Property market – renting & buying. Madness!

Recently had our 6 months notice given on the rented house I’m in so I’m now having to look at what options are out there for renting/buying – ye gods what has happened with the house market!!??!!

I live in Kent so it’s never going to be ‘cheap’ but £1000pm for a 2 bed terraced house, on a busy main road, with no parking? screw that!! There’s some new build flats in swanky towers gone up locally, £1250 a month, for a 2 bed flat. Jeebus.

I looked at a 1 bed house 5 years ago, with a garden that you have to go out the front door and walk about 10m to get to, for £650 a month – at the viewing there was 15 other people also viewing it… That exact same house is back on at £800 a month.

Also looking at shared ownership as an option, but that’s looking unlikely too – £300k+ for a new build 2 bed house, which are going faster than they’re being built.

5 years ago,… for £650 a month…That exact same house is back on at £800 a month.

4.25% per year, thats better than inflation but not huge. Probably realised they asked too little last time too.

If I could find a 100% remote role, I’d be up in Scotland right away.

Compare…

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/69534640#/ Arran.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/104595074#/ Maidstone (nice area)

4.25% per year, thats better than inflation but not huge. Probably realised they asked too little last time too.

Yeah I agree that place isn’t too bad for the price rise, but it was probably under valued last time judging by the amount of viewers.

I genuinely feel guilty sometimes that I have a mortgage. I live on a nice street in Huddersfield in a big (for 2 people) house and the mortgage I pay is probably half what I’d pay in rent. Which I couldn’t afford if I had to rent.
My house is an Edwardian 3 bed semi, so nothing too special but it’s the sort of house a family with a kid should have as their first home but I can’t think of many young families that would be able to afford the rent on it and where would they get the £25k deposit they would need to buy it?
We got on the housing market by the skin of our teeth back in the early 2000’s – literally a month or two more during that boom and we couldn’t have purchased a house and that was at £53k.

I can’t really do anything to help people apart from sell my home cheap to someone but then I’d be in the same position!!

Makes me sad all these poor quality new houses springing up which are mainly 3/4 detached houses going for big money, with very little in the way of affordable housing being made available.

Just over a year ago we considered moving and the agent came round and said ‘hmm £195k max’ which was at the time a little disappointing given what we had put into it. Anyway last month a house around the corner (exact same) went up for £250k and went in a fortnight, and now they are popping up on our estate for similar amounts. Can’t get my head around the increase, supply and demand I guess but seems a crazy jump.

My daughter rents a house in Clapham with 3 other mates and it costs them £3.3k per month between them.

Makes me sad all these poor quality new houses springing up which are mainly 3/4 detached houses going for big money, with very little in the way of affordable housing being made available.

Yep – got a whole load of those going up around us right now. And the developer has just put a big sign up saying ‘Stop Being Generation Rent, Become Generation Buy’ with an offer of 5% towards the £500k – £600k asking price. Fair enough, that is a large amount of money (albeit for over-priced houses in the first place), but there are no 2-bed semis which is what most first time buyers can actually afford!

a nice street in Huddersfield

Every day is a schoolday 😉

We moved up to Sheffield at the start of the year and the rental market was utter madness. One house we liked had 45 people asking for viewings – we failed to even get a look in! Thankfully it didn’t seem to effect prices too much.

We’ve just moved, and when we were looking in December we viewed a place that was up for £525k. We didn’t particularly like it, fair enough, but also really didn’t think it was worth £525k regardless given it’s size/position/location/garden etc. Anyway, it fell off the market for a bit, we assumed it had had an offer, but now it’s reappeared. For £575k… Bonkers.

To make things worse, I worked out that in 5 years time at age 45 (so really, the last chance at buying a house I’ll have), earning 45k a year with a 40k deposit, I’d be only in a slightly better position that I am now with 10k deposit and 10k a year less salary, that’s even with the 20% equity loan taking the deposit up to £110k on a 350k house (equity loan is only on new builds), so I’d have to borrow 240k, which is 5.3x a 45k salary. Not going to happen, even with a 30% deposit.

So, buying on my own, I’d still be looking at a £220k normal house (which gets you nothing now…) or shared ownership but in a better position…

Makes me sad all these poor quality new houses springing up which are mainly 3/4 detached houses going for big money, with very little in the way of affordable housing being made available.

