Concrete proof that some vendors (and their agents) are greedy so and so's.

[bibbitybobbityhat]

I live in an area of London where the vast majority of the housing stock is terraced. Most properties have three or four "natural" bedrooms, two receptions, 1 bathroom and a kitchen. But some people convert their lofts and put one large or two smaller bedrooms and a shower room up there.

The size of gardens varies enormously from 15ft courtyards to huge 120 footers.

So

There is a small terraced house on my road that was sold in early 2010 for 475,000. To get to the front door you have to go up a steep flight of steps as the whole terrace is built on a hill. It has had the attic converted so in effect it is a natural 3 bedroom house with a 15ft courtyard at the back, with an extra 2 bedrooms and a shower room in the loft.

It has just gone on the market, 2 years after it was last sold at £475,000.

Have a guess at the asking price?

That does sound very unrealistic - but OTOH once you throw in the prices of the other two houses it's obvious that the first price of 475 was a snip, so it's not quite as ludicrous as a 275 price hike makes it seem.

Eggy - the property in my link is similar to the one I am bitching about.

It is about the same size and is in a marginally more desirable area (only 10 mins walk away, but its all to do with school catchments).

It does not have the loft conversion or the swish decor.

But, otoh, has the HUGE advantage of NOT having to go up a flight of steps to reach the front door.

And yet it is on the market for £200,000 TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS YES THAT IS TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS!!!!! less than the one I am ranting over.

See what you mean - I think I have deduced which one it is on Rightmove!- but London is weird. People do pay over the odds for decor- a house on our also terraced London street went for 200k over the previous record following a bidding war at the height of the 'crash' due to interior designer owner and a few tins of F&B. Also think possibly not everyone will view the steps as a problem- unless you have v small dcs or are older/disabled they make it seem quite grand. Will watch with interest to see what happens to the price!

I think the school catchment thing will have also loads to do with it. It was all a bit hysterical in ED last year from what I can gather, catchment areas are getting smaller and smaller.

We have been looking at houses on the hill next to the museum near you bibbity - houses are coming on at £80 - £100k more than they would have done last year, not selling and then coming off the market

Ok, I now understand why the bit of my home town on the south coast I live in has changed from a mixed area with older people,students and you g families with high but reasonable prices for this part of the south east, into nappy valley with oversubscribed schools! The housing stock around here is similar and a four bed with a kitchen extension and good decor is about £380,000, it must seem a bargain to someone trying to buy where you are!

the super thing about a free market economy is that a seller can ask as much as they want, and a buyer can offer as little as they want, but nobody has to agree with them.

So it doesn't matter how greedy they are.

mwah hah. in that case, my handy-hints are similar..

1. it being winter is no reason not to have flowering plants in your yard when the estate agent comes to take photos. same for your front garden.
2. they want to see your house, not your family photos 3)fireplaces are nice, large weird ornaments aren't...

and 'motivated vendors' ! - so unmotivated this did'nt even appear in 'similar' when i clicked that from the other house...

they can ask that price, but unless they are really lucky, after a month or two they'll drop it after no-ones come to look...

much nicer, off road parking, huge garden, and only £10k more asked!

Yes, Eggy and more or less opposite!

Levantine - the cheaper house I linked to is in the better school catchment area. I haven't posted a link to the one I am ranting about because it seems a bit rude to do so.

Bottom line is they are asking £275,000 more than they paid for it 2 years ago. Madness. I shall watch the space .

It's only worth what someone will pay for it though. They can ask away, but until someone puts in an offer it's worthless. If someone is mad enough to pay that sort of money then good luck to them.

I don't think they're being greedy at all (think I've also deduced from RM which one you're referring to) - £750k for a 5 double bed house in SE22 sounds about right at the moment, regardless of what they paid for it 2 years ago. We just marketed our 3 bed terrace in Peckham Rye for £700k and got an offer for it within two weeks and it seems in similar nick.

It's crazy, I have a 2 bed house not a not a million miles from there but in a less salubrious location and would be lucky to make half that amount on my house! (the house on the Rightmove link, that is).

Granted the downstairs area in my house is also smaller, as well as lacking a 3rd bedroom upstairs, but the garden's much nicer imho and it's been very nicely done up

This is why people like me will end up moving to the sticks instead of staying in London. Damn Dulwich!

