To thing some homeowners are taking the mick

[headlic]

A house on our road was sold for £600k in Dec 2021 & has been put on the market for £735k. The house is exactly the same inside and out aside from a lick of paint and new furniture. Are housing in the south east increasing as such a rate? I thought house prices were going to stagnate for a few years.

I am really disappointed. Our children are looking to buy a house and increases like this make it seem completely impossible. I thought they would be able to get something decent, I didn't account for a 20% increase for house prices.

The previous owners of the house were a dinner lady and a bus driver. The current owners are a dentist and an accountant in their early 30s. Lovely couple but just an example that home ownership is going to be impossible for so many people.

Well, I no longer live in the UK, but the last house we sold in England we bought for £335 k in 2015 and sold for £480 k in 2021, having done nothing but a lick of paint, new flooring in kitchen and hall, and a new bathroom. And that price was £30 k above asking. It was just a buoyant market, and developers selling flimsy newbuilds on the edge of the village had the paradoxical effect of making solid 1970s houses with bigger rooms and mature gardens look good in comparison.

Exactly!

It's depressing. My DS is so keen to buy but being single it's either have tenants living with him or go low budget. He's in his 30s and has done enough house sharing to know he doesn't want to house share if he can avoid it. He's worked so, so hard to save a really good deposit, has a bit for extra work that needs doing and we plan to help him but where we are he can barely find anything under £250,000 and often it needs about another £75 - £100,000 spending on it to really make it a home. He's mainly looking at real fixer uppers but keeps getting priced out by cash buyer developers.

Also some people aren't that motivated to sell. I could have probably got another 20k but was in a rush because I had a 2.5% mortgage fix agreed, we did it just in time!

There are plenty of people who get the estate agents valuation and demand it's marketed way higher than that valuation. Of course people aren't likely to insist it is marketed 100k below the EA valuation but there are plenty who insist it's market at 100k more than it

And we wouldn't have got a property for the price we did a few months later.

It’s nuts. We bought our home in jan 2020 (so just before lockdown). We spot 450k. Last year our next door neighbour (identical layout and size) sold for 645k. It’s just ridiculous who can keep up with that. Yes of course our house is worth more but we don’t want to move and even if we did other houses would have gone up by the same amount.

There are plenty of people who get the estate agents valuation and demand it's marketed way higher than that valuation.'
Yep or go with the EA who gives the highest valuation as pp said.

Agree DPs purchased semi 3 bed 90foot garden for £21k in 1986 both factory workers no mortgage. They moved 10 years ago sold for £130k and now the same house was sold for £280k it is on a rough estate with a troublesome pub at the end of rhe road. No idea how anyone can afford it.

Me and DH are highly skilled and can not afford to purchase.

So we are not looking to move abroad.

They're not deluded though are they if it sold?

As a pp said, the homeowners don't drive up the prices. It's simple economics - supply and demand.

Are you going to offer your house £200k less than it's worth when you sell it OP to be nice?

increasing house prices when you are trying to move up the almost non existent ladder don't help.

People aren't accounting for inflation in recent years though which is having a big impact. A 500k property in 2020 that increased inline with inflation would be approx 620k today.

@Saggyknickers I'm taking about ones that don't sell for the price they list at?

It's simple economics - supply and demand.

Nope not that simple...

I heard it put that one house is worth one house.

My house has doubled in value in the last ten years but if I sold it I could still only afford to buy the same type of house.

So we are not looking to move abroad.

With an ageing population and a shrinking tax paying base we really shouldn't be losing skilled younger people but I get it.

I mean home owners will get what the market dictates. It’s not them taking the mick. We having a housing shortage and crisis.

Haha, this. Of course, she wouldn't.

Houses will sell for what buyers are willing to pay. It has been and always will be the case.

It really is though.

There are different factors involved in creating the situation but it comes down to supply and demand.

We totally took the piss put the house on for £1.2m and had an offer of £1.25m this was just after COVID – that house is worth no more than £900K but listen if someone is willing to pay over the value why would you not sell or over the value? We were advised by the agents to try for £1.1m and I thought you know what lets give it a go...

If that was you in my situation you 100% would not sit sit there saying

"Oh no I won't make the most money for my house so OP's kids can afford stuff in the future"

Thats not how it works!

It's a bit of both really. Most sellers need to buy somewhere else in the same conditions so lowering their asking price may mean they then couldn't afford their next home. Sure, some sellers are emotive and deluded but the market sets them straight.

I do find it odd, though, when potential buyers get their knickers in a twist about how much the seller is "making as profit". It doesn't matter what they paid for it, what matters is whether or not it's appropriately priced in the current market. There could be circumstances you don't know about the sale when they purchased, eg quick sale needed and they were cash buyers. Also, looking at previous listing photos to try and guess what the current owners have done is hugely inaccurate sometimes because lots are removed or some areas they've renovated may never have been photographed anyway.

I don't know how to just quote part of what you have said. But the bit about the previous owners occupations.

I think that's the really worrying part. Two people with perfectly 'normal' reasonable jobs were able to buy a house and raise their family there. It now takes the wages of two professionals to buy that same house. So where are the dinner lady and bus driver of 2025 going to be able to buy.

We bought our last house for 400K and sold it ten years later, last year, for 500K. Had we sold in 2022 or 2023, it would probably have gone for 600K.

Ah yes taking the piss by investing their money and taking a risk on the housing market (that they don't control!) going up.

The childen who can buy are those with inheritance which fuels the market

As others have said, just because that is asking price doesn’t mean they will get it. When I bought the house I am in now we knocked 20% off the asking price to what we thought was the right price and it was accepted. Sometimes people try it on but to check just look at sold prices recently to see if that is a reasonable price or just wishful thinking on the part of the seller.