Gone in 27 minutes: how long did it take you to decide to buy your home?

The article is interesting in several ways; showing the over-heated London property market for one.

I think it is perhaps doing an injustice to buyers to simply quote Zoopla’s figures which may be only partially reported. Following Which?s link takes me to a newspaper rather than the source however:
” The average house hunter now spends a total of 75 hours over the course of 15 weeks in their search, and attends an average of eight viewings before they find “the one”, the survey found. Residents of Wales take the longest, with buyers searching for an average of 83 hours over 18 weeks, while the quickest property hunters are those in the East Midlands, who take 62 hours (over 12 weeks). ”

Funnily enough most people have spent their lives living in house and visiting other people’s homes so arguably people are far better versed in “house” and areas than they are in sofas, cars etc which the quoted Zoopla says we spend more time on.

” The average house hunter makes a decision on buying their new pad within just 27 minutes of walking through the door while almost a quarter (24 per cent) knew it was for them in 10 minutes or less. This compares to 88 minutes selecting the perfect sofa.”

The 28 minutes seems to ignore all the initial background research people put in to choosing a home – the area they want and can afford, the types of properties on offer, the prices, the facilities nearby such as schools and public transport, and so on. And having found something and then made the 28 minute decision to make an offer there follows weeks of time to confirm that initial choice – mortgage, survey, solicitors reports………. Does all this effort also go into buying a sofa?

When properties are in short supply and areas popular it is inevitable that people (hopefully having done the background work) will have to make a quick decision to proceed but, even then, so much depends upon the appeal of the buyer to the vendor – ability to complete quickly without complications for example. The temptation to short-cut the process doers need to be resisted otherwise it could prove to be a very costly mistake that might trap you in the wrong property for a long time.

Best to do the work, take your time and make a properly considered decision.

Whenever we’ve moved we’ve always done at least two different viewings, prior to my letting SWMBO negotiate the offer. But, as Patrick says, the house buying situation is different in other parts of the country. London, of course, has a significant issue, exacerbated by so many companies using the place as their HQ. Oddly, many of these same companies then proceed to pour petrol onto an already overheated market, by subsiding the fist purchase, paying more as a base salary and advancing housing allowances, all of which then simply adds to the problem. Perhaps some of these companies – such as charities – could move their head offices to more rural locations.

When we bought our current home it was after many months of looking at properties, deciding on a maximum price, refining our requirements over so many criteria, thinking about the best style and layout to suit our existing furniture, and considering different locations. Doing all that thoroughly means you can screen out hundreds of properties without looking at them and, for the remainder, you will know instinctively what is potentially suitable.

The agents were sending us details of new instructions so we were kept up to date with the market, prices, and supply & demand in different areas. We viewed quite a number, if only to see how they worked as living spaces. We were already aware of a lot of the homes coming on the market because we passed them frequently and could tell immediately whether or not they were likely runners. For any viewing we always arrived early in the area or village and had a good look round to see what the immediate environs were like. By the time we crossed the threshold we were fairly sure whether or not we could buy it. We never failed to go through with a booked viewing but with some we were in and out pretty quickly.

Something we soon learned was to work out which rooms were not shown in the estate agent’s photographs and pay particular attention to those because they were where the snags were. Also think about what is not mentioned in the text. Agents mustn’t conceal relevant information or details but they are not obliged to reveal everything in their sales brochure. Sometimes agents only allow fifteen minutes per viewing so it’s really not surprising if a decision is made in quick time. Most prospective buyers know that they can withdraw from a purchase without obligation and without penalty at any time up to exchange of contracts so making an offer and agreeing on a price is just one step in a process. In the end we settled on a house on a small new development; we had seen the plans and visited the ‘marketing suite’ at the beginning of our search but did not take it very seriously until they had actually started building the larger properties and we could get a better impression of the layout and quality of construction. That was several months later. We made our decision to buy very quickly after going inside the shell as by that time we had worked out exactly what we wanted to achieve. The house has a few drawbacks and some things that could have been arranged better but it also has some really excellent features and it is good to have everything brand new and unused; nothing is compromised by a previous owner’s taste or standard of DIY competence, and that proved to be a very important consideration after looking at lots of other properties.

So, as Malcolm says, and is often the case, the Intro does not tell the whole story and the decision to buy or not to buy takes days or weeks.

I bought a house just over a year ago. The accompanied viewing was for only 30 minutes because the estate agent’s rep had another appointment. They said that they could probably give me the key to do a more thorough inspection of the unoccupied property, but either the office manager or owner declined because the house was still partially furnished and contained personal effects. The agent was happy for me to do more accompanied viewings and their rep sat on the sofa looking at Facebook while me and a friend explored each room, the garage, loft and garden. We must have visited six times in all and were allowed 45 minutes after the first visit because the rep’s next viewing was nearby.

It was really useful to take a friend because we could look at different things, compare notes and decide what to check on the next visit.

I had looked at new homes being built in the area but what was on offer seemed very poor value for money.