Diary 2 - Yes but no but yes but...
2 October 1992
The house that I nicknamed RiverNear was appealing primarily because it...
...was a 30-second walk to this:
A tale of four agents in one day.
Agent One tells me that, of the two houses I've come to view in Raynes Park, one is now under offer and they can't reach the owner of the other.
Agent Two shows me three other properties in addition to the two we were scheduled to view. He is very inquisitive and, after this one session, he knows my requirements better than any other agent.
Agent Three shows me three houses in Twickenham. He's very patient and polite and professional - and poorly informed. Are the vendors open to offers? He does not know. He does not care that he does not know. We get nowhere fast.
Agent Four is the poor bloke whose office I stumble into at the end of this exhausting day. He is extremely knowledgeable about his clients and we arrange some viewings.
5 October
Agent Four shows me a house that needs work and tells me that buyers don't necessarily have to wait for completion before starting work on the property. If the seller agrees, work can begin after exchange of contracts. It is an intriguing idea, but he can't answer my one and only question: what happens if the buyer does a lot of work and the seller fails to complete the transaction? [I recalled this conversation years later and wrote an article on the topic. I quoted a solicitor, who said that he would advise any seller NOT to allow the buyer to alter the property before completion. If the buyer were eager to start early, then the buyer should complete early.]
Affordable? In 1992, the average price for a house in the UK (according to Halifax) was £64,000. In 2006, it was £181,000 - roughly three times higher.
In the 24 years between 1983 and 2006, average prices rose in all but five years. ALL of the declining years occurred just after the boom of the late 1980s: 1990-1993; 1995. (In 1994, there was a very modest increase of 0.5%).
The biggest annual rise during those 24 years occurred in 1988, with a rise of 23.2%. The next year - 1989 - was almost as good, jumping 21%.
The decline began right after these two sharply increasing years, and it continued for four more years.
In my househunting year (1992), prices declined 5.8%—the biggest drop of the five declining years.
15 October
An agent in Raynes Park phones me regarding a house with an asking price of nearly £130,000 but with an owner keen to sell. How keen? Maybe £105,000, volunteers the agent. I'm not interested, but this big drop in price shows that we are still solidly in a buyer’s market. Time, I feel, is on my side. The longer I wait, the more that prices will drop.
12 November
The agent handling RiverNear phones and asks if I'm still looking. But only when I actually ask about RiverNear does he say that it is still available, and still asking £90,000. I'm genuinely surprised because reductions of £2,000 to £5,000 have been common.
16 November
After a few days away, a blizzard of particulars awaits me. It now takes me the better part of the entire day to organise a proper filing system. It may sound like a boring detail, but failing to organise file folders at the very beginning resulted in additional work and unnecessary confusion in the long run.
Receiving particulars from many agents in many areas, I have clearly bitten off more than I can chew. But I refuse to chew less, tempting though it is. No pain, no gain.
17 November
A Kingston agent shows me a repossession in New Malden that had been on offer for £115,000, is now £100,000, needs a minimum of £15,000 to £20,000 worth of work and, he says, will be worth £90,000 when renovated. I I ask him if the vendor would consider £60,000, and he thinks it is worth a try. But even at that price, I'm not quite tempted. The house needed rebuilding, not merely redecorating. And the property would have been uninhabitable for several months. (Kingston looking toward Hampton Wick, photo above.)
[Nowadays, with buy-to-let and property investment commonplace, tackling such projects is not unusual. In the early 1990s, renovation jobs were for professionals. Afterward, I regretted not having put in a spectacularly low offer, but this regret was professional, not personal: the journalist in me wanted to know if the vendor—a building society—would have said Yes, No or Let’s Discuss to an offer nearly half of their original asking price. In the intense buyers’ market of the early 1990s, an apparently derisory £60,000 offer to a building-society owner just might have been acceptable.]
When we leave, I notice a For Sale board two houses away. Later, I learn that this house is in decent condition, has a sizable extension, and an asking price of £125,000.
24 November
Mmy search suddenly seems to be over when I view a marvellously extended house in New Malden. It is spacious, in excellent condition, in a quiet and pleasant location, and reasonably priced. [The owner was so desperate to sell that he had lowered the price of his large four-bedroom house to the price of a small three-bedder.] I'm tempted to make an offer on the spot but decide to sleep on it. On my drive home, I am excited and relieved – but I also have a queasy feeling in my stomach.
25 November
Morning brings clarity: this large New Malden house is TooRemote. I will not make an offer. I'm now in a dilemma. When I first viewed the house and was tempted by its low price, I was very pleased that my house-hunting days were finally over. Now I feel compelled to widen my search even further.
I want to register by telephone with a wide array of estate agents in west and southwest London but I don’t have local phone books. So I return to the area and drive around. I register with a few agencies in areas I’d never heard of before.
28 November
My post contains two sets of particulars from an agency I did not register with in an area I did not even visit (because it was clearly out of bounds financially, or so I had thought). One property is too small, but the other is the jackpot – not the handsomest of three-bed houses but acceptable enough in a terrific location. Kew Gardens has underground and national rail service, the famous botanical gardens, and many nearby parks. My phone call to set up a viewing also clarifies the mystery of how they got my contact details: one of the agencies I called in on during my drive-round passed on my details to other agencies in that chain. The other mystery is why a house in this posh area is in my price range.
29 November
I view the house (which I later nickname ChequeredPast) and, although it has fewer (by two!) rooms than TooRemote, the location swings the balance. Afterwards, I drive around, noting nearby houses for sale with other agents.
30 November
I phone the other agents, but all of their houses are much more expensive. Now, however, the second mystery is solved. An agent tells me that ChequeredPast is in a small pocket of council houses, some of which have become privately owned. I am glad that I know this potentially important fact, and I would have been even happier if I had learned it from my estate agent rather than a competitor.
1 December
Originally asking £90,000, ChequeredPast is already down to £85,000 but has been on the market barely a month. We haggle and they accept my offer, subject to survey as well as contract, of £83,000.
We agree to try for completion by Christmas, which means that I have to speed up my mortgage application.
The end of the story?
Mere chance, it seems, has played a key role in my finding ChequeredPast—an estate agency I stumbled upon in desperation in an area I was utterly unfamiliar with passed on my contact information to other offices.
Luck may have indeed played a part, but it all stemmed from my increasingly pro-active aggressive search. As scientists well know: chance favours the prepared. And, as fishermen well know: the wider the net, the more fish you catch.
If, for whatever reason, ChequeredPast does not become mine, TooRemote is still available, and it would be a good consolation prize. And RiverNear is also still on the market, now, finally, reduced by £5,000. In that vast ocean, there is still plenty of choice.
Adapted from What Mortgage, May 1993
Go to Diary of a First-Time Housebuyer Part 3