London Sellers £1.35m - £2m

[Notstayinginmylane]

How are you finding the process? We have been on for nearly two weeks. Our price falls somewhere between the two figures above. We are zone 2, South London, large Victorian townhouse on a lovely road. Great links to the city.

It is a comfortable family home and we have always put the most expensive of everything in here eg stone floor, granite kitchen tops, chef’s ovens etc. There is enough work to do for someone to put their own stamp on it eg paint walls but nothing structural to do.

People on here always say it’s the price but why is no one offering if it’s just the price? Slightly less grand houses near us at a lower price are also not selling. More expensive houses in surrounding areas don’t seem to be selling. I don’t know who will buy ours as it is out of reach for most first time buyers and a big stretch for those in flats. But suspect smaller houses are also not selling.

Had this been July, we would have been under offer days ago. We have had a smattering of viewings, including locals who appreciate how good the location is. But there seem to be no cash or ready buyers.

Hit me with your experiences and tell
me which bit of London you’re in… Maybe there are micro climates!

This thread has just hit the radar on the 'other' site - the one fixated on house prices crashing. That means their army of sock puppets will be here shortly looking to doxx the OP and trying to win the internet.

It makes me chuckle how a group of bed-wetters who were too timid to buy a £150k flat twenty years ago and have spent two decades prophesizing the collapse of society in an attempt to make themselves feel less like losers seem to think they understand the psychology and mindsets of people who have previously bought houses and think like owners. The latest posts are all hypothesising how no-one could afford a house in this price range with a 95% mortgage - but anyone spending £1.3m+ on a family home in London is going to be trading up from an £600-900k flat ... or possibly two of them, if it's a couple who've only recently decided to settle down together.

I think most of London is slow at the moment. Asking prices haven't really fallen so I think people are waiting to see what happens with interest rates/inflation/bonuses. I look at a different area and price bracket but I think of the 50 odd houses listed or reduced on Rightmove since the start of October less than half a dozen are now under offer.

Just for clarity on the low offer, the ‘buyers’ were not in a position to buy or offer and the agent knows about our reluctance to move! She told me of the offer immediately after but knows my views. And for the HPC ‘bedwetters’, I too was you once. I believed what you spent was more important than what you earned. I was convinced the property market was irrational. Guess what, it is but people are even less rational. So we put our money where our mouths were and saved like mad in our 20s, travelled but no car to run and no expensive nights out. We paid off our first mortgage by 30. We did it again on this house a year ago. That’s with two career breaks and school fees and elderly parents to bail out (both from poor families) so behind schedule. But it is a mistake. We could’ve and should’ve taken on more risk and debt earlier in our lives actually so are severally under-leveraged. It’s a lament and not a boast and I hope those under 35 in decent earning jobs or with lucrative side hustles take heed. Pay yourself first (save/invest) BUT take risks. Borrow as much as you comfortably can if it’s for property (emphasis on comfortably). Don’t buy a stepping stone house from a flat if you can afford more. Buy the next house up as stamp duty is criminal on houses over about 900k and you don’t want to do it two or three times. I realise most of us commenting are on a privileged position but that’s why I put the amount in the title thread.

What’s the other place @Mark19735 ?

We sold in 2022 at your price bracket, OP. In Ealing as my username suggests. We had a slowish start and some silly low offers (from the most demanding and hassly of buyers) before a couple of offers over asking. This was, however, before Liz Truss crashed the economy.

Are you getting plenty of viewings? Is the agent doing them and is it someone who knows the house?

I agree with a PP that “offers over” is off putting.

I wouldn’t panic yet — give it a week or two then reassess.

Update: Two offers! One at asking, one 25k over! Finding out what position both parties are in now.

Hmm. I did a lot of what you did (bought in my 20s, first flat nearly broke me etc, but kept climbing the ladder anyway) but I don’t believe people under 35 can be as lucky as we are unless they have help from parents.

My first London property was incredibly cheap… but I bought it 17 years ago with a 100% mortgage. Without that, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I don’t earn enough to be able to buy the sort of place I live in / will buy next without the deposit I have accumulated via utter blind luck at being born when I was.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that anyone can do what we did anymore - unless they’re a couple both on VERY high salaries and / or have parents willing to give them six figure deposits.

The days when “ordinary” professionals (without family money) in London could buy a house in many areas are over.

I work in a creative industry, the people younger than me don’t stand a chance at owning in lots of London areas, and it is absolutely not their fault!

I think the saying “you didn’t make good choices, you had good choices” applies to all of us on this thread who are buying / selling in this price bracket.

I agree @Periodlate . I assume HPC forum people are probably my demographic and older who have never bought as they were outraged at prices rather than because they couldn’t afford it 20 years ago. I have worked in a similar industry and nearly all the younger folk are drawn from middle to upper middle class backgrounds. If you have no bank of mum and dad to fall back on and you’re in media or the creative industries, you are stuffed. I do also think many (though not most) of the cash poor 20 and 30 somethings with aging parents in the SE will be pretty well off in the next two decades as they inherit all the babyboomers’ wealth.

Wow - that's a lot of money. Do you mind me asking what you guys do for a living or is it more of a bank of mum and dad scenario?

We are not your prospective buyers but we hope to be in a couple of years. Our current SW London house is maybe worth £1-1.2m and we will be looking to move to the £1.6-2.3m bracket in 2-5 years once we’ve saved some more/built some more equity.

However, given the uncertainty with mortgage rates we wouldn’t be moving up now even if we were a couple of years down the road. The problem is that while we, and presumably your potential buyers, want the extra space etc. we don’t NEED it for our four person family so while things are uncertain we’ll wait longer than we usually would.

