Feeling totally overwhelmed by the market

[fluffycupcakes]

Will it ever cool down? It's not even financially any more although we've certainly lost money between selling our house and now renting waiting to buy.

Every buyer out there seems to snap up a property before we can breath. I'm not comfortable putting an offer on the second a property reaches the market and yet if I don't it appears we won't ever be able to move. Just so depressed about it all. Any indications the market might slow down?
Sorry for such a depressing post but have people really benefitted from the stamp duty relief? We seem to now have to mortgage up on the extreme price increases instead of making any savings.

*been online that should say!!

I am quite surprised. In the part of London I am looking in, asking prices have decreased and rightmove is full of reductions. Noone seems to be buying anything.

Which part of London are you in cosmi - if you don't mind me asking.

I've heard, probably on here, that people are leaving London so that's why it's dropping in places. Our area is not like that unfortunately.

I am so sorry so many people are going through such a stressful situation with house buying, but I'm reading these comments with huge interest as I'm in the opposite position and don't really know what is going on!

We were assured the probate property, although needing heaps of work, was perfect location, potential, is currently liveable in, and so would be snapped up - even with at least a 2 month wait because of time needed to process and issue the grant. 50 plus viewings later (all mostly, madly booked for last weekend) and only one possibly two interested parties, and the main interested party seem very young to take on a 4 bed house.

More viewings this weekend and the agent wants to accept the/an offer early next week. The house has only been on the market 2 weeks... I am completely confused by all this.

We are in a neighbouring leafy green county to London and it appears everyone has decided it's the county for them. Everything is just going's quickly. Renovation or not. So fed up. Will just have to accept we are going to be in a rental for longer than planned and suck up the losses to one of those life experiences one has to get through while I weep at the £££ disappearing on rent.

If it wasn't for dc school I'd just move to a cheaper location and be done with it. Hate renting too.I'm normally the optimist but this market has really made a grey cloud appear over my head.

@Alonim

Which part of London are you in cosmi - if you don't mind me asking.

I've heard, probably on here, that people are leaving London so that's why it's dropping in places. Our area is not like that unfortunately.

Merton borough

You?

Agree OP. It's a horrible market at present.

Buyers haven't saved from the SDLT property, unless it was a lucky bonus for them as they already had a transaction in process. It's just increased prices by multiples of the savings. Prices have really shot up in many areas.

This doesn't seem to be about London. I am looking in south west London and everyday there are new properties coming up for sale. Lots of houses which haven't changed hands for over 10-20 years are coming on market. Prices have risen but not unreasonably. Mostly people who are now aiming to work from home or older people who see this as a good opportunity to cash out and downsize.
Clearly these London buyers selling off are buying at inflated prices in the country. Someone selling a 2 bed flat in London for 500K would happily spending that on a detached house in the country, even if they have to go much over asking..

London is the 'worst' performing region.

The Nationwide's figures show London house prices increasing 4.8% in the year to 31st March, 2021 (down from 6.2% in the year to December 31st, 2020), with 5.6% for 'the outer metropolitan region', eg. Guildford, Crawley, Chemlsford.

The 'best' perfoming region, was the North West, where prices were up 8.2% in the year to March 31st. So a difference between 'worst' and 'best' performing regions, but not a massive one imo.

In my area the average % rises aren't in line with what's actually happened to the houses I've been looking at though. We are seeing the 'cheap' areas become the expensive ones and the 'expensive' areas now being completely unaffordable and possibly we may never be able to live in those areas again if prices remain as they are. Prices have risen far more on detached houses in the areas I've been looking at than 6% etc.

We’re in East London @cosmi far from Merton I think.

Maybe I’m wrong ... actually less than a handful of houses are being snatched up and bid on. There’s very little being sold Very very little and the stuff that’s sitting around is not very appealing and far too expensive to be able to afford work doing to it.

Why is there so little being sold when supposedly so many Londoners are moving away from London?

@cosmi really? I went to Wimbledon today and as usual anything decent is snapped up.
I live 70 miles away and planned this move two years ago. We are moving for my daughter's school so no option to delay. I'm about to exchange and complete next month on my sale and the house I've offered on may pull out as seller can't find a house to buy. So I'm now looking at everything in my budget. But there's not much available. Looks like an expensive rental instead.

