Should I Buy a New Build or an Older House?

I often get asked the question, "should I buy a new or older property"? Well here are some thoughts to consider.

Here's an example from Ken who was considering buying a house in Bromsgrove, West Midlands...

There was a £20,000 difference between the price of a new modern 4 bed detached house and a 10 year old house.

5 years from now the new house will be 5 years old and a 10-year old house will be 15 years old. The question was would this difference still remain, or will the older house catch up? New houses are like new cars, they lose value as soon as they become second hand!

What you will find, is that property is like fashion, it comes in and out of style.

A 15-year old house will be competing with the new houses of the day. Over 15 years house specifications improve. A four bedroom house which was built 15 years ago might not have a down stairs cloakroom for example. The new one will. Hence the new one is more desirable and is valued higher.

So my advice to anyone with this dilemma, is go for the property which suits your situation the best.

An older property might have more 'potential', but if you don't have the time to add the potential - there's no point in buying it.

Older houses usually have more land with them, which can be a good thing if you want to extend, add a sun room or landscape the gardens.

It can also very much depend on your lifestyle, commitments, and family circumstances.

When you have young children you may need a property that is 'already done', with such specifications as en-suite bathroom to the master bedroom.

You may be both working full time and don't want to have to work on the house. In this case a newly built house is for you.

If you have the time and/or money to do up an older property, it certainly can pay dividends, especially if you add on the features that everyone wants.

These days things like: downstairs cloakroom, utility room, en-suite bathroom, summer room and home office are all worthy additions to an older house that did not have these as original features. The house next door will always get a better price if it has these features over one that does not.

Remember, a house will have a maximum price in any area at any one time, so don't overdo the modifications. If it can be done in keeping with the style of the original building, you can buy low, invest wisely and make money.

Getting Good Property Buyers For Your Property

While it is an incontestable fact that the global real estate market is going through a rough stretch, the truth of the matter is that people are still buying and selling property. Now if you have a property in the UK that you had developed with a plan to sell at this point in time -and your finances are getting tighter with every passing day, then chances are that you will still be on the lookout for the possibility of getting buyers for it, the roughness of the economic climate notwithstanding. In a similar manner, if you have some property in the UK, and you have fallen into tough financial times that you feel nothing can get you out of short of selling the property, then chances are that you will still be looking to get buyers for it, the fact that the UK property market (as indeed the global property market) is going through a 'bust' period notwithstanding.

If for any of the above reasons, or for any other reason, you are looking to sell your real estate at this point in time, chances are also that you will be looking for the very best buyers.

Criteria for what makes the best real estate buyers will tend to vary from real estate seller to seller, but common features that make the best buyers and which are shared by almost all property sellers include the ability to pay promptly, the ability to pay decent prices for decent real estate and the ability to close deals within reasonable periods of time.

There are real estate buyers who take eons before closing deals, just as there are property buyers who close deals promptly but take eons before paying up and real estate buyers who close deals promptly, pay promptly - but offer indecently low prices; and all these certainly don't make the mark for the 'best property buyers rank.'

Now the way to get the good buyer to ensure that you 'shop' far and wide for them.

As it turns out, most of the real estate sellers who end up being saddled with property buyer who are far from ideal are the house sellers who tend to limit their search for the property buyer, either geographically or logically.

Limiting oneself geographically when searching for house buyer is the situation where one looks for a house buyer under the deluded notion that the buyer has to come from the locality around which the property is located - which especially at a time like this (when very few people have money to purchase real estate) - might be unrealistic.

Why not, then, just advertise the property on the national and perhaps even the international scene, if it is something you can afford? It is really a game of numbers. If you simply put up a 'house for sale' sign in front of the real estate, there is a very strong possibility at a time a like this, that the sign might either not attract any buyer, or if it does, it might just attract a very poor quality property buyer: who either can't pay promptly or cant pay decently.

If you advertise in the national media or on the Internet (where advertisement is typically cheaper, if you go about it the right way) on the other hand, then you get an audience of millions of potential real estate buyer including the very best UK property buyer as well as international property buyers who might be looking to make inroads into the UK, and chances are that you are likely to find a coincidence of needs, with someone seriously looking to buy the property and who is willing to work with the terms you are offering, or on a near compromise, at the very least.