And it’s not just the mortgage rates - a lot of people seem to be predicting a few years of recession, who knows if that’s right but we won’t be taking on any higher mortgage until it’s something we could afford on one salary if things went wrong for one of our careers or until we feel more secure.

All that to say, as PPs have, that buyers are waiting a bit longer than we would have done a few years ago - I’m sure your house will sell if it’s as nice as it sounds, it’ll just take a bit longer.

HPC is a weird place. I used to be a member when we were looking for our first home. When it started there was some fairly credible advice, but If I'd taken any notice of the forums when we bought in what they told me was a 'shthole' area of East London that would "never, ever improve", I'd still be renting in a houseshare and long priced out of owning my own property. Thanks to that 'shithle' steadily becoming very desirable over the last 15 or so years we were able to sell for 500k more than we paid and are now mortgage free.

Interesting that a lot of the same names are still spouting the same cobblers on that forum.

I know nothing about HPC, OP! Fair enough!!

Haha I probably live not too far from the “sh!thole area of east London” you’re talking about, chipsarnie, and I’m in this price bracket! (It certainly was nowhere near it when I bought there.)

@Notstayinginmylane great news about the offers! I’m telling you how to suck eggs but could I suggest you go for whomever has the most rock solid finances lined up. Bitter experience…

in answer to the PP, our interest rate is exactly that, not that amount over base. We were borrowing a lot but also had a lot of equity and a shit hot mortgage broker negotiating for us.

We’re probably bucking the trend a little in that we are looking to buy at the lower end of that price bracket at the moment. In our case it’s because we had planned to do some renovations to our house but now due to the crazy price increases it is actually cheaper to just buy somewhere that’s done. With small kids I’m willing to take the stamp duty hit to save us all the upheaval of a side return and loft conversion. Like pps though we don’t have to move now so will only do so for the right house, and there isn’t much coming on the market it seems.

@ParentsTrapped good idea. We have done all of it for our next buyers - side returns, bathrooms etc. There’s just a new colour scheme for someone to pick and redecorate with, recarpet etc. I agree about stamp duty.

@EastLondonObserver We are high earners now though I’m freelance. We are middle aged and used offset mortgages to pay down debt quickly. We bought for 700k 15 years ago but only needed to borrow just over half, having sold our first property for 100k more than we paid for it six years previously (so sold for 300 and something). For most of my career I have earned 50k or less. In the last five years that has almost doubled most years as I changed careers. My OH is in IT. So no bankers’ salaries and both immigrants. Both grew up in relative poverty so we had cast iron discipline when it came to not eating out, no designer clothes, no car until OH turned 40. Never had expensive direct debits going out etc. offset mortgages only work if you’re disciplined! But when you are, you can pay down the debt in about 60% of the time.

A house, anywhere, is only worth what someone is willing to pay. High end fixtures and fittings are good, but if they are to your taste, rather than someone else’s, then people will see a house they have to spend a lot of money on. Rising interest rates and the economy, in general, are putting people off committing. A friend ,who is an estate agent in London, says there are a lot of properties that are being over valued, due to agents wanting the business.

I totally agree @CocoFifi. If we sold for a million that’s fine - as long as we get 700k off the asking price of the forward purchase! Also, when I said high end I meant appliances and natural materials eg limestone kitchen floor rather than anything liked fitted bedroom
furniture (yuck) or designer wallpaper etc. Bricks cleaned up etc. Side return and bifolds. Basically we have managed to turn it into a bright house although it’s Victorian and it’s just the right side of lived in so someone can just paint. No interior designer has been near it! There is a house near us that has been on for a year and it is staged to the extreme. On for 100k more than us (and that’s after a 150k reduction last year). No one has touched it.

So you've had a life of no fun just to own an expensive house... Fair enough!

One of the biggest issues impacting this market of house sales is that people are not building the same amount of equity in the last 5 yrs compared to the previous decade so it's much harder to afford that level. The price of debt, it's a lot more expensive to borrow.

Not really @SD25. I used to an entertainment account so eating at posh restaurants was part of my working week and so held no value for me at weekends.

We didn’t do clubs or designer clothes or flash cars.

We did however have one longhaul holiday most years and at least three to four trips to the continent, mostly in school holidays.

We have also got the kids into highly selective independent schools which don’t come cheap. I would actually prioritise this over a more expensive house. Again, I realise we are lucky to be mid 40s plus! But the little things really do add up.

Now that’s an insightful observation @renonovice . Do you think it’s because people thought cheap credit would last forever so didn’t use the low interest rate years to pay down debt? Or a case of people over extending themselves on house purchases and still trying to maintain their late 20s /early 30s lifestyle?

@Notstayinginmylane @Notatayinginmylane you've had a name change fail

Thank you @JingsMahBucket .Was on a more personal thread that I didn’t want linked to this 💐

@Notatayinginmylane I think because a decent house in a "desirable" area was just so expensive & the belief that one always makes money on property. There are certainly flats in my area of SW London that have sold for similar prices to what was paid if they were bought a few years previously. Cheap credit has lasted for years & renting has always been more expensive.
I know people with huge interest only mortgages who saw it as better then renting because they would sell for more but I really do think the days of buying for X this yr or last yr and doubling your money are over for a while. I also think people are wary re increased bills & job uncertainty. Certainly some tech sectors are being hit by job cuts as are other industries, I don't think any of this has played out fully yet. Plus there are bigger issues at play re affording the ageing population & public sector discord so I think we will see more tax rises as opposed to less.