Well, we did think we had found somewhere we wanted to buy - and offered the asking price - but the owner (who is in the UK and can only be contacted by email) decided he wanted to "think about it"... and that was 10 days ago. I have chased the agent, but they are as unhappy as we. So? - who knows? Anyway, today I went and did a drive-by on another place. It could be ok, so we are going to see it tomorrow, but they are asking top-dollar and I have a feeling that even if it is ok, G will want some changes - so if it IS what we want, they will have to come down in price*. The property market here is frustrating. (well, I guess it is pretty frustrating everywhere), but with the positive being that we are sitting on the money and in a pretty nice house while we search.
The sequence of hunting is that (in theory) G is on the list for each of the agents, and gets email when something comes up. I, in the meantime, go onto the web-crawler house-sales sites that piggy-back on the agents´sites. These mega-sites show what has just come on the market anywhere and actually contain some data that beats the actual agent sites - like the date the property came to market and date of changes to price. It is a good job these mega-sites exist, as the agents are pretty poor when it comes down to doing business.
The agents also have a technique of running an open-house on places on a particular date, or bunching viewings to suit their schedule. The actual owners are almost never available, and the agents haven´t done their homework, so there is a constant frustration of their not knowing information required. This isn´t esoteric information either, but the sort of data you would think would be in their initial questionnaire for the vendor - stuff like date of original construction, materials used and changes / additions made (as almost every bungalow on the island has been extended).
Luckily, there are a number of corporate and / or government sites that are available and which can be checked - so they have records of the property previous sales - (even including price!), details of when / if fibre has been installed, flood risk of locality, bus routes and timetables, a map of airbnb and lettings - and a few more (a bit Singapore-big-brother in some ways).
Throw in google maps and street view and you are writing-off most places without having to move more than a mouse.
"Slightly off the beaten track"
One thing the agents do have in common is a VERY good photographer - one who can make any place look acceptable by judicious use of angles and lenses - and omission of areas you might want to see (I want to see the garage more than anything, but they are very rarely shown). G meanwhile can spot a milllimeter of mould in a bathroom from 50 feet! Despite having the time, we do not really want to get into buying somewhere that needs work doing - mainly as we just don´t know the "good" tradesmen, other than they are the ones who are fully booked!
We have decided we would prefer to live on the south and preferably near Castletown (where we are at the moment). The north of the island seems to be dismissed as uninhabitable by everyone who doesn´t live there - and the northern half of the island also is where the TT runs (and the Manx GP for that matter). Down here we have the "Southern 100" but that is shorter and less days, so can be (almost) ignored.
The Major issue with the TT is not so much the noise as the inconvenience, because if you live within the course (all 40 miles of it) you are pretty much trapped while the TT is on - with only a very narrow, very, very congested, lane to get under the course to the "outside).
Having said that, I was looking (online) at a place yesterday which actually backed onto the course at a corner where it comes down to a roundabout as the riders come off the mountain section. The agent couldn´t really not mention that, so listed it as having a good view of the TT!!
One thing that we have changed is what we are looking for. We started wanting a bungalow (for my knees), but realised that pretty much every bungalow has been extended upwards, thus has some stairs. And once you accept stairs, you might as well just look at houses, for they are actually better value than bungalows!
Any chance we might go full-circle and start looking at apartments? (answer, probably not)
well, we went and saw it this morning, and when we got back in the car, I just said to G "No, no, no, no, no - and I don´t think I like the Port St Mary area either". It was awful, with so many faults you could only admire the elderly lady estate agent who kept commenting about the "amount of space" and "quality flooring". I called it floorboard-printed-linoluem, which didn´t go down well - a bit like the flooring which was rucked-up in a couple of places. It was generally tatty (eg a few taps were dripping), had neighbours windows overlooking the bedrooms, not enough drive space to even turn a car and the ever present smell of, well I leave that to your imagination. No, a thousand times no.
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