I sold last August couldn't find a single place to live - they were getting sold before viewing or on my way home after viewing. I took off the market. Waited a month and put up again in early 21. Sold within 10 days - buyers literally asked me to cancel open day. A couple of houses I had my eye on for 380K approx were sold faster than I could get appointments.
Anyhoo those houses are back on the market (seller obviously pulled out) and up for +£48K meaning they are selling for £450K now.
Seems my house is the cheapest in my post code area I've stopped my solicitor doing work and told agent today that I can't exchange I will just be renting myself to homelessness. It's either I increase my price to catch up with inflation or pull out of the sale now. What can I do I am a single parent with kids to consider and the whole family are super stressed out. The market is way too much. Rishi Sunak is to blame - that stamp duty holiday for buyers was really lining sellers pockets and agents loved it (more commission)

What you may find is chains collapsing nearer the stamp duty deadline - leaving the way open for an immediately proceedable buyer to step in - if you can move fast, with a motivated solicitor.

I can’t wait for the stamp duty deadline to pass. I think we are now at about the point where people realise they won’t get the relief, so things are slowing down. But not much as there is so much demand not yet me by the shortage of properties on the market.

People are dropping out at the last minute round here too. I keep getting estate agents emailing asking buyers to step in quickly to save the chain I suppose. I don’t know. We’ve never done this before.

I wonder whether soon there will be so many broken chains - what will happen then. It has the potential to become quite chaotic.

Also lenders are rejecting the high valuations so some buyers are unable to go through with the purchase. But the sellers are happy because they just relist and add £40k.

As a seller I only accepted the offer on the terms that 'it was not subject to having to meet stamp duty etc' and that it was on the condition they let me find somewhere. I have not heard any complaints from the buyers but once I have pushed the agent on many occasions they eventually said the buyer was trying to meet the July deadline. They agreed to push through but it's not even likely we will find anywhere by September.

New build only have a place to book for March/april completion and you have to pay £1k deposit now. Prob. i may not be in a job then nor even be able to get a mortgage and will lose the £1K and have to prob put the house up for the third time if my buyer gets fed up of waiting.

I hadn't thought of sellers being so worse off too tbh. All a bit rubbish. Sorry to those also having issues with this situation.

We are selling/buying currently. We sold our house for 249 after listing it at 225 and only had one day of viewings where all the slots were booked by 10am the morning we listed.

Totally bonkers.

We have been very lucky/wild fluke to actually get an offer accepted on a great house which we initially lost out on within 2 weeks of selling ours. (4 bed/garage/garden/ good area)

We offered more than 10% over and it needs a full refurb/rewire/new boiler/kitchen/ bathroom. I’m worried that we have offered too much and it’s going to be downvalued (plus the likely 5 years of unending diy projects) but there was no other way to secure it.

There has been nothing similar or even close come up that we would consider since we sold. Shitty houses that would usually sit for weeks without moving. Or nicely done houses but no gardens or teeny 3rd bedrooms without much more space than we have currently.

We are crossing our fingers and hoping nothing goes wrong.

Panda368 yes I am finding all the landlords renting HMO's to students that need everything gutting in the house are getting shot of their shitty portfolios because alot of learning is going online or hybrid with part remote learning. Problem is they can be a moneypit and you can end up living in an area where the whole area is just house rentals to students eg. and while you'll bring your house up to standard and renovate the neighbours won't because they are in transit accomodation and no matter how good your home looks if your neighbours home or the ones on the road are not cared for - bang goes all your hard earned money when you come to sell in the future.
What surprised me house hunting is the 'STATE' some people are living in their home. Homes that look normal outside - OMG when you go inside it's horrific... absolutely no pride in their living space. You'd think you were in a slum in a third world country!

As a seller I only accepted the offer on the terms that 'it was not subject to having to meet stamp duty etc' and that it was on the condition they let me find somewhere. I have not heard any complaints from the buyers but once I have pushed the agent on many occasions they eventually said the buyer was trying to meet the July deadline. They agreed to push through but it's not even likely we will find anywhere by September.

