London flat not selling. Why? Why? Can you plz help me to understand.

[Mypizzicato]

My 3 bedroom flat is not selling. It has been on the market since a week before the 1st National lockdown in March.
Had a few viewings but not offer. Price was reduced twice since March.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/68930043#/

I think it's a nice flat in a great location. We also extended the lease till 2197
I know that London at the moment can be a difficult market but this would be still a nice flat when things would be back to normal.
Thanks for any suggestions

@Dugee

Spot the posters with huge debts secured on rapidly falling in price assets.

Property prices never drop do they.

Well property prices can of course drop but it's absolutely ludicrous to compare a flat in Maida Vale with a flat in Sheffield...

We don’t know what financial and social changes Covid, Brexit and the recession will bring.

I can see why young people would like to live in London (and maybe they’ll be able to afford to in the near future) but if people only have to go into the office 2-3 days a week post Covid, then it makes sense for families to buy a bigger property with a garden, somewhere less overcrowded. Maybe this is a social change that Covid has prompted - people have been put off living on top of each other. Those that can afford a 550k flat have a lot of choice about where they live.

We don’t know what financial and social changes Covid, Brexit and the recession will bring.

I can see why young people would like to live in London (and maybe they’ll be able to afford to in the near future) but if people only have to go into the office 2-3 days a week post Covid, then it makes sense for families to buy a bigger property with a garden, somewhere less overcrowded. Maybe this is a social change that Covid has prompted - people have been put off living on top of each other. Those that can afford a 550k flat have a lot of choice about where they live.

@TazMac I did contemplate living in the home counties but even if I wanted to, I could not afford it..I can afford a £400k flat but I can't afford to live outside London... Cos 2 * season ticket fares is £800 per month even if you are commuting from 30 mins away, somewhere like Hitchin which is 80% of my whole mortgage in london.

And as a 28 year old, I cannot say that for the rest of my life , I would be full time wfh. And even if I wfh 2-3 times a week, the money spent commuting would still be considerable for 2, not to mention the additional cost of running a car. I suspect that even if you do the math for a £550k flat, you would not be able to buy much in the home counties due to the high cost of rail fares. I don't think of property as an investment at all but if you have me the choice between buying an expensive and small property and £800 rail fares, I think the expensive property might be more worth it as there is a chance I can recover some of my costs if I sell up. At least the chance of that is higher than me getting my rail fare money back.

A season ticket from Sheffield is £14k. That’s the same as an annual mortgage payment for a £300k mortgage, so the savings in outgoings are nil by swapping Maida Vale for Sheffield. On top of that you’ve got 4 - 5 hours of commuting a day.

Of course no one is going to choose Sheffield if they need to be in London.

It’s too early to tell if working from home will become the norm. It certainly makes slot of sense. If it does then that flat is nolonger worth half a million.

I think very few people would want to travel for hours even if it were only a few times a week. Plus work is onlyone of the reasons to live in London. There is also all the other stuff to do which is what attracts people. It's hard to say what will happen long term if people continue to work from home. We live in London,but not centrally. I would say the majority if people have jobs where they can work from home. That may result in a mass exodus to somewhere more rural if it continues, but I suspect there will be people like us who want to live here as they dont want to be in the countryside.

Having the balcony off the kitchen would stop me being interested, I'd only want a flat with it off the lounge.

Of course no one is going to choose Sheffield if they need to be in London.

Well I just sold my house in Sheffield (wayyyy over the asking price) to a young couple who are still working in London (Town planning) and are planning to work from home and commute when they need to. And I know of lots of friends who have sold to London buyers, it's actually caused a mini housing boom.

Everyone on here desperately defendingLondon are clearly the people who own overpriced houses/flats and can't face the impending negative equity

Lounge, bathroom and balcony are nice enough.
Kitchen is old-fashioned. I imagine most people would think it would need replacing. Bedrooms are box-like and clinical. Not very welcoming.

What’s the service charge? Who owns the lease - do you own a %?

It would be very dangerous to move put of London based on a theory that majority office work will be wfh indefinitely.
Lots of firms are now noticing decreases in productivity so I can't imagine 100% wfh will be the norm in the long run.

I thought prices were falling in London, whilst rising in other city suburbs, as more people move to home working?

In the summer, lots of people eat on their balconies accessed via the kitchen and see this as a benefit. I don’t think the balcony is a problem.

