House shortages and greedy sellers

[AprilMae]

Just a rant about the current market really, I feel so disheartened. We’ve just offered £325k on a 3 bed terrace house in the North West and been rejected. Seller says they want £340k as there’s ‘so few homes available’.

So they’re admitting it’s overpriced but the scarcity means they think they can ask it? I’m not even sure a lender would agree to that valuation.

Sold our 2 bed as we need more space but there are very few 3 beds coming on the market, we’re looking in a 15mile radius. I’m really annoyed to have worked hard and scrimped only to be priced out of buying a quote ordinary family home in an inexpensive part of the country.

@VodselForDinner I’m worried they won’t creep up and we will have overpaid and be set back financially because of it.

We’ve arranged a viewing on a house asking £300k, just seen that next door (identical, better kitchen) sold for £185k in 2020. A 60% increase in 2 years doesn’t seem correct so again worried about overpaying.

I do feel sorry for people trying to buy at the moment!

This is our plan too!

I'm in a different country and bought 10 years ago. The place I bought the owner had turned down an offer 12 months before I looked at it. They sold to me for $40k under the offer they'd turned down. Bet they were kicking themselves.

OP my advice would be don't look at what places sold for previously. The market has risen substantially. Offer what you believe the house is worth now, based on other properties you are viewing and how much it meets your needs. I've always known I've found the place for me when I start planning where my furniture will go as I walk through.

If the mortgage lender values it less than the advertising price then of course you can go in at a lower offer. If it is over market price, I would imagine, they will struggle to sell unless someone is wishing to buy it as their forever home.

You do seem quite resentful of sellers earning a profit on their property, this has always been the case.

OP if you bought a property for 300k and 3 years later if you needed to sell and was now valued at 450k are you saying you would sell at what you bought for?

It's always a chance you take when purchasing a property, generally house prices increase but there is always the chance it can take a dip!

This! My daughter's father was from Upholland in Skelmersdale and it's not nice!! I always locked my car doors as soon as we arrived whenever visiting his parents

*Whilst still driving I mean

I'm from Harrogate originally and whilst it's always been very pricey to buy a house here, for some reason there seems to have been a boom of families migrating up from the south east/London area over the past few years. So much so that you can't even go to a park there, without hearing a southern accent booming across the playground (no offence intended, it's just generally a lot louder than the much softer local accent, so is particularly noticeable).
Obviously people can move where they like and it doesn't bother me, it's just something that locals are noticing a lot.

The only detriment is that it seems to be driving house prices up. Like what was said by a PP above re: Manchester - Londoners are moving here with London money!

My widowed mother is desperate to move bungalows as hers just needs too much work doing and as she's nearly 80, she can't cope with the chaos of it all. However she's totally priced out of the town she's lived (& worked full time) in for almost 80 years....

The only detriment is that it seems to be driving house prices up. Like what was said by a PP above re: Manchester - Londoners are moving here with London money!

tbf they could be priced out of London.

FFS. Get over yourself. I suppose that you’ve decided that the entire area is unspeakable because it produced’your daughter’s father’. Be less snobbish.

You could take a look at Roby Mill. That’s actually part of Upholland. It’s also close to Skem and is a very desirable place to live. Good luck affording a house there. I don’t live there but some very wealthy people do.

My widowed mother is desperate to move bungalows as hers just needs too much work doing and as she's nearly 80, she can't cope with the chaos of it all. However she's totally priced out of the town she's lived (& worked full time) in for almost 80 years....
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Bungalows are a whole different beast. There's a 2 bed in our village for £380k that has a similar layout to DP's old flat. Our bigger 3 bed end of terrace is £100k less. Bungalows tend to be on a bigger plot than average and everyone sees the potential to build a first floor and still have a massive living space.

Prices are starting to drop where I am. I dont think this hot property market will last forever we were going to move going to wait. I have a feeling the economy is going to get very bad .

This is happening however, an offer is only good if the bank will fund the mortgage. Let this one go and see if it comes around again.

Something has got to give soon.

If you hand been made to keep the sale price of your house low, would you have upped it by £30k?

@Iamthewombat hahaha It is absolutely nothing to do with 'producing' my daughter's father (how DARE you? He was a wonderful husband and is now dead....! You've just assumed you own narrative there....) Skelmersdale is just a horrible, deprived place littered with well, litter!

No although the neighbours we spoke to said they were hoping there will be. I don't know if a parish council can do that? The government have allowed housing to become another way of rich people becoming even richer at the expense of less well-off people who need and deserve decent, local homes. Same old story.

