..to think a lot of large houses will come on to the market?

[Whatarisk]

AIBU to assume that larger more expensive houses will start to appear on the property market?

My house is currently up for sale. We’d like to upsize. DH doesn’t think the property market will be affected much and if anything, people in larger houses will be put off listing their home. I think the opposite will be true.

Our jobs are relatively secure (in the sense that v few can be 100% confident of total job security right now) and I’m of the opinion that we sell ours, move in with my parents and hope something comes up. There are no properties that we are interested in currently but I’d rather sell before the market dips too much.

Interested in people’s views.

My house is on the market was just pre Covid and I won’t be moving much on price because the houses that I would want to buy I know won’t move on price so if I did sell I wouldn’t be able to buy. This has happened in the area I live in in a couple of market dips. People in big houses are more likely to wait it out and the area is mainly a retirement area and other jobs are secure.

There's also the small issue about increased taxes to pay for the pandemic. If that burden is only on the younger generations that's even less disposable income for the wider economy.

The problem with holding out for a probate ‘bargain’ is that they often need gutting to bring them up to modern decorative standards. Good Kitchens and bathrooms don’t come cheap. And when you factor in needing to skim over artex, remove ugly 60s and 70s home ‘improvements’ like pine cladding etc, replace an ancient boiler, re-lay a crumbling driveway and an dread 1970s patio, you are talking into the many tens if not hundreds of thousands. The bulk of the value of any house is determined by the location and the footprint. Interior condition doesn’t impact the price as much as you might think it does. A house with a fabulous new kitchen that appeals to most people’s tastes will sell faster but it won’t necessarily be worth All that much more, and not necessarily more than it cost to fit.

If you can find a similar house with kitchens and bathrooms that are already done in a way you actually like then you are probably better off going for that, unless you can afford to just have what you like for the hell of it.

We're retired and live in a 4/5 bed detached property. At Christmas, we were planning to make this the year we downsized into a bungalow somewhere in a different area, nearer my DH's family, and had done some pre move work on the house with that in mind.

Lockdown has made us completely re-consider and we're staying put for at least another 3 years for financial and practical reasons - all other things being equal! We have lots of friends in a similar situation and of the same opinion. .

I don't think there will be a huge surge in property coming to market either, when we're all free to move once again.

@MamaFrey29 we were looking in north London and it was an utter nightmare.
I think every home we looked at bar 2 (moving for school catchment) was owned by an over 60 who "was thinking about selling"
All had lived there 20+ years and were delusional about property condition, desirability and value. And while you can tell someone their house isn't worth it if no one is budging and there is now pressure to sell what are you going to do? other than overpay slightly on a house been sold due to acrimonious divorce

Let’s me take me, mid fifties, no mortgage, last DC is looking to buy first home. I want to downsize now to a bungalow but I wouldn’t because any spare equity will bump up my pension pot, so I hold on until prices recover.

But if they do drop when will that be? And what happens if lots are in the same boat? If you want to boost your pension at some point you need to sell or stay out & live on less.

Where I live houses are about 1-1.2m. on average which has been the same price for at least 5 yrs & actually dropped. One of the reasons the prices have done this is the people who have been here yrs take the lower offers as they paid 100k. This suppressing the prices so those who paid 1.2m & want 1.4m after 5 yrs and doing work don't get it & are stuck.

We want to downsize , and in fact had the place on the market , but took it off the market when lockdown was announced
We’ll probably wait it out and go back on the market this time next year
We decided we didn’t want viewers at the moment , just in case they bought the virus with them

OP if your thinking about older people in 3/4 bedroom houses dying there might be more now but less over the winter or next couple of years.
Many of their families might decide that they are better moving into the parents house and selling their smaller property or taking a mortgage and buying out siblings that way.

So no I can't see a sudden rush of properties on the market.

We are hoping that increased wfh means we can move out of London although I was discussing this with friends yesterday who want to
do similar & if this becomes a big trend it will have a big impact on the economy. Less need for expensive big shiny offices, reduced footfall on public transport & in the likes of Pret or the bars after work.

What about all the buy you let's who rely on overseas air bnb or short term let's? They could be in trouble.

