So, let me just set the scene for you; I'm trying to buy a house in Cambridge. To clarify, I'm trying to buy a house in Cambridge that I want to live in myself, that will be the only house I own, and I'm not rich. I bet you can imagine the fun I'm having right now.
For those of you who aren't aware, the market in Cambridge seems similar to London in its ruthlessness, however is thankfully not as expensive. Yet.
A typical viewing scenario goes like this:
1) See house online during the week.
2) Book viewing for the weekend.
3) Turn up along with a queue of other potential buyers.
4) Walk around bumping into other people, not having your questions answered by the agents.
5) Get a phone call on Monday (or earlier) asking you if you want to put in an offer, and by the way, the asking price has already been achieved by some number of other bidders. P.S are you a cash buyer?
Now I just want to make this clear; any old shit sells! We've seen nice places, and right wrecks and everything follows this pattern, because the wrecks are a bit cheaper, so for £10k cash, someone will do the place up and either rent it out or pop it back on the market for a profit quick as a flash. It's infuriating.
The best, and by best I mean worst, estate agency here (let's call them 'Shrub' for anonymity and all that) have got the system sorted to a tee. They post a picture of the outside of a house online, a location, and a number of bedrooms (typically 3). Everyone flocks to it with NO OTHER INFORMATION. A queue of people forms on Saturday traipsing around the place, which is inevitable rubbish, so many of us have wasted at least an hour of our lives. On top of it all, the agent who meets you at the property can't answer any questions about it because, hilariously, this is the first time they've seen it too! On Monday morning, chirpy as anything, I get a phone call asking "we're just wondering if you have any feedback about the house?" "Hi, thanks yes we won't be proceeding any further with this property", and in my head "because it's a pile of wank." But they have offers on it anyway so it doesn't really matter to them, they'd just like to have more to push up the price you see.
Let's just imagine for one moment that we've finally tracked down a nice house, in our price range, and we want to put an offer in on it. So we do. Woo! But also, eek; scary! But don't worry, because within two days you get told that the offer you put in, at the asking price, has been topped by someone offering £20k more. Do you want to increase your offer? No, fuck off, we've hit the limit of the potential mortgage a bank would lend us. Someone will battle it out though, I bet.
Back to square one for us. It seems whatever we look at, will actually sell for at least £10k more than the guide price so we've got to start looking at lower initial value properties so we can eventually pay through the teeth for one and whatever price we end at is still within budget. Funtimes. Not.