I hate to say it , but the big problem is it’s an ugly Council block, dated interiors with no proper bathroom for three bedrooms. Two bed flats in attractive buildings in the immediate area are priced similarly so even with a price correction for all the flats, it might be that buyers prefer a nicer two bed. Lots for sale in the very attractive part of your road too.

There are reasons for two beds being more money. Younger single people, younger couples and pied a terre adults don’t need three bedrooms. Families would probably go further out. The ugly building really doesn’t help. The £500,000 stamp duty limit is exceeded so it feels more expensive for the target market. There are few three bedroom flats for sale and they are nearly all in ex council blocks. They have a niche market I think - but definitely not the rich Russian/Chinese one.

I would say your only option is to go down to £499,000.

‘Of course no one is going to choose Sheffield if they need to be in London’

I live in Sheffield. Prices are insane here. Like Surrey prices. One of the reason is so many people are leaving London for a better quality of life. Lots of houses are going to Londoners.

Work isn’t the only price driver. London in normal times has so much to offer on the doorstep. People will want this when it comes back. And it will. Lots of younger people don’t want the sleepy suburbs and that longer commute after a night out. There will be a market for great flats but this isn’t one of them, sadly.

OP - another person who has looked at the flat online. My feedback is it's a tricky market at the moment. We're a family with a kid and honestly I was put off by the building (we live v locally). The flat is fine. But for 550-600k budget we can afford to buy a period flat in a different area even though by staying we'd be closer to DGs etc.

Younger couples with 550k will probably also be looking at period somewhere else or assume that buying in an exLA building they will be able to quickly build up equivity which wont be possible in Maida Vale in this market. W2/Maida Vale is really for people for can afford 700k/800k plus and people are v judgy.

Am assuming that you would be looking at an investor so dropping your price to make it a good deal for them might work.

Err!! I know Sheffield and it ain’t Surrey prices. Still plenty of dirt cheap properties they are big enough!

Lordy this reminds me why we left London to buy. I think the kitchen looks dated. Also it's quite bland looking. I know people can change this but people don't seem to remember this! I think it needs to look more stylish and aspirational.

I also think all the stuff pp's have said on people not buying flats in London right now is true.

Presentingpercy, depends where you’re looking.

S10,11and 17 are

think people who would think this have never been to Maida Vale grin
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I have been to Maida Vale and I would still be put off by the building. Everyone in London knows that in any area you can have a beautiful set of Mary Poppins style houses on one street and a rough estate around the corner.

If the rooms were empty, showing potential and with a view of the views outside, it would be a lot more appealing to me, personally- to see the potential.

You would need to put the building photo later on in the gallery, so it's not the first thing the buyer sees- photos of the corridors/stairwells too, to show that the building is well looked after.

Also would be a lot less of offputting if the photo had been taken on a sunny day, rather than a grey damp one, with branchless trees outside. Could you not get a photo of the whole street instead, with the building in focus and some greenery in the background?

Edit- I see that it is a blue sky photo, but the damp floors had my brain just seeing grey!

I think people are opting for outside space? For that money round here you can get a nice 3 bed semi with a big garden. 6 minutes from the station. ( Zone 6).

I’m not sure what sales are doing here to be honest but I heard that the rental enquires are up 95%!

Sorry op - looks a nice flat in a lovely area

@jcurve

A season ticket from Sheffield is £14k. That’s the same as an annual mortgage payment for a £300k mortgage, so the savings in outgoings are nil by swapping Maida Vale for Sheffield. On top of that you’ve got 4 - 5 hours of commuting a day.

Of course no one is going to choose Sheffield if they need to be in London.

They might choose Sheffield with the Peak District on the doorstep than an area of London which has seen better days.

There's some pretty heavy lifting going on on this thread. Both from the posters claiming that everyone who owns a property in London is deluded and that living in Sheffield and commuting to London is preferable to living in Maida Vale, and from those people claiming that there is absolutely no life outside of Zone 2 and never will be.

Getting back to the OP...
I think you need to paint the kitchen cabinets, retake the balcony picture (I HATE the square netting that ex-council flats always have) and lead with the best picture of the interior. Save the picture of the block to relatively near the end (but not the last picture). Maybe book end the last three photos as balcony view, block and then balcony looking back into the flat, to give a sense of the space.