Mochinbach

I'm starting to worry...

We bought our house 10 months ago when we returned from Oz to give it a go in the UK. The plan was we'd stay for a couple of years (have babies and all that jazz) and then go back... We changed our mind and are trying to get back ASAP. We bought the house for £242,000 back in march 07. We've put it back on the market for £225,000 (having now lost out entire deposit) and having just over £6,000 in fees for soliciors and estate agents to add on top!!! (eik!)

I thought that was bad enough but three weeks later I'm being told I probably need to reduce it to £215,000 and will proabably sell for £210,000!!!! OMFG! That doesn't even cover the mortgage!!!!!!!!! He says I don't have to make the decision now but I should bare in mind that if I don't act quickly them my house could be worth even less in about 5 months.......
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGgghhhhhhhhhhhhh

Is this estate agent mad??!!! What's going on!!!!
I don't think we can even afford to consider that and renting it out isn't an option either. We'd only get £750 a month for it and our mortgage can only go to £1,020 at lowest. Am I completely screwed?

Do any of you want a house? LMAO It's a lovely house which backs on to a load of fields and has lots of space, is in the catchment area for the local grammars... what more do you want? lol

jon.n.bec

Oh mochinbach i really feel for you, we are in a similar situation, we don't have our visas yet so there is no mad rush i suppose, but if i didn't want to move to oz, i would still be selling this house anyway (major neighbour problems).

However our house has been on the market for 15 months, weve had viewings (not many considering how long its been for sale), we are with 2 estate agents (both with large fees), it started off at £265,000 and now it down to £200,000!

Spoke to one of the agents last week who asked if we wanted to drop the price further, but to be honest we can't afford to do that, he also asked if we wanted to pay £250.00 plus vat to have a full page spread in the local paper! (so now on top of the high fees, there expecting us to pay for our own marketing!)

like yours its in a really nice area, good schools, nice house etc. etc., just don't know what else we can do to sell it.

Mochinbach

I wish we'd never come back!! LMAO...
ah... hindsight is a wonderful thing lol

grahampaula

Hi there
Sorry to hear about the nightmares of trying to sell. We also are very familiar with this situation.
Our visas were granted in August 2006, YES you heard me right, 2006 OMG!
We put our house on the market in November of the same year. Accepted an offer in December 2006. Their house was way overpriced and so, they did not get any viewings.

Had lots more interest and then another offer, but they has still not sold theirs :curse:
We went back to the original people with the first offer and tried to persuade them to reduce theirs by telling them that someone else was interested in ours, (Bloody EA advise). To our horror, they pulled out!

Back to the drawing board and changed agents twice. Another very hopeful offer, but they still had, and still have a property to sell.
We reduced by about 20K in total and I was now starting to see our future funds dwindle to zilch, but easy come, easy go and all that.

Anyway, we made an executive decision about a month ago that we would try and rent it out until the market picks up, (Please lord make this happen at some stage). I was speaking to one of the mums at my son's school and just happen to mention that we were going to rent instead. I received a phone call the following day asking about the house and could she come and have a look.
Showed her round and told her all of our terms etc, and she asked us to take it straight off the market and said that she would be happy to draw up and pay for a Tenant agreement. and that she also wanted it long term.
We were very luck, as when our fixed rate ran out a year or so ago, our financial advisor told us to go for interest only! GET IN THERE!!! We are now better off to the tune of approximately £550 a month at the moment.
So finally after nearly three years of waiting and hell I have finally booked our flights. We leave Manchester on 24th June and arrive in Brisbane on 29th June.

It is a bad situation for loads, so don't give up hope, I am a great believer that if you want something so bad, things will come right in the end.
Best of luck with it all and let us know how you get on.
Also, good luck to all the others still waiting

jon.n.bec

I'm so pleased that it's worked out for you in the end, good luck with the move, i can't begin to imagine how excited you must be now it's 'real' and all your plans are in place. Hopefully we will sell before we are ready to move, if not i'm not sure what we will do, don't think that renting is possible for us, the rent would cover the mortgage, however, we have the usual credit cards, loans etc that would need to be paid before we went and all of our money is tied up in the house, so I can't see how we would have enough money to take with us to get us set up in rental etc. (£30,000??not sure) and tide us over until we found jobs. We are a family of 5 so i would hate to get there and run out of money!

Good Luck for the future

hollykimalan

We are 'stuck' in UK too!
HKA
x

coolerkingcooler

Do you have an interest only mortgage?

Cooler

coolerkingcooler

For us, it means that we'll now have to rent until OH gets a job in a few years as we still have two u'3. There are some benefits in that as only one of us will be working and not owning a house, you do get more benefits - so OH tells me.

So our plan is to rent for a few years then build a house

Cooler

franki

We are also on the same situation. I've thought about renting. Our fixed rate is up in June and thought about going interest only. I think that's the only way we could cover the mortgage. Problem is, we need money from the sale to fund our move back unless we borrow more money on the house. Don't even know if that's possible!! Does anyone know??

Bermudashorts

In theory it is possible to borrow more against your house, but it would depend on many things such as how much equity you have in the house and your credit history. But mortgage lenders have tightened up their lending policies these days and I definitely think if you said you wanted to borow more to fund a move to Australia then it would be a no.

We are in similar boat as some other people on here. We moved back from Bermuda last year, bought a house in March 2008, just before all the prices started to fall, transfered our USD savings back when it was $2 to £1 and would have got about another £40k at today's rates and now we want to go to Australia! We could not have done things much worse. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and we try not to beat ourselves up about it. Oz is a good year off for us, so hopefully things will be better by then.

Devlin

Sorry, but if you were only planning to stay for a couple of years in the UK why did you even buy?? The stigma attached to renting in the UK is crazy IMO.

comet555

I don't quite get it either, particular when 10 months ago there was an entire house selling thread full of people who could not manage to sell their house. It was also fairly obvious that the housing was on a downward spiral.

So, unfortunately it seems as though the poster is a bit screwed at the moment. Hopefully they can manage to sell for a decent price, but in this climate I wouldn't count on it.

I think you'll have to decide whether you really MUST move to Oz right away at a big loss or whether you'll stay for a couple years as planned and hopefully recover some of the losses.

capo

You say 10 months ago, and then you later say you bought it in March 2007.

That is 24 months ago.

DownUnderPaddy

I do empathise with your situation. You seem to be unfortunate victims of timing here.

I have to say though that I don't think the estate agent is mad with his/her comments. Given the data and the ongoing trend, there is no current indication that the house prices are going to bottom out yet.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009...fx6129089.html

What it comes down to is how much you want to move to Aus in the next year, and at what cost ? (I am agreeing with Comet55s earlier comment here)

If it is more important to you than anything else in the world then you simply sell now for whatever you can get (and what the current market is willing to pay).
If it is not live or death and the move can wait for a few years, then why not hang on there and wait for the housing market to recover, which it will in a couple of years time.

themerlin

Just be glad you didn't buy in the USA, apparently 11% of houses are in danger of default.