feels "moral obligation" to buyer he's accepted offer from, but if we go higher he may switch to us...
We have another think and realise it's just fishing and clearly they have no morals if they are contemplating switching anyway.
We tell EA the seller needs to give counter offer and we'll consider it.
Seller then decides to stay with original buyer.

At the last count it's now more than 10 houses we've offered on since October which have failed for one reason or another.
My wife genuinely feels we won't be able to buy somewhere right now...

I’ve just done a bit of digging - same person owned both houses and converted the left one to four flats and the right hand one to three (inc garden workshop).
Explains all the shifting boundaries and lack of objections there!

Seller apparently feels "moral obligation" to buyer he's accepted offer from, but if we go higher he may switch to us...

Very moral

Hahhhhhh

Folks who bought the workshop conversion need a word with themselves.

Whoa, that sounds tough - where is the market that bad?! (This does not fill me with hope as we were hoping to buy soon ish too...)

South East london - our place sold within 9 days of going on market
Agents are all really busy

Exactly where I hoped you wouldn't say, that's where I am too!

Had noticed that nowhere stays on Rightmove long, hadn't realised it was quite that bad....

Quite a few Agents now do viewings "off list" which is a new one to me.
Acorn offered to market our place for just one week, only letting people on its mailing list view it. No long contract, they wouldn't even put it on the search engines. It was just so they could try and sell it first.
There's been a surge after Stamp Duty holiday was extended.
It's good if you're selling but we need to buy somewhere too!

Sounds stressful... I can't decide if we should try and move while demand is high so it's easier to sell, or hold off until things have calmed down.

I'd be in the same boat, looking to sell + buy a new place, so it feels rough either way - either too much or not enough demand will make one part of the transaction difficult!

Maybe I need to get registered with some estate agents though

Yeah get registered and I'd say get the house on ASAP.
Was just chatting to one Agent who thinks it's pent up demand which has now been released following the end to home schooling. He says it's not a price bubble.
We're viewing a house with him on Saturday. It's not on Rightmove yet and there are 21 other viewings that same day, all of them are "proceedable" buyers.

I guess though there's a lot of money around for the people who've not lost their jobs and haven't had anything to spend it on.

That's interesting - so a bump even that recently (home schooling only ended a few weeks ago?!)

The comment on pricing bubble is a bit of a "well they would say that" though isn't it - and if there's that much demand, hard to see how it doesn't push prices up!

Yeah just his view but I've always found him very straightforward.
We waited till the kids were back so it rings true with me and there are a lot of family houses we're viewing.

We're going to be in direct competition aren't we?! Also in the "family homes" market...

Only if you're looking in the ridiculously tiny catchment areas of north and east Dulwich Charter schools!

At the last count it's now more than 10 houses we've offered on since October which have failed for one reason or another.

I don't know why your more than 10 offers haven't worked out - they may all have been completely out of your control - but London is a febrile seller's market at the moment.

Find somewhere you really want, then offer as much as you can afford to/bear, then hope it's enough. If it doesn't make you feel a bit sick, it's probably not enough.

Dont worry, Ive missed out on so much and then covid hit and now I'm holding out but they sound like dicks and shock horror EA are at it as bloody usual.