Buying our first property in an overpriced market

Due to the lovely uncertainty of Brexit we have been delaying getting onto the property ladder. Looking at some statistics it even looked like house prices might fall in the UK depending on the outcome of the negotiations.

I remember talking to my friend who has bought the house just before the house prices drop of 2009. We spoke around three years later and he would still not cover his outstanding mortgage by selling then.

I was petrified that the same might happen to us. On the other hand I constantly reminded myself that timing any market is a foolish game.

Country is currently getting ready to elect new parliament following years of complete fiasco negotiations and parliament blocking UK leaving the European Union. I won’t share my views on referendum, Brexit or election. It’ll just be better this way.

The fact that two prime ministers and majority Conservative government were unable to resolve this issue that they got themselves into has finally pushed us to look at buying. Times are very uncertain, but as far as I am concerned this is a sensible part of our ten year plan.
​
We thought that buying before Christmas in these uncertain times will be easy. Well it is not! Properties in good locations are disappearing really quickly. We recently went to see house which needed a lot of work including some new windows, doors and bathroom has also been trashed. Even doing the work ourselves it would probably cost in region of £10000 to get it to the right state. 

On arriving at the property we were surprised by the estate agents attitude as he was not even trying to sell that property. He has told us that there were already three offers at asking price and that property will be sold in next three days.
With the work this house required and the time it would take it made no sense to bid higher than £175k asking price. Especially knowing that there already were people prepared to pay over that. Slightly mad if you ask me and not making any sense for us. We wanted to add value to this property and we would not be adding value at these prices.
We called to make an offer which we thought was the highest we could go to for the purchase to still make sense the offer was £162500. Why did we do it? We did it in case estate agents were bluffing about the offers. It does not look like they did!

We are still looking and will most likely now buy property, which we will re-mortgage and rent out in two years through a Ltd. Company due to tax rules. Not really sure how we will set this up with sale to the Ltd. company etc. We will than proceed to buy a property which we will live in for further eight years.
Moral – properties in good locations are still overpriced due to the demand and that is unlikely to change.