Aibu to think homeowners are being unreasonable about prices?

[Justawonderer2018]

I live in London so maybe this is very niche but I'm a first time buyer and am shocked at some of the prices people are demanding for their flats.

Im looking at 1 bed flats and it's clear some of them are way over priced and that they're not selling plus the market is falling yet owners are holding out for more.

One flat I saw last year was on for 600k. Way over priced for what it was even though it was a lovely flat. It dropped to 585 earlier this year and is now on for 565. Even still it's probably not worth more than 499k but apparently the seller won't entertain anything less than the current valuation even though he's been waiting over a year to sell. He bought it for a lot less so it's not like he is losing money.

Similarly saw another flat on top of a shop - nice but very small. The owner wants 475k. I would say it's worth about 400k. She bought it almost 20 years ago and it's a rental property for her.

The estate agent told me people are just stubborn but it seems to me to be pure greed. At the same time it's clear that these sellers can and will simply wait till someone comes along who can afford their vastly inflated prices.

Im slightly baffled and irritated

It's a business deal:

Sellers want the highest possible price; buyers the lowest
Whether you are a buyer or a seller, don't get emotional about the price of the other side

If the houses are overpriced they won’t sell, I personally would not view a place and put in a very low offer because I think it is overpriced. If it is overpriced the sellers will realise in time and drop the price, their expectations will change and you can offer at this point.

I would actually welcome a price drop as it makes moving up the ladder much easier.

I agree with GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER it’s not sustainable. Yes it was hard in the past but nothing like now, I grew up in a leafy SW neighbourhood & went to schools in neighbouring boroughs. The vast majority of my friends had parents with normal jobs & many with only 1 parent working & they could afford a terrace house. The parents with the good jobs, could afford the detached with the off street parking. A friends house in Wimbledon village cost around 1m in the late 90s now that would cost at least 4m. There are houses in Wandsworth that have increased in value by 1-2m in 10 years. Very few jobs pay wages that can pay those mortgages & a lot of people (myself included) have gained lots of equity. The cycle only works if people can keep getting on the ladder at the bottom rung but that’s too high now. A standard 2 bed flat seems to be 500-600k these days, will that flat be worth 700-800k in 5 years, I doubt it.

If they need to sell they'll take less. If they're happy where they are but 600k and not a penny less would mean they can pack in their jobs and realise their dream of becoming rare chicken breeders in mid Wales then they might as well wait it out and see what happens.

The answer is to get away from London! I've just bought a 3 bed flat with gorgeous views in a lovely little town on the edge of a national park for 100k, an hour from 2 big cities. I can't get an Ethiopian takeaway at 2am any more and there's no night bus but my god it's worth it.

In my area where we bought fairly recently there are a lot of houses that have been sat on the market for well over a year, I think that the houses are overpriced and obviously the other buyers agree.

We reduced our house because it wasn’t getting many viewings, we wanted to sell it and as soon as we dropped the price by £15k, we had four offers.
I do think there is an element of greed, our estate agent said he felt his most difficult customers were people who bought 20+ years ago. Bit of a sweeping generalisation but from our viewings, it was the empty nesters who were asking too much each time. One said that she wanted to have enough money so that she could buy her son a house as she was sick of him still coming back home between rentals

Over half the houses brought to market subsequently get withdrawn after failing to achieve a sale.

So yes, it's perfectly fair to describe at least half the vendors on the property market as unreasonable... not to mention greedy and deluded and time wasters.

More grammatical than spelling...

They should have went...
We done it...

Sorry! Wrong thread.

Would you have the same opinion if you were the one selling the property ?

So yes, it's perfectly fair to describe at least half the vendors on the property market as unreasonable... not to mention greedy and deluded and time wasters.

That’s bonkers. They are putting their properties on the market to see if they can sell it for a price they’d be willing to sell for. Whose time are they wasting? What’s greedy in ‘I’d be prepared to move at x price, but it’s not worth it to me below that, so if I can’t achieve that I’ll stay put.’ They’re not holding a gun to anyone’s heads. Should they be forced to sell so that would be buyers’ feelings aren’t hurt?

People who aren’t prepared to pay that much but view the place anyway are the time wasters. You could make an argument that they’re wasting estate agents’ time, but it’s up to the agent whether they’re willing to take on a property.

I’ve never been in that position - when we sold we absolutely needed to move, but thankfully it was a sellers market at that point in time and we got more than we expected or were willing to sell for, but the flip side was that the place we were buying was correspondingly higher priced. People’s selling decisions don’t happen in a vacuum.

There’s a house on my road that went on a few months ago at £825, it’s now been reduced to £679 and still hasn’t sold. In a case like this, do people think the estate agents are giving bad advice - how could an initial valuation be so far out?

Yes it's clear from a lot of the responses on this thread that vendors are greedy and defensive.

There's simply no point saying I can put it on for whatever price I want and it's not my problem when it's clear that it's too much being demanded. We have a serious housing problem with people on average salaries being unable to afford less than average starter flats. And some of that is very seriously down to greed.