It’s the same around here. There are a few new developments. All are detached 3/4 bed ‘Executive’ homes. The prices are absolutely insane. All half a million, upwards.

Who on earth is buying these houses?

@IHN – you have to share the link to the £575k house!

I live in Kent so it’s never going to be ‘cheap’

yep, bought a house in Kent last year during lockdown 1 (offer having been accepted just pre-Covid). So glad it went through (and we didn’t listen to everyone claiming a massive crash was on the way!) as prices have absolutely rocketed since which would’ve made it unaffordable (buying with partner, no way I could have afforded it solo anyway).

and we didn’t listen to everyone claiming a massive crash was on the way!)

We bought 10 years ago. There was a gadge on here was looking at the same time . Don’t see him any more. He harped on for about 3 years a massive crash was coming and that buying was silly

It hasn’t. Yes my house isn’t worth any more (for location reasons) but at the same time I’ve spent less over 10 yearsthan I would have on rent and have equity.

Covids about the closest we have had to a Correction and it hasn’t happened. The UK needs mass population reduction /removal(emigration etc) to correct the housing market as house builders are never going to saturate the market enough to bring prices down too many fingers in that pie

All are massive, detached 3/4 bed ‘Executive’ homes.

Well you say ‘massive’ but they are not really – it’s just clever use of space so they can say ‘kitchen/diner, en-suite, four double bedrooms (but three of them are only just big enough for a double bed), office, garage, etc, etc’. And the gardens are invariably tiny and overlook the neighbours garden with very little space around them.

I’m looking at a modern (12 yo) 2 bed house at the minute as a buy-to-let. £100k, to be rented at £600pcm or so. It’s grim up north.

And the gardens are invariably tiny and overlook the neighbours garden with very little space around them.

Interestingly we had a conversation along these lines on Saturday passing a row of new builds with a slab path between them.

Although detatched they are potentially closer than me and my mate are to our respective neighbours due to there being fire places on both sides of the party wall.

All are detached 3/4 bed ‘Executive’ homes. The prices are absolutely insane

To be fair though there is an abundance of quality 2 bed starter homes in the area, not always in nice locations but terraces in the north are fairly ubiquitous. Also a 3/4 bed exec home is really 2/3 bed plus storage cupboard. Despite everything we’re still in a position where demand out strips supply and people would rather live in a ‘good’ postcode in a new box rather than a 100 year terrace that needs a bit of work. Without building our way out of this (which wouldn’t work, NIMBYs, people wanting to live in nice locations while whole streets of terraces rot etc.) the only option is to limit borrowing levels to more sustainable levels, would crash the market so won’t happen.

I can’t really do anything to help people apart from sell my home cheap to someone

In the process of selling our old flat. Went on the market last Thursday and had 6 viewings booked up until this Wednesday. Had it valued at £100-£110 . I had work priced up to bring it up to scratch (total rewire / bit of plumbing / a couple of ceilings need replacing and general decoration). I reckoned on around £7-8k to do a nice job.
First guy (first time buyer) who viewed it on Saturday put in an offer of £105K yesterday. Discussed it with the wife and we agreed to sell it to him as we would rather it went to someone to get on the ladder than someone to make money from it.
Phoned the EA to be told there was a same value cash offer from one of their regular buyers and that we could probably push for more as they are buying up property in the area.
We are sticking with the first guy.

All are massive, detached 3/4 bed ‘Executive’ homes.

Well you say ‘massive’ but they are not really – it’s just clever use of space so they can say ‘kitchen/diner, en-suite, four double bedrooms (but three of them are only just big enough for a double bed), office, garage, etc, etc’. And the gardens are invariably tiny and overlook the neighbours garden with very little space around them.

You’re absolutely right. I’ve removed the word ‘massive’. They seem to get a plot then see how many houses they can shoe-horn in.

Which makes the price even more inexplicable. I just can’t see who has that kind of money around this neck of the woods. Or have lenders returned to lending bonkers, unpayable’ sums again?

These developers must be making absolutely enormous margins on these boxes. Its not difficult to see how the Chief Exec of Persimmon homes can pay himself a bonus of £75 million quid

Phoned the EA to be told there was a same value cash offer from one of their regular buyers and that we could probably push for more as they are buying up property in the area.
We are sticking with the first guy.

