Properties relisted at pre-COVID prices - are sellers in cuckoo land?

[househunter2020]

Started property search in February (London) and saw various properties quickly sold, obviously riding on post election bounce. We did not put in offer for any. Now we are seeing from this week properties that were sold get relisted at previous asking price (Jan/ Feb time). Are sellers in cuckoo land?

Just spoke to one agent about one relisting and asked if seller is reducing the price and was told oh that one was priced very well already and sold straight away last time it was listed, only now the buyer pulled out due to work problems... Of course it was February or a century ago...

I would expect about 5% reduction from previous listing. What do you think?

@Smallgoon My advice is if you wait, there will never be a right time, the doubt will always be there.

This is quite simply terrible advice!

Why would you rush the most important financial decision you would make in your life? Especially at a time like this? Every day there's a news article about several thousand jobs being cut and this is before the furlough scheme has even ended!

@thequantofmontecarlo

Ok Mum...

Nobody, anywhere in this this thread, has advised FTBs to 'rush' the decision making process of purchasing a property. What has been advised, is that if they are "in a position" to finally own their own property, that they should look to purchase rather than throwing away £££ a month on rent.

I actually think we could be more likely to see high inflation than a house price crash. It's not in the government's interests to let house prices fall, see loads of FTBs in negative equity and have reposessions everywhere. More likely, they will devalue the currency, print some more money (like they are doing now) and hand out free cash to people - like furlough, benefits, some new crazy HTB scheme. So prices might go up or stagnate, but relative to income and actual cost of things they will go down. Win-win, everyone who bought a house can be comfortable in the fact that the number isn't lower than what they bought it for. Also, our government has looooooads of debt, so it would be in their interest to do this as it would be easier for them to pay it off.

@BeijingBikini

I actually think we could be more likely to see high inflation than a house price crash. It's not in the government's interests to let house prices fall, see loads of FTBs in negative equity and have reposessions everywhere. More likely, they will devalue the currency, print some more money (like they are doing now) and hand out free cash to people - like furlough, benefits, some new crazy HTB scheme. So prices might go up or stagnate, but relative to income and actual cost of things they will go down. Win-win, everyone who bought a house can be comfortable in the fact that the number isn't lower than what they bought it for. Also, our government has looooooads of debt, so it would be in their interest to do this as it would be easier for them to pay it off.

How right you were.

I have enjoyed reading this thread. It should be preserved in an archive as living history.

@IamwhoIsayIam god yes I agree, I was selling when this thread was active, my buyers guzundered us at the last moment and we had to reduce by £20,000. It was a beautiful house which we were selling with The Modern House, if only we had known what was around the corner!

@IamwhoIsayIam

I have enjoyed reading this thread. It should be preserved in an archive as living history.

Fascinating reading!

@thequantofmontecarlo

But who knew last year. We were all just speculating.

@FanGirlX

But who knew last year. We were all just speculating.

Absolutely, but that's the point.

Looking back to what was written last spring some posters were absolutely convinced the market was going to tank 20 - 30%. There was not the slightest shred of doubt in some minds.

Residential property is massively hard to predict.

@Mildura

I must admit I was expecting a correction (small) or flatline. I wasn't expecting a boom.

Such interesting reading! And my first ever zombie thread that was clearly a zombie from the title!

Seems the vendors weren't deluded/in cloud cuckoo land and all the other insulting adjectives after all

It'll be interesting to see what happens as 2021 crawls to its miserable end. I was watching 3 on a street here from earlier this year. Back then, I said the smallest was a fair price, and the two larger ones were overpriced, one ridiculously so.
Last time I reported back a month or two ago, the reasonably priced one had sold. The overpriced one was under offer. The ridiculous one was still for sale. So far, so predictable. A sensible price sells, an inflated one takes longer (and the offer may have been less than asking) and the silly money one was getting nowhere.

This week, of the two remaining, the under offer one is back on as for sale, and the ridiculous one hasn't even got as far as under offer and is now under two agencies.

I suspect that some sales are falling through because lenders are not confident that the current high prices will be maintained. I don't know why the middle one fell through, but on property threads it's clear that a lot of lenders are downvaluing properties compared to asking prices/offers- I'd say this is more common to read of than it used to be.