Buying in the UK

gary the great

As you may of seen from my last thread im considering buying a property in Surrey with some mates.

I have no clue about the housing market over here, so im going to go do some reserach now but wanted to get feedback from here to.

The house is big (5 bed) in a decent part of walton on thames near a train station which will bring you to london in 20mins.

Is the property market over here stable?
Will there be much capital appreciation?

The house is costing 290kstg between us

It seems like we'd be getting way more for our money than in Ireland, especially seeing as the market is a bit dodgy over there now.

Whata re your thoughts?

antoinolachtnai

You should check the facts. It looks to me like it takes 29-42 minutes to get to London Waterloo, not 20. This is a big difference.

You need to watch out on the quality of the building. Some of the uk stock is not all that great and doesn't have great foundations (may be true here too).

A lot depends on what the area is like obviously. Is it really a nice place to live?

On the whole it sounds ok to me.

There is a little book you can buy which explains all the different areas of london and gives you an idea about prices and upcoming areas in London.

Best of luck with it!

godtabh

antoinolachtnai wrote:

You need to watch out on the quality of the building. Some of the uk stock is not all that great and doesn't have great foundations (may be true here too).

London has problems with the soil that the foundations are built on. Alot of properties need to be underpinned due to subcidence. Banks will not allow you to buy such a property unless under pinning is carried out. A friend of mine had to wait 4 months for works to done (at the expense of the seller) before the bank would issue the home loan.

London bolder clay causes a lot of problems

gary the great

Well its Surrey not London, but itsd walton on thames which is a 10min drive from kingston which is in London.

I got the train on Saturday and timed it, it took 25mins from walton to waterloo(although there was just one stop).

The area is lovely, plenty of mansions about and not much scum although the roads are taken over by women bringing their kids to school in Porsche 4x4's and landrovers! A ncie leafy suburb the place is with loads of parks etc

iguana

Have you checked out if it is under any Heathrow flight paths? That would be my main worry in south-west London/north Surrey. I was in Richmond park a few weeks ago and the low-flying planes were driving me mad as in the evening they were coming in every 4 minutes.

godtabh

gary the great wrote:

Well its Surrey not London, but itsd walton on thames which is a 10min drive from kingston which is in London.

I think the problem extends along the Thames but is more of a problem in London due to fact that the built up rather than out

A Dub in Glasgo

£295k for a 5 bedroom with good access to London seems a bit on the cheap side to me

gary the great

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

£295k for a 5 bedroom with good access to London seems a bit on the cheap side to me

Well thats the price. it also has a big back garden and garage like most of the Surrey houses.

Re the flight path, theres definelty always planes in the sky but you rarely hear them unless your lookin at them. Has never bothered me!

iguana

gary the great wrote:

Well thats the price. it also has a big back garden and garage like most of the Surrey houses.

Re the flight path, theres definelty always planes in the sky but you rarely hear them unless your lookin at them. Has never bothered me!

Have you been to a viewing or just seen it online? I'm pretty sure I found it online and it seems ok from the description, especially as all the bedrooms are double (if it's the one I'm thinking of). Have you checked out the condition and the rest of the street? As when I was house hunting I saw quite a few houses that were lovely online but awful in reality. In fact the house I did buy had pictures on the website that were of my house at the time the vendor had bought it when it had been well staged and were nothing like what it was actually like. Though I had seen it before it went on the market so had no illusions to be shattered.

Do you currently actually live in walton-on-thames? If not do investigate the flight-paths fully as I'm told that Heathrow use different paths on rotation at different times, so there might be nothing for a month and then a lot of noise the next month. Maybe ask a local if that's not where you currently live. Tbh, it's probably a bit far from Heathrow to have much problem, but it doesn't hurt to ask around.

As for the housing market, I'm no expert and my views are going to be biased by what I want to happen rather than facts. But I believe the UK market in and around London will continue to be strong for the next few years. The Olympics is giving what may prove to be an artificial boost to this region. The amount of development which London is due to see in the next 5 years will keep unemployment low and the need for housing stock high, in what is an already densely populated area. I think 6 years from now things might change but for now property is unlikley to lose value.

Investigate your area though. Some areas in and around Stansted, for example, are becoming less desirable because the airport is being doubled in size for 2012. And many people are deciding to move rather than deal with the increased noise, while not a lot of people want to move there.