Too many for sale?

[Nutellaontoast19]

Looking at some houses on an estate. There are around 25 houses and 5 are up for sale at the moment. From Zoopla I can see that a few have been up before in 2013-2017 but haven’t sold. They were new builds in 2009. I’m worried I’m missing something and there’s a reason they haven’t sold!

Go and knock on some doors and ask or go for a few evening strolls and strike up conversations! Or ask on your local town Facebook?

Does sound like there maybe some dissatisfaction - is the estate centrally managed? Are their issues with the services? Ask an agent that has a few of the houses listed, or go into a newsagent/ hairdressers close by (get a mani or something) and they may know what’s going on!

Check the crime in the area.

Could they be described as starter homes? Maybe they were bought by mostly young couples with no kids when the houses were new, and now people are having children etc and looking for more space on similar timelines.

Is it in a catchment if a poor school or even worse- no school?

There's an estate like that near me and the problem is that there's planning permission for more houses when there's lots of empty ones. Plus there's another estate nearby with more affordable homes. Another problem is that there is no fibre optic cable on that estate and BT will only lay down the cables if the residents pay them to (several thousand pounds I believe)

I've just sold my new build and around 4/5 other houses were up at the same time. One of the big factors in our resale was that as a new build, we were on help to buy scheme and after 5 years you have to start paying back that loan so your mortgage payment increases (a lot) so worth moving before that happens. May be something similar on this plot. New build insurance runs out after ten years, too. I wouldn't think too much into it.

Perhaps check they are freehold? Could be people trying to escape new build leasehold properties.

Yes - maybe ground rent increases kicked in or service charges escalating?

There’s been a bit in the news recently about spiralling ground rent on new builds

It could be that they were very expensive when new and people can’t afford to accept what is now a reasonable offer.

Not leasehold and no service charges. These are not starter homes. They are in the mid to upper price range for the area. Catchment for excellent schools. There are some new builds going up nearby that are similar so could be affecting these older ones? I think they were maybe priced too highly when we like @BitOftheSea said. Thanks for your replies as it helped me to rule out a few things!

From what you’ve said I expect people will be going for the similar new builds rather than the ones which may be starting to get tired and need things replacing. However it’s worth asking around about the history, I think there was a recent thread about an estate where all the houses had a high level of Radon gas so you never know.