any advise on whether to buy or wait?

ski

this is a bit of a rigmarole so bear with me - i bought an apartment 5.5 years ago (owe €180k on mortgage now) and my husband and i bought a house over a year ago which we did up over many months (owe approx 380K on it) we have just relocated to the west & have had the apartment on the market since nov & intend to rent the dublin house, should it all go wrong for us in the west

we had put a booking deposit on a house (new) we liked in the west, assuming the apartment would be sold when we needed to close complete sale - the apartment sale agreed has just fallen through - i am now torn as to whether to chance proceeding with house in west & draw down the full price out it (our salaries would about cover it) and hope for the best in relation to apartment sale & hope to pay off a lump sum??? my heart quickens in panic though as i think of us exposed to all that debt..... should we just hold tight on buying in the west until we have the money in our hands so to speak? my apartment is in a really good spot & they were selling in approx 6 weeks with waiting lists last year - times they have a changed.....

any opinions would be greatly appreciated

dodgyme

Jez I dont know. The young lads at work are now not buying and they have decide to wait a year or two. Why didnt you just sell the apartment when you bought the house.? sounds like you made a decision to bite of more then you can chew. However I know you were trying to do the best based on your circumstances. How long can you hold out?

Afuera

Why not rent for the first year in the West until you see how things pan out? A high level of debt with all the eggs in the same basket is not where you want to be.

ski

i know, i now wish we did sell dublin apartment before buying house- i suppose i had it for over 5 years, bought it when i was single and we could get a mortgage for the house in dublin without selling it- and everyone said it would be mad to sell........famous last words
both mortgages can be covered by renting them but am very nervous of drawing down another mortgage in the west for alota money without the apartment sold - renting in the west is probably the safest option

Afuera

ski wrote:

and everyone said it would be mad to sell........famous last words

Funny what a difference a year can make. At the moment everyone I've talked to says "you'd be mad to buy now".

ski wrote:

renting in the west is probably the safest option

If I was in your shoes, I would take the safest option. I don't see any good reason to expose yourself to such a high level of risk.

dodgyme

I would try to sell the apartment as soon as you can because if prices do drop and it looks like they will, you wont know how long it will be before your apartment in dublin will make money again and how far the drop will go.Now might be your last chance to make a bitta cash:cool:

Zambia

You have made a crap load of cash on the apartment if you brought in 2001 so its not all bad. You may lose money on it as the market slides off a bit but it could be a nice rentable retirement package.

I mean may be hard to sell this appartment now and easier to rent the it?

May be easier to sell the house , but I detect you dont want to do that. If you dont then rent in the west look around at what is availble.

I mean your in a good position you have two propertys that appear to be solid if you can rent out both then you are in a good position as the rent from them both should cover the rental in the west ?

However renting to houses may lead to hassle..

Best of luck

seamus

It's a landlord's market in Dublin now for apartments. There are a lot of people disposing of apartments at the moment, so apartments to rent out are scarce on the ground. If you rent/continue to rent out the apartment, then you're going to get a good return on it, and you could use that to pay off the €180k you owe on it.

I would say dispose of the Dublin house, as you stand to lose the most money on that in the long run - you will always be able to rent an apartment in a good location to a couple or a single person who want their privacy. You may not have the same success getting renters for a whole house.

Unless I'm completely miscalculating, disposing of the Dublin house and buying the house in the west would also expose you to least level of debt.

As it stands, you have Apartment + House = €560k of debt.

If you sell the house, you have 180k debt in the apartment, and (hopefully) some liquid cash from the sale of the house. Unless you're looking at a mortgage of > €380k on the house in the west, then your overall debt level is lower, and thus your overall risk & outgoing costs are lower.

In terms of whether it's a good idea to buy now, that's up to you. It's a bad time to buy if you're looking to sell in 3 years' time for profit. If you're looking for a long term (>10 years) family home though, there's very little reason not to buy.

tHE vAGGABOND

Your choice all depends on the locations of your second house and apartment. If one is in a crappy area and the other in a better area, sell the one in the worse area..

What seamus is saying about apartments is right, if your apartment is a nice place in a great area it will rent for good cash and quickly, but if its not a great place and/or in the middle of nowhere then he is wrong

But as somone looking for an apartment right now, there are indeed plenty floating around, and lots of them seem to have been on the market since before christmas. I saw a place the other night, and it was 390, where an almost identical place in the same block [1 floor down] was only 370. There are a lot of owners selling, and trying to get 12 months ago [aka unrealisitc]prices. Those places wont sell.

All that said, my family are trying to talk me into getting a house, saying a house in the burbs is a better long term investment at todays prices..

IMHO, it sounds like you guys made your choice to sell apartment. I sure you had reasons for that. So stick with selling the apartment, maybe look at dropping the price by a couple of quid if you want it sold quicker?