Yes, it is a huge amount to the size/type of property, but IMO I don't think that makes them greedy. That's what the housing market is, isn't it, like it or not. We sold our 1-bed flat in N London for double what we'd paid for it 4 yrs previously. Would I have paid that much for a 1-bed flat? No way. Did it occur to me to say, "I think I'm being greedy accepting htis much money for my flat"? Er, no!

Bibbity are you talking primary or secondary catchment? If it's the former, it just goes to show what a short-term thing this can be - when DD started school the school nearest the first house was bargepole material, but it looks like you are saying the school near the second house (which incidentally DD went to) has now fallen from favour. (DD is in Y7 now but I'm aware of some of the shenanigans at school B in recent times.) We lived near school B for many years pre-child and stayed there long after we had grown out of our flat because at the time people were falling over themselves to get into that school.

Likewise, when we moved to ED the bit down by the station was practically no-go while the 'up the hill and nearer the park' bit where I believe you live and where we did until 2009 was definitely more desirable. These days it seems to be the other way round.

Loving the house on Upland Road, EAP.

Who was it who asked about how Londoners cope with the insane house prices? So far as I can tell, city bankers aside, we struggle. I'm older than God, fairly senior in my line of work, earn a good wage, and live in a fairly modest house. If I was living in most parts of the country, I think I would be enjoying a fairly affluent lifestyle (IF I had a job and IF it paid this much - I'm very well aware those are pretty big ifs). Instead, we don't have a car and we don't go on holiday. I don't go to hairdressers or beauty salons or spas, the children wear mostly second hand, we don't have a cleaner. I painted my kitchen units and tiles because I can't afford new ones.

I'm not doing a monty python poor me act - I'm not poor, I've just made different choices: staying in London was very important to me (near jobs and family) and so is living in a nice area with good schools. But most of my friends can point to some factor that helped them onto the housing ladder - they first bought at a cheaper time, or they had some family help with the deposit. I truly do not know how our dc will ever leave home...

I really am astounded at the price of houses in London. I can't even begin to imagine paying that much for a terrace. For £580k you can have a huge house with an enormous garden and it's own library where I live [[
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-35329976.html]]

But look at the state of it!

Well yes, but nothing a coat of paint and several large skips wouldn't solve

There is a house on the street next to mine which is being marketed by Fine & Country. It is priced around £200k more than a very similar house a few doors down. The cheaper one sold in about a month. The F&C one has been on the market since ooooh about September

So will all left-leaning right thinking home owners now be selling their properties at less than they can get so as not to be greedy capitalists?

Somehow I think not.

But there'll always be a proportion of vendors who are completely deluded, I don't think it tells you anything other than that a proportion of any group of people are always going to be bonkers. When we had our house on the market, there was one a few doors down which was marginally bigger but in similar condition and no extra bedrooms, on at £175k more. She hadn't had a viewing in the 4 months she'd been on the market, but refused to change the price according to our (mutual) agents. We had an offer on ours within 2 weeks, she eventually took hers off the market rather than drop the price. Her prerogative...

I think there are some people who haven't quite got their heads round the fact that the market is no longer what it was 3 or 4 years ago.

If you want to look at comparisons to London, I found this in Huntingdon when I was addicted to browsing RM. £550k for a 6 bed Georgian home fit for a magazine shoot? And commutable to London? Couldn't work out what on earth must be wrong with Huntingdon for it to be so cheap......

I did actually buy my house ludicrously cheap (for the area - still ludicrously expensive compared to the rest of the country) because it was filthy, painted violent orange throughout, had had the garden fence kicked down, and lacked a Farrow&Ball/shaker kitchen.

It was at least £100-150k cheaper than comparable houses in the street because it looked so fecking awful. (I nearly turned tail and refused to enter when I saw it from the outside.) The local market has set the standard on interior decor so high, that I was able to pick up a bargain.

I do still live in a feckin ugly house, though.

The whole point of this thread isn't that London house prices are ridiculous (yes, yes they absolutely are).

Its that there is a small house for sale near me that is similar to the house I linked (but has had a loft conversion and is better decorated), although is not in such a great area school catchment wise and has a flight of steps up to the front door, on the market for £200,000 more than the one I linked to.

EAs can only work out property values from comparables. What they found to compare this one to I simply can't imagine.