I had to make a similar decision last year illWill - had a three year rental contract which was up for renewal (with a three month notice period which was a nightmare to deal with re: buying a house as you can imagine), so had to take the plunge.

Hoping for a gentle Brexit too!

Got two mates who are looking to sell at the moment (but not desperate). On 2 bed flats in Zone 2 they were getting cheeky offers of 60-100k less than asking e.g. 500-600k.

Lot's of flats at and a bit above the 600k mark seem to be tumbling from the original listed price over the course of a few months by 50k easy, at least looking at Right Move. Some of this will be a silly price to begin with though.

Seems like there is just a whole lot less being bought and sole, with some backed into a corner to sell having to accept a loss on the 'market value', but probably still making money depending on how long they have owned it.

Our place sold on its first morning on the market for a record price in the area (NW5 / N19). We weren’t greedy, we just presented the place well with a solid agency at the right time. There are a lot of stupidly priced places out there at the moment, Dexter’s seem to be the new Foxtons.

Our buying and selling process has been a disgrace. We’ve had to move two solicitors off our account due to incompetence. Our sellers original solicitor couldn’t use a computer and had to dictate his emails to his part time assistant, in 2019.

Our freeholder tried to derail our sale numerous times and eventually cost us our original buyer. He then submitted an offer and lowballed us by £100K the next day. Fortunately we sold to the other bidder at the original price.

Surveyors are a joke. We had one come to our place last week and spent longer playing with my dog then he did looking around, It cost the buyer £750 too. We commissioned one on the place we’re buying which cost almost £1k, I’m glad we did it for peace of mind, but it didn’t find anything major.

We started everything back in April and we’re still not in, our sellers gave us a £10k discount last week to keep us. We’re exchanging next week allegedly…

Doesn’t seem fair for the purchaser though, other than ticking a box for a mortgage lender…

Had a nightmare with my mortgage lender at the time of buying my house, after weeks of getting messed about (at one point I was asked to complete my mortgage application by hand on a paper application form clearly stamped internal use only on every page) I complained direct to the chief exec, and got the mortgage application processed, survey completed and all fees waived within 2 days.

At the end of the day if the surveyor fucks around then ultimately, that’s on them. If it turns out it has clear signs of subsidence and he was negligent in not noticing it then it’s his or his firms PI which takes the hit

depends on the size of the gaff imo. bigger ones will obviously be more risky, 1-2 bed flats safer

fluctuations in the housing market only really ever fuck you strongly if you are buying them as investments and not using them to live in. i'd rather pay a mortgage than rent, come out evens (worst case scenario lose some equity) then when it comes to upsizing to the next place you can get a bit more for your money if there is still a bit of a slump in house prices. if you're on the ladder, you're on the ladder. rent in this country is obscene

Fortunately we've been renting the place for the last 12 months so it's a known quantity and over that period we've managed to get the landlord to fix a few bits that needed doing.

Anyone clued up on property law / leases I could PM a question?