My First House

Yaayuh!

Yaayuh!

Yaayuh!

Soldato
Joined
5 Nov 2010
Posts
24,415
Location
Hertfordshire
Excited, so i thought i'd create a thread.
I moved out of my parents when i was 17 and in to a house with my best friend. It was a dive, but an awesome one. Moving out of home and in with your mates is going to be awesome, regardless of the house.
After living there for 2-3 years i moved out and into a nice 3 bed flat with other friends and had a full-time job less than 100 meters down the road. Best times of my life there, so much fun and so convenient. Rent was pretty much a steal, being on the high street of the town it was £250 each excluding bills etc.

I was there for another 3 years until i got cosy with my girlfriend and moved in with her, she has a shared ownership new-build 2 bed (1 bed with tiny storage room really....) flat in Stevenage. Very convenient but one of the worst places you could live around here, the only good thing is the convenience, train line, shops etc.
Nice place but we've outgrown it easily, the area is getting on my nipples and we have enough money for a 10% deposit on a £250K tops house.

We were after the usual;
3 bed Semi
Garage
Nice small town

We have just had an offer accepted on this

houseee.png

(Will get better pictures, but it's being taken off the market now so no use linking it.)

It's in the same town where i moved out from home so i'm familiar with the area as i spent 10 years of my child/teen-hood there.

We have viewed the house twice, with my parents on the second time. Always worth an extra set of eyes when viewing houses i tell you, they can see things you're not looking for. Loved the house on first viewing, already know a few things that we would like to do but really, we can move in and not decorate for ages.

The only thing we don't like is the lack of downstairs loo... which is ok because on the first viewing the owner showed us this massive under stairs cupboard and has some quotes on getting it converted into a cloakroom/toilet. Apart from that, there will be changes to the garden as i want some grass, that's no problem.
It's big, 1 bedroom more than required, easy access to loft for future expansion. Decent garage, 3 walls are internal so it's not freezing cold.

At the moment we've just got our mortgage in principle and an offer accepted and just confirmed with our shared ownership housing association that we want to sell and to put it on the market. The ball is rolling!

We're very excited and will keep you posted with pictures and the whole story. :)

EDIT 1: Original purchase failed, see post #64 onwards for this:

house1e.png


EDIT 2:
Offer accepted @ £245K
Completion date 19th July

Some Pictures:

http://imageshack.us/a/img27/3483/1frontofhouse.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img62/6905/2rearofhouse.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img27/3900/3backgarden.jpg

If the image is larger than 1280 pixels wide please resize, link only or put in spoiler tags. Thank you.
 
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Thanks :)

Yeah the logistics of the loo i'm not too sure about, or worried about either. I know it's possible, that's all i need to know at this point.
Macerator is the last resort. A friend had a Saniflow and had nothing but problems with it but another friend's parents had one installed in an en-suite and has been fine for years... mixed results.
 
ci_newman said:
I'm really surprised that the current owner has taken it off of the market considering you haven't sold your property yet - that is really quite rare!

As you have now formed a "chain", it could be months before you're actually in a position to start the paperwork for buying his house, as you'll need to have a buyer for yours first.

Congrats on the house though, it looks nice :) My wife and I are looking for something similar, at a similar budget in our area.
Click to expand...

It was a conditional offer and the estate agents selling their house are the ones that sorted out our mortgage in principal with and have a few people looking for a flat just like ours... So this may be a quick transaction, well, maybe a month or two instead of 6...
We had an almost 2 hour meeting with the Connells guy and i think the estate agents explained to the sellers our situation with our offer.


I will update with how the paperwork and legal rubbish goes. Luckily, the girlfriend is a Financial Controller so she knows her numbers and paperwork. I just say "yes dear" to whatever she's saying to be honest.. :p
 
Went to Sam Whit, and loved it tbh. It had it's issues but i thought it was good. Better than Fernhill anyway.

Very familiar with the area as well, Henlow, Langford, Stondon, Clifton, Shefford etc etc.
 