We’re in the same position as your buyer... our vendor asked for time to move; and it was always clear that we wouldn’t make the July deadline, but we expect to make the September one. To be honest, I think if our vendor asked for a few months, our buyer would probably pull out... but even if they didn’t, we want to be moved before then.

Has the EA made it clear to them that it’s going to be a long wait? Our suggested that our vendor would need “a few weeks”... it’s been a month or so now, and our buyer has started to query how long it’s taking, so we’re going to chase it up on Tuesday if we haven’t heard anything...

Thankfully we’re not near London, but the market here is still pretty crazy, most things are under offer the same day that they get listed.

We have the same problems with HMOs though. Loads of nice houses have been sold to convert into flats, even though flats aren’t really selling, and there’s a load of old HMOs for sale that aren’t moving because there’s no students to rent them at the moment. It’s hard to find a nice house! I’m so scared we’ll lose ours and not be able to find much else, but we also can’t lose our buyer.

I hope you find somewhere soon, buying and selling feels so stressful right now.

@TakeYourFinalPosition

As a seller I only accepted the offer on the terms that 'it was not subject to having to meet stamp duty etc' and that it was on the condition they let me find somewhere. I have not heard any complaints from the buyers but once I have pushed the agent on many occasions they eventually said the buyer was trying to meet the July deadline. They agreed to push through but it's not even likely we will find anywhere by September.

We’re in the same position as your buyer... our vendor asked for time to move; and it was always clear that we wouldn’t make the July deadline, but we expect to make the September one. To be honest, I think if our vendor asked for a few months, our buyer would probably pull out... but even if they didn’t, we want to be moved before then.

Has the EA made it clear to them that it’s going to be a long wait? Our suggested that our vendor would need “a few weeks”... it’s been a month or so now, and our buyer has started to query how long it’s taking, so we’re going to chase it up on Tuesday if we haven’t heard anything...

Thankfully we’re not near London, but the market here is still pretty crazy, most things are under offer the same day that they get listed.

We have the same problems with HMOs though. Loads of nice houses have been sold to convert into flats, even though flats aren’t really selling, and there’s a load of old HMOs for sale that aren’t moving because there’s no students to rent them at the moment. It’s hard to find a nice house! I’m so scared we’ll lose ours and not be able to find much else, but we also can’t lose our buyer.

I hope you find somewhere soon, buying and selling feels so stressful right now.

No I don't think the EA has made it clear to them. I think she has given them a fair bit of hope to be honest. In the meantime the EA has put me under way too much pressure! The EA has suggested that perhaps I'd like to rent and suggested a few £K thrown my way to move out (enough to cover 3 months rent...just). So that my buyer can move in and they don't lose their buyer.

HOWEVER... 'in capitals'... I reckon I'll be renting for more than 6 months and I'd be throwing capital on rentals. It would mean moving my kids out into a horrible rental and it would mean two moves (paying removals twice, stress of move twice). But the biggest issue with this for me is I don't want to be sat with cash like that in the bank (It may affect my ability to get tax credits and all that as my savings would be more than £16k and on top of that the way inflation is going right now who is to say that the cash in the bank would even be enough to purchase a deck chair come 2022. Way too scary).

A lot of houses being sold at inflated prices next to A roads, backing into railway track, in front of a fire station etc. Have to be careful. Buying in desperation could lead to further pain down the line.

Yes that's true @DblEspresso it does feel like they're the only type of properties left on rightmove. I have said to dh I'm not going to force us to buy somewhere we then get stuck in because it was too high a price to start so we are going to sit it out for now unless something ok does come on.

Interesting thread, but my current experience in North London is awful. Things selling straight away, I’m in queues to view with only 15 mins, I’m getting very fed up, the only things that aren’t selling are either very overpriced or with no outside space. Houses go in days.
I’m now having to wait for new property to come on to the market. I’m in theory a hot buyer, nothing to sell either cash or cash and small mortgage but the estate agents aren’t that interested as so may others are also looking in my price range.
I’m getting very fed up with it all.