Very noble of you – I tried to do that when I sold my last place (single mother, seemed lovely and despite having more interest and higher offers we wanted to stick with her). Further down the line she couldn’t get a mortgage.

^^^ yeah as above, hopefully doesn’t bite you on the arse! There’s no way I’d turn down a cash offer for a FTB who needs a mortgage, been burnt before!

^^^ yeah as above, hopefully doesn’t bite you on the arse! There’s no way I’d turn down a cash offer for a FTB who needs a mortgage, been burnt before!

Yeah, fingers crossed. Fortunately we are not in a chain so if it does go tits up then i’ll learn from it. As long as it sells in the next 24 months, then i can get a refund on the stamp duty I paid for the place we are in now.

Phoned the EA to be told there was a same value cash offer from one of their regular buyers and that we could probably push for more as they are buying up property in the area.
We are sticking with the first guy.

To be fair our last house, a nice 2 bed terrace, had a lot of interest. We had quite a few people who were “buying it for their kids to live in” but I reckon they were going to rent it out as an investment. We then had a young couple who came with one of their dads who was a builder and we had a good chat and found they were buying their first house. I was really glad to sell it to them, as far as I know they did some work to it – the work we wanted to do – and are still living there as I met the guy a few times working in a supermarket which is really nice. I might have got a few quid more if I had held out but really liked them.

I’m glad we managed to buy when we did in Dec 2019, it was a slog, not short of 10 years of saving / planning and even then we needed an inheritance and home buyers isa bonus to scrape together 5% deposit. A few people said we should aim for 10% to avoid the silly interest of the 95% LTV mortgage, but in reality we were being out-paced by house price inflation. It’s daft really.

This is going to sound like one of those things dickheads in the early 2000s said for a bit of a brag, but it’s more a damming tale of how **** up things are. We supposedly ‘bought’ well but I don’t know, it was a bit rough looking but structurally sound and we tried to be as smart as we could, for exmaple replacing blown window units and washing the frames rather than replacing them all on the never-never and doing as much of the decorating as we could ourselves but we still ended up spending £10k. In the 18th months we’ve lived here, we’ve paid £9k off the mortgage, added £10k to the value just bringing the maintenance up to date (best guess) and some how that all pales because it’s risen £40k in value through a pandemic and massive deep recession.

We bought 10 years ago. There was a gadge on here was looking at the same time . Don’t see him any more. He harped on for about 3 years a massive crash was coming and that buying was silly

I’d have probably sung the same song, it makes no sense really. When Blackrock fell we suddenly and terribly realised that the market had been driven by a lot of people being a bit silly with all this 105% self-cert mortgage nonsense and in reality, they couldn’t afford their homes, the only sensible outcome was that the market would correct back to pre-boom pricing, but it just never happened, there was a short contraction for a few quarters and we went right back to over-inflation price rises. The whole thing feels like a kind of ponzi scheme that’s going to collapse at some point, but I’ve learnt there’s really no point trying to swim against the tide.

Noble or Naive?

Nice that you’re doing it – but there’s a lot of risk (and potential expense) there.

Anyway. I have no idea why anyone lives down south. It’s madness and, frankly, other than London being a nice occasional playground (yes, hotbed for jobs) but at what cost?

Few years back a colleague was spending £550k on a two up two down in Brighton. On street parking. Long commute into London.

I was living in a 3 bed semi in Nottingham with a garage and front and back garden for less than a third of the price. If we were doing the same job he’d have maybe got 10k london weighting. Instead I spanked my spare cash into a rental.

We moved to Wales. 3 bed detached house, 7 acres of land, outbuildings. Paid about the average house price for the UK.

If I have to go to London for meetings I’ll hop on a train, spend a couple of nights in a hotel. If the company isn’t picking it up then I’ll still be quids in because I’ll not be paying an extra £1000+/month on a “living down south” mortgage – and I’ll be retiring a decade earlier than the other bloke.

The moral of the story is – you don’t have to live down south and you’re mad if you do. It’s far from grim up North.

but you’re in Wales ?

I was planning on selling our 3 bed terrace next year after we’ve paid some big loans off.

