Other What Makes Your Life, Meh?

This could end up going one of two ways, so I’m putting it here for now…

Put in an offer on a flat yesterday.

It ticks all our boxes, and more: within our modest budget, decent size, relatively close to city centre, off-street parking, not-insane management fees/ground rent/etc, and it also has a garage.

The seller is happy with our offer, but they haven’t accepted it yet. They’ve cancelled further viewings but someone already had a second viewing booked for later this afternoon, and the seller wants to give them the opportunity to also make an offer. Fair enough from their point of view I suppose, but it’s frustrating for us.

We do have some wiggle room, and I am willing to go over asking price. The fact that it has a garage makes it exceptionally good value for the market in Cardiff and it’s a huge selling point for me. However, I am not interested in a back-and-forth bidding war, it’s a hard limit and I am not going over it. If someone wants to out-bid me then so be it: I’m walking away and finding the next viewing.

This waiting sucks. Hopefully we should know where we stand by the morning.

 

So were we, then along came Smokey and Bandit, 2 Maine **** kittens, ended up with 4 months in the other house, and now 5 days in the new one. They've settled in very quickly.

 

Yep. Outbid by the other party, I thought this might happen.

Well, I’ll send my final offer this evening and that’s that.

 

It's essential to have this attitude to house buying, good man.

What I would say is it's often just highest bid and people have lost our for the sake of hundreds. If you're going to say £320,000 then £320,200 could easy clinch it.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean. But we'll never know what the other party has offered, so the best I can do is set my upper limit and stick to it.

 

I'm going down the new build route, mainly because I'm buying on my own and need Shared Ownership to make it viable, so fingers crossed it makes it less stressful!

I have my eye on a developemnt thats going to release this month or next and I'm chomping at the bit to apply! It has everything I need and is affordable for me and a 10-15 minute walk to the office. Just trying to not get my hopes up in case I miss it!

 

It's how I've played it, it's worth x to me and that's that. If they don't go for it, move on.

 

We're using Skipton Building Society's "Track Record" mortgage, which is a 100% loan-to-value product for people in private tenancies. It's 100% LTV so no deposit required, but the catch is that how much they lend is principally limited by your monthly rent payments; the idea is that you end up paying the same (or less) for your monthly mortgage payments as your average rent for the last 6 months. That's even worse for us because our rent is about 40%-50% below the market rate for this type of property in Cardiff.

Our final offer is very close to the amount we had a decision in principle on. I already think there'll be some "fluctuations" or "complications" when we go through the full mortgage application, we might end up having a shortfall that we have to meet from our own money. Hence: we've got a limit and that's it.

 

The deposit isn't the issue, I have it saved and we're getting bonusses and pay rises this month, its the per monthly payment when we're at 5-6% interest rates!!! Plus in Bristol housing prices are f***ed, so that would be way too limiting and I've end up commuting forever which I'm trying to avoid!

If you have savings, why are you going for a 100% LVT? Reducing that will make the interest rate drop...

 

We do have savings, but not a lot

Buying a flat is a stepping-stone. The plan is to either pay down as much of the mortgage as we can, or put as much as we can aside in a savings account every month (whichever gives us the most benefit), and then use whatever we earn in equity/savings in 5 years to buy somewhere we actually want. The amount we'll be able to put aside in that 5 years is nothing to sniff at.

Why not just start saving that now? Because we're both sick of this house and all its problems, and we're tired of paying someone else's retirement fund - we want out... now . Buying a flat in the interim means we can get out of this house, build equity, and put money aside.

If this all falls through then I think the next likely step is a visit to a financial adviser.

 

Ditto, exactly my plan too Save for 5 years, build equity, use that to bounce into something nicer

I'm in the exact same mindset, I'm 37, I'm sick of paying someone else mortgage and not having control over my space!Plus, over 40 it becomes increasingly difficult as you run the risk of shorter payment periods driving up the repayment amount, so its a bit of a race fo me!

 

And this is one of the reasons I'm being cagey about offering so close to the DIP amount . Skipton say the mortgage has to be paid off by 75, so I selected a 33 year term for the DIP application, because my age of 42 plus 33 year term equals 75, right? Except no, it'd have to be 32 years in order to be paid off by my 75th birthday, and that slightly lowers the estimated amount they'd lend. We can make up the few grand shortfall between that amount and our offer through savings, but no more.

We'll never know the true outcome until we go through the mortgage application, and we can't do that until the offer is accepted... so we're back to frustrated waiting!

And we're in the same boat in Cardiff regarding prices, tbh. I don't think it's as bad as Brizzle, but it ain't far behind. A 3-bed semi with driveway & garage - our ideal property - is around £300,000-£350,000 on the outskirts, and even more the closer you get to city centre.

 

It's always the most expensive items that sell on eBay where the buyer just ghosts....

They recently implemented a feature where by making an offer you agree to automate the subsequent payment if the seller agrees to the price.

Therefore you have to commit prior to making the offer instead of just taking a punt and then deciding not to pay.

Hasn't worked this time though... grrrr

 

Yup, tis true. I usually always make offers and now it just auto pays. Which I don't mind, as my offers are usually always cheeky.

 

Old people braking for people on the other side of the road/miles away in the distance on the other side of the road, then indicating right and driving straight forward, finished off with doing 30-35 in a 60 down blind bends with tall hedges etc...

 

My partner and I did this back in 2020. It does not make it easier or less stressful. Well, it didn't for us because all the solicitors involved made everything way more difficult and drawn out than it needed to be. Get a good solicitor would definitely be my advice!

 

Saw a couple more flats, but nothing we both immediately wanted. There was one that seemed to tick all the right boxes, and I’d more or less convinced myself to make an offer… right up until the time came to call the estate agent. Just couldn’t put my finger on why I was hesitant, or what was bothering me.

So had a bit of a think on Saturday, and I’ve come back around to the idea that getting completely debt free is going to be better in the long run. We’ve already got a lot of money left in our budget every month and we can double that if we pay off our debts.

It can be a double-edged sword because, without any credit, lenders don’t know how to assess your ability to re-pay. So I have no idea how that’ll affect a mortgage application. But I’ll deal with that when I get there, it wouldn’t be a hardship to take out a credit card for 6 months and pay it off in full every month.

And it does mean staying in this house for a while longer, so there’s a ton of stuff I want sorted.

 

Credit ratings work in mysterious ways. My wife uses her credit card, for the cash back, which she pays in full each month and ,has had a loan which she paid back early, I have had no credit at all for many years and, had bad debts, now gone. My credit rating is significantly better...

 

TBH I’m starting to really not give a flying one about the largely meaningless horseshit that banks and such make up and label “credit ratings”.

Having no credit at all might cause us a problem in a couple of years when we’re back in a position to apply for a mortgage, but we can deal with that if and when it does become an issue.

 

35 years ago (jeez!) I landed in the UK, did various jobs, all cash in little brown envelopes with payslips (remember them?). After a couple of years I got a job in an office, salary paid by BACS. No bank would give me a bank account because I didn't exist in the UK before 1989. Got one in a building society eventually, they even contacted my bank in NZ (by snail mail).

Had a zero credit rating for a couple of years due to being non-existent, eventually bought a TV on credit (extortionate), despite having the funds to pay for it all. Fast forward a couple of years and I had a credit rating.

Credit card companies have been falling over themselves to offer me more credit for the last 15 years or so, I've even refused multiple credit limit increases that I don't need. I keep the cards for emergencies or certain purchases.

It is all a bit of a shell game or ponzi scheme, they gotta keep you on that wheel.