Nearly-new builds up for sale

[MindatWork]

Hi there, just wondering if it’s a common practice for people to buy new-builds with a view to selling them on fairly quickly?

We’ve been casually browsing Rightmove for the last year or so; we live in a semi-rural village but there are 3 new build estates either recently completed or in their final phases. On each site there have been a number of houses come up for sale which have evidently only been lived in for a year, sometimes even less.

Just wondering if this is because people move onto new builds and then decide they don’t like it or whether it’s a deliberate way of making money (ie buy off plan, wait for prices to inflate and then sell on after most of the development has sold).

It seems far too common to be the former - this morning yet another swanky 4-bed house has come on in a neighbouring village which could only have been occupied for less than a year.

DH is always worried it’s a sign of issues on the development but it seems far too common to be a coincidence?

@MindatWork I've read that a lot of landlords are selling up atm due to potential capital gains tax increases next year, I know a lot of investors will buy new builds to rent out. That does seem unusual though, I haven't seen the same trend here, are they asking for much more than what they paid originally?

We did exactly this but we actually loved the house but we'd relocated and decided we didn't really like the area and didn't want to wait until our toddlers were in school and settled and then move them . We moved to another year old new build elsewhere and have lived in it for 18 years. The people who'd owned our current house also moved to another new build.

I live on a new estate , people move fairly often and it's for various reasons . Moving for jobs , back to another country . I think over COVID a lot of people have realised they want a house with a bigger garden though so maybe this .

Parents live in a new build estate (very small number of houses) someone there bought 3 houses while they were being built & sold the lot within a year, making a profit on each of them. We had thought it was odd at the time to have 3 houses in one estate!

As a previous person mentioned I'd wonder if garden size came into it. All the new build estates near us have postage stamp sized gardens. That might have seemed fine a year ago, when you could take your kids to the local parks and wide open spaces. But after this past summer, watching FB feeds full of photos of people with huge paddling pools, making the most of their garden with the kids stuck at home, they might have realised they can't hack another year like that.
Also if people are now working from home more, all these open plan living spaces that developers seem to love so much don't really help if you need privacy.

As far as I can tell, some people who buy new builds off plan buy houses in the same way people buy cars (with HP agreements). They look to get a new one every few years. It seems to be pretty common on new build estates.

They also tend to be the type of people who insist on telling you about all the ‘upgrades’ they took when they bought if you view their house (using the term upgrade too). I guess it’s because they only buy new build houses off plan, so they don’t understand that the standard house buying market just looks at a house as it is. That outside tap or slightly fancier tile trim isn’t an ‘upgrade’; they’re just the outside tap and the tiles in the bathroom.

Interesting comments, thanks all. We can’t always access the previously sold figures but this house that came on this morning is on a small close of 7 other houses, the most expensive of which sold for £550k around this time last year. This one is on for £600k, although we have seen people putting houses up for 90k over the price they paid a year ago!

The others in our village always seem to have been deliberately kept neutral, all still magnolia etc and sparse furniture, which always makes me think they weren’t intending on staying there long term.

There were also a couple of instances of 2 or 3 houses on one street being up for sale while the other end of the estate was still being built, which made us wonder about building issues or antisocial behaviour - although I guess this could also be coincidence.

We are south east on a mainline rail station to london, so I’d be surprised if it’s because of the pandemic - most of the houses have fairly sizeable gardens and are big 4/5 beds, although i imagine at least a few of the sales are probably due to pandemic reasons.

@nancy75 and @KumquatSalad this what I was wondering, interesting to see this is a ‘thing’.

The outer houses in my small 2014 estate were sold as views over a farm towards the canal. We’ve had a spate of them selling over the last year as the farm has sold a field and is building a dozen houses on it. No view of the canal anymore and the mess and racket of building. So they’ve moved.

We viewed 3x one year old houses this year, 2x were divorcing couples & 1x was sadly covid job losses..

The financial support available (help to buy, 5% deposit etc) means that new builds are often purchased by first time buyers.
I'd take a bet that many of these quick sales, which are often for less than the original purchase price, are due to couples moving in together, discovering the cold realities of living with a partner, & not liking it much :P

We are on a new build estate. Its still in the process of being completed. There are 3 houses for sale, I know one is a relationship breakdown, one the couple have both lost jobs due to covid. Dont know the owners of the 3rd.

I live in a new build and I’ve noticed this but I can’t see that it’s for money as new builds go for less a year or two later than when first bought. We looked at 3 2 year old new builds before buying ours and it was all couples that had split up.

Yes they do, my father used to think the estate agents had bought them because so many signs went up as soon as a local site was finished .
Investors can sometimes get a discount for buying more than one off plan too.

I think it depends where you are on them going for more.
They certainly have here, we have had a few houses up for sale on our development, one was a divorce, one wanted to downsize after realising the house was too big and I am not sure on the other, they all went for more than they paid. Only been living in them around one year.