SW England housing market?

[ghostinthehouse]

Those of you buying/selling in SW England at the moment... what is the market like? Just to give an idea, we are approximately 1h30 commute to central London, in a village but surrounded by countryside, mid-sized family home, all pretty standard tbh.

Actually wanted to sell and buy last year, but when we were finally ready, the timing couldn't have been worse with Truss-gate and BoE. Now looking to put it on the market in time for this summer, but finding it hard to get a feel for things... Last summer we saw lots of fast sales for high prices in our area, which is obviously no longer the case - in fact there barely seems to be any activity at all. Just wondering how people who are actively selling/buying have found it so far?

Fwiw, we are at that stage in life where an upsize is needed, might move a bit further out to accommodate this.

Thank you!

Can I guess? Bruton? Frome?

Its not me it was the other person. But yeh probably Bruton or Frome. I’ve been watching and those areas also getting many reductions recently.
I wouldn’t personally want to live there, there’s a reason why I moved away from London!

There's a certain type of Londoner colonising the SW. I know it offends people when we complain about them but you'd have to meet them to know what we mean 😂 If you're a normal person who happens to be from London, no one will give a shit.

Londoners have been priced out of buying in London for decades. No one cared about that at all. It’s only now it’s affecting Wales/ Cornwall / North Yorkshire people are cross about it.

I think we need to get a big further away from the pandemic / WFH ideal that people were sold before markets will stabilise or even correct in some places.

I'm in Cornwall too, and there seems to be quite a lot coming on to the market. I think a lot of it is former rentals or air bnbs that perhaps haven't had much business over the winter. I would say prices here are slowly dropping. Last summer, an average 2 bed was about £200,000, now they seem to have fallen to the £180-190,000 range.

There are also a lot of new builds being built in the area here- the prices seem high for what they are, but obviously they are increasing supply.

I'm not sure how similar our market is to somewhere within 2 hours of London though- because obviously then you have the option of being able to get into an office in London (or e.g. Bristol) a few times a month/once a week- whereas people here who work remotely, it really is proper remote work.

The Cornish have been being price out of Cornwall for at least as long, and it's a significantly more deprived county. The idea that England cares more about Cornwall than London is a joke.

The people moving here are not priced out, they are very wealthy.

Since the 1980s? Really?!

Somerton.

I am not wealthy. I bought it for £210,000. Its now worth £280,000. The seller had it on the market for 3 years and it wasn't moving then covid hit and now everyone wants to move here. There is an artisan bakery, a London chef and so on. I just wanted toive in a village after years in the south east paying a giant mortgage. I've downsized to a bigger house and now have almost paid off the mortgage.

@KevinDeBrioche Being processed out of your 'home' market has been a problem in North and mid-Wales since the 70s ("come home to a real fire - buy a cottage in Wales' etc). It's been a problem in the Cotswolds for a long, long time too.

There's a certain type of Londoner colonising the SW. I know it offends people when we complain about them but you'd have to meet them to know what we mean 😂 If you're a normal person who happens to be from London, no one will give a shit.

The first type likely aren't from London though just moved there in their 20s. They give us all a bad name though!

Being priced out of your 'home' market is something that happens even in cities when gentrification happens. It happens here in Bristol. An area just down the road from me was working class terraces when I was in my 20s. A few coffee shops, a micro brewery and a factory converted into a theatre later and everyone has a log store, a cargo bike and the houses cost half a mill.

It has definitely slowed down a lot. We are in a beautiful area on the Dorset/Somerset border and are selling a 4/5 bedroom renovated and extended farmhouse. A year ago the market was a lot more buoyant than it is today. So frustrating but the buyers just don't seem to be out there at the moment,

Big houses that need work doing are taking a while whereas small houses done up nicely are moving quickly. Market a lot busier now

It's not selling as fast but is selling (n Somerset). It peaked about a year ago I think, houses were selling before they made it to rightmove, people bidding up, not it's taking around a month to sell based on my neighbourhood plus we have neighbours who need to sell because of the interest rates

@PinkFootstool

Depends where you are, where I am it's pretty much 3x typical 2 income professional household for a 3 bed as wages are much higher in the city and some commute to london

@gogohmm well yes, that's the point. A couple on or around minimum wage in Cornwall are screwed though. A joint income of £40,098 isn't going to buy you anything pretty much anywhere in the count. We aren't an easy commute to London - not much of the county is on the main railway route - and wages down here are notoriously low.

According to the ONS, the average salary of £31k in. Cornwall is £9k/yr lower than the national average of £40k.

The average house price is £364k. The national average is £290k.

It's an impoverished county and has been for many many years.

We've been renting in the south west for a few years (OH is a 'native' ) and looking to buy now but the properties that seem ideal for us tend to be ones occupied by an ageing population (as we are too).

I've moved way too many times before and done a decent amount of refurbishment so now I'd really like a chain free, ready to move into property. With certain other requirements.

I'm getting bored looking as nothing new seems to be coming onto the market.

@3928d93

We have that kind of londoner here, 1/3 of our development is second homes. They stand in Waitrose and loudly moan that x or y bizarre exotic food stuff is always in stock in Kensington. Bet we have a far better cider selection!

I'm actually a Londoner by birth but left 25 years ago, my accent is more Home Counties so nobody realises thankfully.

We also have lots of bristolonians who need larger family homes, they mostly whinge about the lack of bus services, lack of take away options and too many cars (due to lack of bus services)

LOL at Bristolians moaning about lack of bus service. The buses in Bristol are appalling.

Thank you everyone for your replies and apologies for not keeping up. This is all really useful info - I know it depends on location, but we are casting a pretty wide net so it's good to hear about all the regional differences.

I’m in Somerset, and not a touristy part. The market here was insane in 2021. There weren’t nearly enough properties for sale in the more popular areas to meet demand. So properties were coming onto the market at inflated prices, then were fought over by up to ten potential buyers.

Sometimes, sales would fall through because the mortgage company thought the property was worth less than the agreed price and refused to lend based on that amount. Some other sales collapsed because the seller couldn’t find (or get an offer accepted) on an onward purchase. It was all very dysfunctional.

I think the feeding frenzy was partly due to some moves being delayed due to Covid and also due to the post-Covid exodus from the South-East.

Asking prices are still high now, but the market has calmed down. If you see a property you like, there’s a good chance it will still be on the market next week. Some sellers get lucky with some rather high asking prices, but others end up having to reduce. I think it’s possible that prices will fall in the short-term, however long-term, I think most properties here will steadily increase in value.

Dorset with a premiership football club 🤣. Market is slow. Not much coming on and lots of things getting taken off unsold at top of the market or reduced. Middle of the market is better but massive slow down from covid where you could have sold any old shithole. We are trying to buy at the moment and the chain feels v unstable.