We live on a main road and I dislike the area and not fond of the house. Due to the prices and we needed to fix our mortgage again this year, we decided to stay put for the time being due to mad prices.

We could finish renovations and sell for around £120k (we bought it for 90k 12 years ago) and could come away with a decent chunk of equity, but we’d need to chuck it into a potentially more expensive house.

We’re now paying our mortgage that is cheaper than most people’s car leases! If I can stick it out in the area a bit longer, it’ll give us a chance to build some savings.

I too feel really sorry for anyone on minimum wage trying to get their own place. It’s not like renting is a cheaper option these days!

I live in a village on the Northumberland coast.

The property market has gone mad since lockdown.

Anything remotely desirable goes in days.

A 1 bedroom flat, it’s tiny, the details had no floor plan or room dimensions. Seaview however.

Asking £250k, gone STC within a week of going on Right Move.

Beautiful 5 bedroom period house, £1.3 million, gone within 4 weeks.

Supposedly two bedroom flats (i.e mine) in my area of Edinburgh have gone up 17% in the last year????
And mine is better finished/maintained than most as not a student let.

Mental.

@ElShalimo – yeah – it’s rubbish here.

MTB, kayaking, running, swimming, beaches, mountains all on the doorstep. I don’t have to go and see my mates or family because they’re queuing up to come here instead.

Or I could live in a flat polluted concrete jungle for twice the price.

I’m not disputing it’s lovely…it’s your grasp of geography that worries me.
Mind you most people in the SE think “the North” starts somewhere near the Stevenage badlands

@IHN – you have to share the link to the £575k house!

Bloody ‘ell, it’s sold!

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/72121437#/

@ElShalimo – it’s my grasp of geography that made me move here 🙂

I’m done living in a place because of closeness to work. If anything the last year has taught us that if you’ve got the right skillset then you can work from a camper van in Khazakstan if you’ve got an internet connection.

We just moved and the only way we managed to get this place was because we know the estate agent and were able to view the house before they’d even taken pictures, and were able to make a cash offer at asking price.

Lost count of the number of times we had viewings booked on other places but the sellers had accepted an offer before we could even view. It is madness.

Bloody ‘ell, it’s sold!

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/72121437#/

I don’t think that there are any windows in that house that the average person would be able to see out of (without a step ladder).

That would be a horrible way to live.

Private landlord buy to let should be made almost impossible as its one of the main drivers of why the OP can’t afford to buy. Renting out an existing property you own for a short period whilst circumstances change before you are legally obliged to sell would be fine. All rental property should be dealt with by not for profit housing associations. Second homes should be abolished too. Only when all that is in place will the housing madness end.

I think its disgusting that people view a ‘buy to let’ as a pension option when its somebody elses life basically put on hold. Those cash buyer types that rush in and buy up ‘all the property in the area’ would be first against the wall in my revolution but there are plenty of little old couples who are holding a gun to the heads of a whole generation abeit with an apologetic smile…..’

Crazy and needs sorting before all the long term renters try and retire. Property market supply is fixed and demand stoked by stamp duty holiday, so prices spike.

Older generation won’t move out of larger homes suitable for families as stamp duty is so much.

Buy to let capital gains will be taxed as income soon so they won’t get sold.

Then Jeremy Corbyn started saying he would give long term tenants the right to buy at a discount, look what happened to him. Everybody went with Boris s slogan.

Now we have been warned of negative interest interest rates so anyone with the cash is buying starter properties.

It’s a uk thing, Spain and Germany have stable prices, my friends just sold a nice villa for what they paid 20 years ago. They enjoyed living in it, did not want a profit, hopefully the new owner will do the same.

Not for for profit and charities will end up rinsing more out of people than private landlords ever did. Just attracts the wrong sort of people who are either incompetent, or wolves hiding behind the facade. Ask anyone normal you may know that has been unfortunate enough to work at a large corporate brand charity.

The only way out is oversupply of housing or an interest rate rise. Just when you think it will never happen and feel really safe is when it will happen. Remember quite a few friends parents losing houses back in day. If interest alone only the normal / poor / comfortably poor will lose out. Some private equity co will swoop in and buy at scale.

Personally never understood Kent. Everything is just average and mid priced.

Now:

If we could all get together and buy a chunk of Syria I hear it’s pretty warm and they have good MTB trails 😂