A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE ...
BY CHRISTIAN COVENTRY , CONCEPT MORTGAGES
“ You think I am mad , don ’ t you ? You think I should take the higher offer . I know £ 12,000 is a lot of money , but I just feel I need to do the right thing .”
Having waited for her house to sell for a month , which believe me feels an eternity when the market is moving at its current pace , my client suddenly had two offers in a matter of days and did not know what to do . She had already said yes to the first offer and now she had the lure of an extra twelve grand !
“ I know this should feel like a nice position to be in , but it just doesn ’ t ” she said .
Having wrestled with her conscience overnight , she had decided to stick with the first offer as had already given her word and that meant more to her than chasing the extra cash .
Now there may be those of you that think she was indeed mad not to take the higher offer , but when you dig a little deeper , the buyers who made the first offer had no chain and were looking to complete before the stamp duty holiday ends in June . Offer number two also wanted to complete within the same timeframe but were selling to First Time Buyers who had progressed , but it was still relatively early days in their sale process .
“ Not at all .” I said , “ Do what your gut is telling you to do , you would be surprised the number of times I have seen buyers and sellers let greed get in the way of a good deal .”
I have witnessed many sellers over the years switch buyers part way through their sale , even when their initial buyer has committed time and money to starting their purchase , only for this to blow up in their face later down the line . Its usually the Estate Agent that gets it in the neck at this point with cries of foul play , but Estate Agents can only do as their Vendors instruct and unfortunately not all Vendors want to do the right thing !
With much fanfare 95 % mortgages came crashing back on to the scene this month , or that is what was meant to happen .
As it turned out two lenders decided to make a break before the end of March and launch their own 95 % mortgages without Government assistance and a few others waited to see how they managed before launching their own products . At the time of writing only a handful of lenders have launched 95 % mortgages and one lender , Aldermore , has already had to withdraw from this market to cope with demand .
We are still waiting for the bigger beasts of the lending world to launch their Government backed schemes , which we are now told may be later this month . It is important that we have as many lenders as possible in this space to share the workload , as if we only have a few players in this market then they are likely to fold under the weight of demand , which will also cause collateral damage in the housing market with delays and disappointments .
I would say that at least half the enquiries we are currently receiving are for low deposit schemes and given the majority of First Time Buyers are unlikely to be paying stamp duty regardless , many will hang back until the current madness is over , meaning we should still see plenty of activity assuming that there are still houses available to buy . Low housing stock with plentiful buyers can only lead to one thing however , higher prices !
Maybe more buyers and sellers out there might look to do the right thing and hopefully there can be good deals for all .
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