The difference is, and it is a key reason people vote Tory, once people buy a house or even two, they are greedy for money-suddenly happy to see prices shooting up because they are now benefitting from it, terrified house prices will fall, happy to charge large rents that actually prevent tenants being able to save for a deposit, defend their right to 'a free market' (capitalism at it's most extreme), vote for a party that allows them the most freedom and least restrictions on making this money. eg no control on house prices, few restrictions on paying council tax on second homes , no rent restrictions, few requirements to keep properties in best order. The tenants pay for every cost associated with these houses- their rent just goes up.
It would be interesting to know how many properties are owned by people who have more than one other property. I would bet it is in the millions. Meanwhile, we destroy swathes of land, hedgerows, fields and pollute the world, building new monstrosities that the government hands billions of our money to their rich builder pals for building them. We don't need them.

Once more, be less snobbish and unpleasant.

I wondered, upthread, why people like you feel the need to sneer at areas you barely know, where loads of ordinary respectable people lead happy and peaceful lives. I concluded that it was probably insecurity, and I think that that is the case here.

Did you share your views on the area your ‘daughter’s father’s’ parents lived in with them? Did you walk in and say, “I’ve locked the car because where you live is horrible, deprived and full of litter”? If so, I hope they laughed at you.

They most definitely are not greedy, but I totally understand how disheartened you must feel.
we were the same, we found a house we loved on the market for £325k in Barnsley and we ended up paying £380k to secure it. It had multiple offers, so in the end was worth a lot more than offers over £325k.
and we have a mortgage

@cormorant5 it seems like there are loads of really large houses on the market for 500k plus near me but hardly any 3 beds. I think these larger houses used to be affordable for more average people before prices went up and up.

@Iamthewombat no offence meant I’ve happily lived in all kinds of places including Kirkby and Birkenhead, have a baby now so thinking about schools and decent parks has changed priorities for location. People just have different preferences and prejudices.

I think this is the case where I’m looking too. 3-4 beds for 380-400k+ stick around for ages. Any 3bed 330k or under went quickly

The poster you really need to be apologising to (if that is what you are doing) is @sillytops , who lives in Skelmersdale and has explained to you why it is a nice place to live. She’s near a good school for her kids. Parks and good schools can be found all over West Lancashire.

We’ve seen all kinds of ‘prejudices and preferences’ on this thread, from you and the idiot who appears to have taken violently against perfectly respectable areas like Upholland, presumably to make yourselves feel better.

Here’s the thing people like you never understand: the people keenest to sneer at residential areas for being ‘common’ or ‘rough’ are always, without fail, the people who have come from that exact background and are desperate to distance themselves. Desperate. Because they are closer to their origins than they want to admit and it doesn’t fit in with their fragile self-image of someone who has (kind of) made it.

Example: you say that you have lived happily in Birkenhead and Kirkby, both towns that have some rougher areas but plenty of areas that are nice and where lots of respectable people live happily. And yet, you’re on this thread moaning that you can’t consider anything but the most expensive areas of west Lancs, and insulting more affordable areas that you “wouldn’t even want to drive through”, and which you later admitted that you didn’t even know that much about, despite the fact that you yourself benefited from buying an affordable house. Because you consider yourself a cut above people just like you, and you think that you need to show it by living somewhere you can boast about. But you can’t afford it, can you?

As for this:

it seems like there are loads of really large houses on the market for 500k plus near me but hardly any 3 beds. I think these larger houses used to be affordable for more average people before prices went up and up.

If you thought about it, and it’s already been explained to you, you would understand why you can’t afford these ‘larger houses’. You never could have. The current prices are being fuelled by a tidal wave of money chasing houses. That money is coming from looser lending, to people like you. Too many average people have got £325k to spend. Not because they are special, or a cut above, as you seem to think you are, but because that is what banks are lending to ‘average people’. Before prices went up, lending was stricter. So you still couldn’t have afforded the type of house you want, because you’d have had less money to spend. What bit of this don’t you get?

5-10% over asking price, depending on how 'done' the house is is pretty standard where we're looking. We've been looking for a year now and this hasn't changed, even though prices are going up and up. It's horrendous. Sadly we didn't secure anything over asking from our buyer so the gulf is even wider.

Just to add: the concept of people desperately trying to distance themselves from the origins they are (unfathomably) ashamed of by affecting poshness and sneering at the life they left behind is so well established in popular culture that it is the subject of innumerable works of literature and TV programmes. Vanity Fair. Keeping Up Appearances. I could go on.