What is the property market like where you live? It's dead here

[OnedayIlflyaway]

Haven't had any viewings for a month. Joint agents, very competitively priced. Have a potential buyer, but they need to sell their own house in North London; they've been on the market for 6 weeks. Agents tell me the market is very strange at the moment, mortgage increases are making potential buyers very nervous. I'm in south Hertfordshire.

It’s always the price in my experience
A lot of sellers have yet to understand that buyers don’t have the same purchasing power that they had when the rates were at 1percent . So they can’t borrow as much or they need more of a deposit

By the time they do understand it they will probably have to drop even more or stay put

I sold my late parents house in 2021 it sold the first day had about 15 -20 viewers on a open day and went for 40k over the asking price it was a doer upper

2 doors up now exact same house but not a dooer upper been on the market for 2 months and not sold as of yet

the sellers my son is buying from are small developers and bit his hand off at his offer of 315 instead of 325

they understood that an offer from him with a huge deposit and no issues with getting a mortgage and no chain was probably worth more than an offer of 325 with someone who was not as procedable

Still selling, prices steady (SW London). Three bed terraces sell from £850k if need modernising and no loft extension or up to £1.4m if they have been. Less coming on but they don't seem to hang around when they do. Rental market is red hot though. It's a nice area with good and excellent primaries and parks, walking distance to tube/train.

Yes there’s certainly no hurry. Though it’s always hard to judge the top or bottom of the market to get it just right. When interest rates do eventually start falling again (end of 2024 is my guess but who knows) there will be a lot of pent up demand so I can imagine prices will slowly start rising again.

I do think the most desirable areas/properties are largely cocooned from the upsets of a falling market. The exception being central London because although it’s still highly desirable, the lack of foreign buyers has had an especially big impact there on prices.

Generally speaking though, certain properties or streets will always be in demand. There may be fewer people fighting over them now but they are always going to sell fairly quickly because they are the best.

@Twiglets1
It is £30k cheaper than the one for sale next door. Both similar condition.

Last week we dropped our asking price by £50K, got two enquiries. First one was a no-show.. the market feels so dead.. we first put our house up for sale in April…. how long do we give it before we take it off the market?

It's better to talk in terms of percentage. A 50k reduction on a one million property may not be seen as a very significant reduction. What price bracket are you trying to sell at ? Are you the cheapest comparable in your area ? It will sell if you hit the right price point but having already been on the market for 3 or 4 months the vast majority of potential buyers have already seen and rejected it.

For the next two years, if you do not have to move, don’t move. The issue is if you blink first and you drop your house by 50 grand what happened in 2008 was nobody else did and so you ended up being 50 grand down. And probably paying 50 grand too much as well.

We’ve accepted an offer which is about 22% below our original asking price. Once we reduced the price a second time we had loads of interest and two offers. We went for the cash buyer. Of course it’s disappointing given the figure we had in mind at the beginning. But we had to be realistic. A doer upper like ours (an inherited property) would be fine in a buoyant market but is at the bottom of the pile in a difficult market like now. I’m relieved tbh.

reduced by 9% after one month of no proceed-able offers, got 9 offers and choosing one on that’s 2% under original asking. Not sure if the news last week about mortgage rates dropping had anything to do with it.

I'm in a desirable area of a Northern city with a very popular school round the corner.

There is still plenty coming onto the market and sales seem to be taking around 3 weeks.

It's hard to say what's happening with prices as we won't know all the sold prices for months. But, from what I hear, quite a few local sales have gone to cash buyers and those houses have all gone for a bit over asking (they were priced in line with recent sales).

A couple of houses were up for £800k down the road, they both sold within a few weeks but I have no idea what they went for. I'd assume under asking as the peak price last summer was £775k.

@wutheringkites ours is a typical FTB house. Most of our offers were cash buyers or investors. Doesn’t look like lower house prices are helping FTB’s because of the high interest rates

Our £50K drop was about 6%, £850K down to £795K.. there are several similar properties, some more than ours. I had hoped that the price drop would generate more interest…

It’s hard because if your house has been on since April, everyone will have already seen it hanging around for a while. If this is the first drop, it would have been better to have reduced the price a bit earlier, which your EA should have advised.
6% is a decent drop though so hopefully that will generate some interest over the next month.

I think you are right @Twiglets1
I had been telling myself that the reason we had so little interest was the price was too high, but dropping the price hasn’t really made a difference..

Considering summer is meant to be peak selling season, I think winter 23/24 is going to be very interesting indeed

In April this year we tried to sell in south east London , 3bed terrace well priced but unfortunate EA. We've since pulled the listing and planning on going back but unsure whether to do that now or wait until September. Is August really a bad time to list ?

I would say wait until October. Or actually January is the busiest month of the year for house sales December, 26 is the busiest day on Rightmove, so if you can list than ready for divorce season in January.

August isn't that bad a time to list. Yes it's the school holidays but everyone uses Rightmove these days and the listings can still be seen even if people are on holiday and viewings booked. If you have a garden, that will look better now than later in the year.

Hope you've got a good EA now. In my opinion it's always worth paying a bit more if you have to in order to get the best EA in your area. Not even just to get the Sale agreed but to be proactive in getting it to Completion.

@3BSHKATS thank you for this, first time selling a house and hadn't considered there was such a thing as divorce season. Saying that we're hoping we can sell this year.

@Twiglets1 thank you for this , yes we do have a garden and although not very big it's lovely and south facing. I think we've now found a good EA. Their approach seem miles away from the previous one.

It's utterly stagnant around us, especially with the more expensive properties. There are houses that have been sitting on the market for months, despite having been reduced.

That's positive about the garden. Make sure it's mentioned on the EA details that it's south facing, that's a good selling point.