Anyone noticed the market has changed?

[yaxe]

We are in the process of buying (have sold) & it was mad in March, lots of overbidding etc. I've noticed now reductions & stuff is staying on rather than going in a wk. It's making me a bit nervous tbh.

Trying to find houses to view, loads of reductions but there’s not much about that’s any good for us. We need to complete by March or we lose our pre budget mortgage rate. Well aware the bank could change their mind anyway and withdraw their offer at any point. It could be last chance saloon for us, worried if we don’t buy asap we might not be able to again for a long time and age is definitely not on our side. Weighing up whether to buy something we don’t really want (too small, too much work, crap road, etc etc) , or risk renting forever. Constantly aware time is ticking away.

Unfortunately that good houses are either no longer coming in or the demand for them is so high that the prices remain high and the get sold quickly. A lot of the undesirable ones are available and even drop in prices do not make them attractive.

To be fair the market is always dead this time of year.

And that will get worse and worse if we are in recession because as somebody post it up threat nobody will move unless they really really have to, supply and demand

This is the same where we are. Supply is still the driver of bidding wars and prices staying high.

Bailey also suggested that fixed mortgage rates have peaked.

Quoted from the Telegraph today in case it's behind a paywall:

The Governor of the Bank of England has taken on money markets with a warning that interest rates will not rise as high as they have bet - and issued a rebuke to lenders that mortgage costs do "not need to rise as they have done".
Andrew Bailey said that borrowing costs will peak at a lower level than traders are predicting, even as he announced the biggest interest rate rise in 30 years.
The Bank put rates up by 0.75 percentage points to 3pc on Thursday, the largest increase since Black Wednesday in 1992.

However, Mr Bailey said that increasing rates to the 5.25pc level recently expected by markets would trigger a two-year recession and cut household real incomes by £800 in 2023.
He said this should serve "as a reminder that we should not increase Bank Rate too far", and added: "We can't make promises about future interest rates but based on where we stand today, we think Bank Rate will have to go up by less than currently priced in financial markets."
Mr Bailey also suggested fixed mortgage rates had peaked.
Mr Bailey said there was even a "downside" risk for fixed rate mortgages, which have accounted for 95pc of new business so far this year, because they are largely based on bets of future rate increases. These have fallen sharply since the end of September.
The Governor said: "This action should not lead to higher mortgage rates".
^^
David Hollingworth of broker L&C Mortgages said there should be “very little change” to fixed-rate mortgage deals as a result of the Bank's interest rate increase.
Some lenders are even cutting their rates. HSBC on Thursday reduced rates on a selection of its fixed-rate mortgages by up to 0.29 percentage points.

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/11/03/mortgage-costs-have-risen-high-says-bailey-rebuke-markets/

@Paddingtonthebear same here. We saved up the deposit and have been gazumped twice and house withdrawn on a third purchase. £8500 of legal and mortgage fees. No apologies, no compensation. We have been renting our current small flat for 19 months with storage on top. Yesterday I gave up and bought a modern ex rental. Good address and nothing much to do. It will cost us £300 a month more but at least we will be paying down a mortgage. We are in our 50s so feel time is not on our side.

UK house prices fell by 0.4% in October after Liz Truss’s mini-budget drove a sudden rise in mortgage rates, the lender Halifax said.
The decline in the average price to £292,598 was the third in the past four months and the steepest since February 2021. The annual rate of growth in house prices slowed to 8.3% in October from 9.8% in September.

www.theguardian.com/business/live/2022/nov/07/uk-house-prices-fall-ceo-pay-made-ryanair-twitter-meta-business-live

so glad DH and I are mortgage free on our home

Those articles about house prices falling in October are so inaccurate as they refer to completions. Those sales will date back to March/April so the reality is that in most areas prices have been falling since then. We won’t see the impact of the October budget until Feb/March data. It makes me mad that journalists are so inept in their reporting.

Those sales will date back to March/April so the reality is that in most areas prices have been falling since then

They absolutely haven’t round me.

They have where I am in Bristol.

Prices are definitely lowering here. Lots of reductions, but actually new house listings seem to have asking prices that are less ambitious than this year has typically seen.
Plus a fair few bouncing back on the market.

If I do move it would be around early 2024, so I'm following things with interest to work out what we are up against.

I wonder if it may be hard to judge whether prices are dropping as it would be selling prices that drop, not necessarily asking prices.
After the crazy period of houses selling for over asking, maybe it will just change to selling at or below asking?

