OMG the housing market in Somerset

[Shehasadiamondinthesky]

The market here is so outrageous here in Somerset the estate agents will not let you view a property unless your house is sold!!
You have to be in a position where your house is actually sold and then they take best offers. Leaving you pretty much at risk of homelessness, at risk of being gazumped over your limit, some are pricing them really low then selling to the highest bidder sometimes £50-100k plus over the asking price.
My DS, daughter in law and I want to move in together with me in an annexe because they can't get on the housing ladder on their own.
It's hard enough finding a house with an annexe let alone competing with 10 other people in a price war. Every single house on the market has had several offers.
I'm going to have to let them down and we're going to have to wait at least another year.
I work full time in the NHS and don't need this kind of stress on top of my job. We all have pets and you can't get a rental round here with pets, the last time I moved I had to rent a caravan in a holiday park so I could keep my cat and it was unbelievably expensive. Luckily it was only 3 months but even so.
If you have to sell your house, give notice on your rental or have any kind of complications you are basically stuffed.
They would have to move up here and in with me, put all their stuff in storage then we'd have to start looking with my house sold. It would be a nightmare.
Locals (Somerset) are being priced right out of the market.
Its not worth even looking until the market calms down and/or there is a recession.

@noterook 😆

Is your house on the market? You don't say what your selling position is.

If not, would recommend you get it on and get an offer, then go see everything you want to. You don't have to proceed with your sale if you don't find anything you want to buy.

Housing is in a crisis in the UK.

Rishi Sunak is responsible for making it even worse. His scheme to lose taxpayers billions in lost stamp duty has further inflated an already overheated market.

Ever increasing house prices aren't what the country needs. At all.

FTB don't need taxpayer funded Help to Buy - schemes which give huge sums of tax money to developers to construct shoddily built new builds on the cheap. This simply pushes prices up further out of reach.

What's actually needed to is a cool down (which isn't the same as a crash). Plus lots more social housing.

As for Somerset. Advertise the presence of George Osborne. That should be enough to deter at least some prospective buyers. Who wants to live near him. His maleovant presence.

It's not only Somerset, and it's not just this year. I bought in Yorkshire a year ago and the market was insane then. I considered putting it off a year, but am now glad that I didn't. Who knows how long it will last. There's hardly anything left on the market where I live except for flats.

The gentrification of Somerset is something that has been steadily happening under the radar for years - but it's now accelerated to a crazy peak. I totally agree about George Osborne - but personally I wouldn't want to live in Bruton anyway - the ghastly types swanning around Hauser and Wirth are nauseating. In the restaurant you hear stuff like 'oh, but you've still got your London flat!!! (this was in the days before having a London flat was the liability they now are). There is not a single house for sale in the small village we used to live in - and the corporate types who populate the parish council actively encouraged a very expensive housing estate, which has put both the school and the nursery under huge pressure. And also has caused a huge traffic problem. Ironically we did sell in 2019 to a lovely couple from the South East - we had a cottage with quite a bit of land - and I always said to my husband that it would be someone from the Home Counties who would buy it. Yes, we would get more for it now, but we would be paying more for our house too - our fairly unfashionable but rural village also now has no houses or even flats for sale. And the prices have escalated like everywhere else. Somerset is a gem, I can absolutely understand why people want to live there with the combination of the coast and the country. The people who bought our house are still in touch with us and they are very happy. But I do wonder about how some people will adapt to the long winters and the sea of mud, where the lanes are narrow and you're likely to meet a tractor driven by a teenager haring round the bends, the smell and lung searing ammonia of the slurry spread on the fields. And don't mention the cyclists - swarms of lycra clad people shouting 'clear' at every junction, riding three abreast so you can't get past them!!!!

I know we could sell our bungalow very quickly in the current market but my worry is finding something I'd want to buy. Several people I know locally have had to let their buyers down as they haven't been able to find anything to buy. One of my friends has sold, completed and moved into rental property which she thought would make it easier to buy. They can't find anything worth viewing and are becoming quite concerned about how long they will have to rent for.

I bought near Somerset 25 years ago and it was like this then

Bryonyshcmyony

Was this 1997

We ended up homeless after selling our house within 7 minutes of telling the agent to go ahead and sell it.
We were in holiday rental accommodation on a farm in Essex where all the other holiday lets were occupied by others in the same boat.
Our furniture went to France to be stored as there wasn’t any storage in the U.K.
I was phoning up EAs (pre Rightmove) and most didn’t have a single place for sale on their books.

1998

Houses selling straight away. The River Cottage effect

I'm going to wait another year, it's a bun fight at the moment, we'll see how it goes in spring. I could've put my house on the market and sold it in two days but all of the suitable houses had multiple people after them so I think buyings going to be a problem.
Hopefully it will all calm down eventually.

@Noterook

Do you work for the NHS by any chance? You haven't mentioned it.

It's the same a lot of places at the moment, it is an odd viewpoint if you've moved from elsewhere yourself, many people will have connections to Somerset or be moving for work, and even if not, some locals will have benefited from the rising prices if they bought when reasonably priced to stay local and can now sell high.

Where do you work again?

NHS. They are desperate here, half the staff have left because of covid and we can't recruit anyone. Nobody wants to work in such a rural area, they want London. Bristol, Cardiff, Plymouth. I love it but then I'm much older, there isn't a lot for young people here.

I might know somebody in North Somerset with a lovely house that will be going on the market in a couple of months. 4 bed, swimming pool, very reasonable price...😉

What's your search radius and budget?

I knew a lot of agents that did this pre covid to be honest.
I’m selling at the moment and am I fuck having someone round who hasn’t even got their house on the market.

I live in Somerset, but I don't think it's much different elsewhere.

We moved 14 or so years ago and could view properties when our house was on the market. I wouldn't have dreamt of putting in an offer until ours had been "sold" and wouldn't accept an offer on ours if the buyers were waiting to sell themselves. I think that's always been pretty standard practice in the 35 years that we have been buying and selling houses.

Covid has meant only serious buyers are allowed to view houses. I think that's fair enough too.

Just buy a house with a decent size garden and build your own annex. That way more properties will be available for you to buy than just the ones with an annex .

Nobody wants to work in such a rural area, they want London. Bristol, Cardiff, Plymouth.

The others maybe, I don't know, but they definitely don't want London. NHS workers, that is. Or they might want but they can't afford.

NHS workers have been steadily priced out of London for years. Several friends of mine amongst them. One, a nurse struggled to rent in London. She left and now owns.

It's actually a huge problem. A city of 9 million, many very deprived (with associated health issues). And increasingly short of doctors and nurses and paramedics and other HCP.

I know this is off-topic op, but since you only moved 18 months ago and still work full time, are you sure you are ready to be 'annexed'?

It means once you retire, you cannot sell up and move or if you have a fall out with your family, you are all stuck together.

I know of several annex people and it has always been more problematic that they anticipated.

I’ve lived in Somerset all my life. I’m 30 in a one bed flat and was planning to sell after I finish university (just coming up to 2nd year) but housing market is so crazy and we are being priced out by people moving here or second home owners we decided to sell ASAP. It’s been tough and we had to have an offer first as you described but there is no other way.

Im hoping it won’t become like Cornwall. If you visit there in the autumn/winter when the 2nd homeowners have gone it’s a quiet dark depressing place.

The top of the market is mental
I'm absolutely not in the market but houses that would have been 2.5 million a year ago are 5 now!