They will almost certainly be considering letting them on a normal tenancy, at least for a year or so.

tontie yes I know that but you are going to have to hope for ‘older people’ (over 50???!!! LOL!) to be dying in ENORMOUS numbers before you see any meaningful difference in the number of larger homes coming to the market as a direct result of Covid deaths, and that thankfully isn’t happening. Most of those between 50 and 60 probably still have teen dependents or young adult children who would live in the house themselves for a start, so even if they both died the house probably wouldn’t come to the market.

If you are talking about the homes owned by sole occupants over 80 you might have a point. There will be more than in any other year, yes, but I don’t think we are likely to see any sort of noticeable flooding of the market. If their adult children are in their fifties and sixties themselves then they can probably afford to hang on and wait for any immediate drop in value to recover. Especially if there are several beneficiaries to split the money between so the amounts are not huge to start with.

I had always planned to die in this house (literally - my parents died inside their house of 50 years) and certainly this lockdown has made me realise despite people laughing at surburbs (neither close to inner London nor a country place) I think it works for me - detached house, garden the woods opposite and I work from home so I don't think I do want to move house.

What would make some older people move from expensive houses would be if a £30k a year property tax were brought in which Labour mooted at one point although even then they would probably get some kind of loan and only have to pay it when they die so may not move either.

yes I know that but you are going to have to hope for ‘older people’ (over 50???!!! LOL!) to be dying in ENORMOUS numbers before you see any meaningful difference in the number of larger homes coming to the market as a direct result of Covid deaths,

that's not what I said though. I just talked about your situation & how holding out may be affected by what your neighbours do who may be older & selling for all kind of reasons not just because they died of covid.

If their adult children are in their fifties and sixties themselves then they can probably afford to hang on and wait for any immediate drop in value to recover. Especially if there are several beneficiaries to split the money between so the amounts are not huge to start with.

Depends on the market because if the adult children who inherit, inherit something that has already increased in value why hold out for price increases, most would want to get the cash.

We were just about to put our 5 bed detached home on the market, before the Covid breakout, as we really want to downsize to a 3 bed bungalow, so once the property market is going again we will move. I am sure there will be plenty of larger homes on the market, needs change regardless of the market conditions. We are quite expecting to get less for our home, but where we buy will be cheaper to.

Good point Xenia many asset rich, cash poor people would go to equity release companies rather than leave their homes.

And had that labour policy actually come to bear I imagine companies would be springing up all over the place to provide a service that solved that particular problem.

I thought the housing market would of stalled. But while walking I've seen several houses nearby that were for sale now marked sold. I'm assuming people are thinking once lockdown is lifted the sale will complete as normal chain permitting.

We are quite expecting to get less for our home, but where we buy will be cheaper to.

If we do sell, we will do exactly the same.

I was wondering about house selling etc after this, we have just had planning lodged for 200 new houses on a piece of land in the small town next to my village which hasn’t got the school capacity or doctor capacity for that many houses. At least another 500 social houses are being built already but these ones are going to be private with a portion for affordable housing, my first thought was surprise at these plans being lodged at this moment in time and my second thought was a lot of people aren’t going to have jobs never mind money to buy them!

What PP said. If older parents or a singular parent have died during this time, 20-30 somethings would most likely move into the larger family homes, buy out siblings/pay rent to siblings etc.

We are in a large house i don't like. It was bought to house me, DH, 2 DDs and my mum and is way too big and a financial drain, plus I don't like it. Mum has moved out now so we were looking for our forever home, well, we were. That's on hold for the foreseeable now.

Dunno if more houses are likely to come on.
But you are ready to move. Bung yours on. Hope you get a sale then take the next step.

Xenia a £30k property tax will never happen. Do you honestly think that labour would get voted in with policys like that, or that MP'S would vote for a £30k tax for themselves? There is a reason Tory won the last election and its not because they are brilliant, its because labour were off the wall.

There will be some properties selling because some people have to move (eg I'm mid divorce) but volumes will sink time a new low this year.

We are in a 2 bed London flat (no garden) that went up for sale about 2 days before all this properly kicked off so naturally it hasn't sold though we had loads of interest.

We still want to move, and I imagine others in our position will still want to move.

Xenia No I don’t and I agree with you. And I hope for their sakes that the days of self defeating, tax payer repelling, whacky policies designed to punish ‘the rich’ are over, because if not, they may as well just disband as a party now. They’ll never see the inside of No. 10 again.

But from my personal perspective, the longer they remain unelectable the better.

And I know it'll probably fetch less money now, but the type of house we want to buy will also drop in value, so I can't see that it matters much.