Update

Connells are messing us about. Our offer was subject to it being taken off the market and it was accepted.

The property is still on the market.

I am going to ring them later and give them an ear full.
 
ci_newman said:
As much as I feared tbh, unless your place is sold and off of the market then they don't consider the chain to be complete :(
Click to expand...

Indeed, i agree.
But the offer was accepted on the grounds that it would come off the market and a for sale sign put up, for 6 weeks. None of this has been done.
 
True.
I'm just leaving it. Doesn't matter if i kick my toys out the pram, it won't change anything lol.
Will just have to sit tight and stop worrying.

Just had the valuation/survey of our current place. Bit of a worry, i may of dropped in value slightly.
I also have to rectify by bodge job to the "fire doors". They had spring back doors and 2 of them were ******* annoying, so i disabled it. Turns out i need to rectify this as it's required due to fire safety. Gonna take a while with the risk of losing my fingers to sort out, but it needs doing.
 
King Damager said:
Can't believe that's 250,000....

Out of interest, how close to a train line to London, and how much deposit did you need and how much are you jointly earning?

I know that's quite a lot of 'personal' info, so feel free not to share, but I'm quite intrigued...

kd
Click to expand...

It's a lot of house for the money and the cheapest we've viewed.
I used to walk to the station when i used to live in the town and to London is about 40 minutes to Kings Cross.

We needed 10% deposit.
Together we earn £62K before tax.
 
Ev0 said:
My family are estate agents so I always chuckle when people rant in threads that all agents are naughty words, but Connells really are scum of the earth in my eyes from personal experience ;)

So it's a shame you have to deal with them as they are awful, but good luck!
Click to expand...

Yep. When they talk to me all i hear is "BS £££ BS BS BS BS ££££ BS ...... BS BS, BS BS £ BS £ BS..... BS ££££££££££"

We have asked for a break down of the costs quoted, on Tuesday.... we haven't had a reply yet.

SDK^ said:
Nice place :)
Click to expand...

Thanks :)
 
Indeed. The only reason we went for this house is because we pretty much fell in love with it.
It's hard to find a house you want to buy without getting emotionally attached to it, in fact, you don't really want to buy a house that you're not.
 
TheCrow said:
Very annoying! we were close to loosing our house as they put it back on the market even though they had accepted the offer.

Is there anything else in the area?

p.s. crazy high prices you have down there!!!!!
Click to expand...

Nope, nothing. Have been scouring rightmove and other such sites and there isn't anything worth viewing at the moment...
 
Trifid said:
I agree, it looked like a nice house, hopefully you will be able to find a similar/even better one soon. I hope you didn't lose any money on the house.
Click to expand...

We haven't paid any money out yet, well, only on getting our flat on the market, which needs to happen regardless. So no money wasted.
 
Cheers :)

My girlfriend and i have agreed that we won't view anymore houses at all until we've found a buyer for the flat, there's just no point. She got quite upset when we lost the other house, she got excited and furnished it all in her head.
 
Right, have 2 people interested in our flat, just waiting for a holding fee before we can view/offer on a place.

I have a question I hope someone can help me with a potential issue. There's a house we're interested in a cul de sac which has field behind that has future plans for house development.
What I want to know is, how will this effect the value of the houses near by? If anything that is.
 
It's 20 something residential. I'm not bothered by the work that would be done and the access to it wouldn't be near me but the house woul most probably back on to houses/other gardens instead of fields.
I assume if anything it would be negative slightly.
 
Attempt number 3 failed.

Another house came up for sale on Friday, just round the corner from where i used to live as a kid (mum still lives there).
Went to view it on Saturday, we were 1 of 8 viewings that day.... We loved it so rang up first thing Monday and put an offer on at asking price due to all the interest.
We failed. There were 5 offers at asking price. I've gone up £5K on top of the that and waiting to hear back form the vendor but i very much doubt it's going to stick..

That's the 3rd house we've lost out on and we're starting to get stressed and slightly upset.

Buying houses is a pain in the balls.
 
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