@Mooserp good point. I guess I'm assuming that lower asking prices and longer to sell means the actual selling price will be the asking price or lower, rather than the flying off the shelves frenzy we had been seeing. But a valid point nonetheless as the initial listing is only a small part of the story.

In London at least in the zone 2-3 where we have been looking, the vibe has shifted quite significantly since the summer, we are FTB and have been viewing quite actively since May (only looking at period flats 600-800k), the key changes we see are:

(1) a lot of reductions in price overall (mostly 50k - 100k reductions for 700k-900k range flats) seen from Sept and escalating
(2) general reduction in nice, garden flats stock but a big increase in tenanted stocks coming on, esp in centralish London (guessing a lot of buy to let landlords cant hold on to their rental properities due to rate rises)
(3) there seems to be a huge drop in buyer interest in flats (couple of agents told me the market is really dead, no buyers inquiring etc)
(4) a big increase in agenst calling us daily and hinting the price can really drop further

So we are feeling bit more positive to wait for a better market for us in terms of pricing. TBH I cannot help thinking how any FTB can afford to buy anything in London going forward with the current rates...I think flat sales will be dead for at least for the next two years unless a lot of people decide to downsize in London

This is just based on my experience in the past few months so not like a market view or anything!

Estate agents are ridiculous. I've just seen one go back on the market that I know without a doubt the bank valued at a certain amount a few months ago. The right move asking price is already £10k above that. Some poor buyer is going to probably engage in a bidding war above asking, think they have secured a house and then have to decide whether to walk away, or chuck cash in over what the property is worth (if they are able to). Hopefully they get the valuation before committing any other funds..

But that's not the agent's fault. They work for the vendor and act on their instructions.

But interest rates are higher so unless you’re paying cash or you are getting salary increases, you’ll no longer have access to mortgage that allows you to look in the range of £600-£800.

@MsGus yeah we are hoping the rate won't be as high as now next year...it's like a bit above 6% now...and house prices will hopefully drop at least 10% as we are seeing pretty good drops already (although I don't think they are reflected in the market data bc they are based on sold prices on land registry so effectively those ones must have been offered early this year)

I'd also rat the HA out to the vendors. They have a right to know what their HA is up to.
We did this on a house we bought. Had been on sale for over a year, the vendors were getting desperate to sell as one of them was working the other side of the country, where they had found a house they wanted. We saw it, liked it, and wanted to put an offer in the next day- at full asking. So we rang the office, it was a Bank Holiday Saturday, and the village branch was closed, but the call was diverted to the nearest branch, a few miles away. They refused to pass on or even record our offer. DH was hopping mad, as we really wanted the place and needed to close fast as we had lost one we were offering on (bad survey) and had a buyer in a hurry for ours when buyers were scarce. So we broke the rules, found the phone number of the vendors, and rang them up( we weren't close by). Mr Vendor - a very nice, quiet, and polite chap as it happens- more or less exploded with rage when he found his HA had refused to pass on an urgent full asking price offer on to him- we could easily have found another place in the next three days. I could hear him from across the room. When he calmed down, Mr Vendor and my DH made a 'gentleman's agreement' that he accepted our offer. We lived there for over 30 happy years. Not sure what Mr Vendor said to the agent, but I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall.

I have noticed that holiday cottages in an area we used to go to a lot that used to be pretty booked up most of the winter, and which were asking silly money in the last two years, are now advertising 'last minute deals' with very large reductions, and when you look, they are down as 'available' for a lot of weeks in the next few months. Given that many of them are stone cottages, I'd not like to be paying the heating bills, even to maintain the fabric of the building if it was empty. I also note that a few are getting complaints in reviews that the heating has been fixed at a level so low they're simply too cold. We are meanies who keep our house at 17 in the daytime, which means woolly hats- hardly what you want when on holiday, when the NHS recommendation is 18 for healthy adults. One 'holiday' place was set at 14.5. 😬Under the old Factories Act, that would be so low that you'd have been entitled to walk out at work.

It’s not a busy season right now, is it? Kids at school with only half terms as major holidays until summer.

The PP said this though: 'I have noticed that holiday cottages in an area we used to go to a lot that used to be pretty booked up most of the winter...' which shows that it's not usual for that particular area.

I think this is a very good summary, and is what I’m observing in C London.

We are going to view a 4 bed bungalow today that has been for sale for a month but has no offers. 6 months ago it woukd have had a bidding war no doubt and sold by now.

I'm not sure what I'll do if I like. I think I too would too uncertain to offer atm.