If it’s on for too much then a property won’t sell. The market finds its own level, sooner or later.
London is one of the most expensive cities on the planet, property is not cheap.

We were looking to trade up but decided against as it wasn’t a long term move. The market is definitely dodgy at the moment. It’s disconcerting to see properties like the below with huge price drops in relatively short timeframes & they still look overpriced! and yet I’ve seen MN threads where offering 10% below asking price is akin to eating babies
m.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/46899095?search_identifier=a26dc6ba859a83d72c1efc0f0ca6a801

m.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/48486751?search_identifier=a26dc6ba859a83d72c1efc0f0ca6a801

m.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/47598843?search_identifier=95c38c2b8eb706d67f7c8bc69b6b25b2

m.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/47064583?search_identifier=bb7bd28b6b590c59f5fec2dd77151a64

m.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/47400528?search_identifier=c4a0a7959a1ab36ccfae28955fb34a65

You seem pretty greedy and defensive to me, OP. You're looking at properties you can't afford and perceiving their sellers to be greedy because they won't drop the price to suit your budget. Maybe you should cut your coat according to your cloth.

With regard to Kintan's point, the estate agents haven't necessarily over valued. The market is stagnant due to the Brexit shadow.There just aren't the buyers out there.
In a lot of cases currently, houses are not selling even at a what would be considered a reasonable price for the location. Buyers lack confidence and are waiting to better understand the effect Brexit will have on the economy- and that includes house prices.

There's simply no point saying I can put it on for whatever price I want and it's not my problem when it's clear that it's too much being demanded. We have a serious housing problem with people on average salaries being unable to afford less than average starter flats. And some of that is very seriously down to greed.

That’s totally illogical. Are you suggesting that people should take less than they are offered for their property - and less than they need to buy their next place - as a public service?

Or that once people list a place they should be obliged to sell it for whatever they can get, rather than deciding they’re only willing to move if it will fund the place they want to move to?

Logical extension, are you saying everyone should be forced to sell every five years to ensure liquidity in the market and keep prices down?

I get that you’re frustrated but you are lashing out at the wrong people. You don’t seem to understand how markets work, or what the vast majority of people do with every penny they get from a house sale.

Quick reminder that if most vendors weren’t ‘greedy’ (which I assume you use to mean wanting to live somewhere bigger/nicer with a mortgage they can afford), many wouldn’t put their homes on the market at all, driving down supply, and you’d be even more fucked.

Seriously OP. Think it through.

The problem is the market enables this, it’s one of the biggest evils of modern life IMO. There needs to be caps on property prices, having a home should be an achievable thing for everyone, not a profit making exercise. I really can’t muster any sympathy for people who own a property but are struggling to make a profit on it. Boohoo, you can’t move. You own a place already, security that’s been made unachievable for many people because of out of control capitalism

There's simply no point saying I can put it on for whatever price I want and it's not my problem when it's clear that it's too much being demanded

As someone way up the thread said, a house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. What the OP thinks it's worth is irrelevant. Estate agents and vendors will stick property on the market at as high a price as they think they can get away with it. If you see a house valued at £500k but are only prepared to pay £400k for it then that's what you offer. Nobody is forcing you into spending more than you want.

It's the ultimate in free market economics in that demand and supply totally dictates prices. Demand in the South East has been crazily high, so prices have risen hugely. In other parts of the UK, we haven't seen the huge rises or stagnating market which Londoners are talking about.

I really can’t muster any sympathy for people who own a property but are struggling to make a profit on it. Boohoo, you can’t move. You own a place already, security that’s been made unachievable for many people because of out of control capitalism

Who’s asking for sympathy on this thread? The OP seems to think people should list homes she wants for what she’s willing to pay, and if there’s a mismatch between what would make it worth their while to life and what OP thinks it’s worth, then she should win out or it’s ‘greedy’. Which is strange logic.

If a seller gets 3 estate agents round and they all appear equally good (or as awful as each other) you probably go on who says they can get the most for it, it’s human nature, so some will overvalue as routine.

To the person who said you either want to sell or you don’t there’s a third level, I’ll sell if someone makes me an offer worth taking, but I don’t need to if it doesn’t give me enough to make it worth my whole.

It's not greedy and defensive to realise that on average or better than average or even good salary you should be able to afford property in your area without moving an hour out to commute in with all the negative repercussions that has on the subsequent location.

Furthermore in my last 18 months of looking a lot of the vendors I've encountered with unrealistic/greedy valuations of their house are not looking to trade up but have them as buy to let's. I should have made that clearer in my OP but I thought that was pretty obvious.

As much as people are bleating on on this thread about being stuck and needing a high price to move up, I've seen that actually there is a significant proportion of vendors who are not in that position but who have these starter flats as rentals and are trying to massively profiteer.

If you've been looking at properties you consider over valued for 18 months surely that must tell you the property you want in a location you want is out of your price range. Or is that too logical for you? Why should a buy to let landlord sell at a low price? You either pay the market value or you don't buy but it seems you're currently just wasting everyone's time.