Intrigued by this house - PurpleBricks and selling after a year?

[IntriguedPotentialBuyer]

Hi everyone,

DH and I are looking for our next house, which will ideally be our family/‘forever’ home. We’ve seen a house which would be ideal - great area, period property, spacious, lovely garden, off-road parking etc.

It’s on with Purple Bricks, which we’ve never used (we bought our current house through a local high street EA). It’s also being sold after just a year (last sold for £425000 in March 2022, I think), and has already been reduced this time from £475000 to £450000 (or OIEO).

As far as I can see from looking on Zoopla, the neighbours both sides are long-standing, so it seems unlikely to be neighbour issues (prior to last year, the house was last sold in 2002, so the previous owners were there a long time). There’s been no extensive work done in the past year that I can see, so it’s not likely to be a case of ‘flipping’ the property either?

It looks a brilliant house for us, but I’m a little worried that it’s being sold so quickly after its last sale. With it also being sold through PB, I’m not sure how easy it will be to find out why, or whether there are any issues potential buyers should be aware of.

What would your thoughts be as a potential buyer?

link is here (hope it’s OK to share) https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137259164#/?channel=RES_BUY

My friend bought a house with her boyfriend who died about 8months later so she sold up, couldn't face living there on her own.

@Zipps that’s so sad, I’m so sorry for your friend’s loss. 💐

I’ve no idea at the moment. We’d have to go and have a look and a proper chat with the agent and/or vendor. £385000 is too low isn’t it? That’s slightly less than 15% off the asking price, and is the asking price for (IMO) the nicer of the two detached properties on the market around the corner. And considering how the market is at the moment, it does seem overpriced, but I’m inclined to think the vendor wouldn’t consider 15% off asking and we’d end up looking cheeky.

I’m not experienced when it comes to these things as we were FTBs for our current place! What would your offer be?

I wouldn’t assume long standing neighbours means no neighbour problems. It’s really just a battle of wills if you have an awful neighbour.

We’ve bought a house that had been lived in by the previous occupant for 40+ years and our neighbours both sides have been there for 20+ years. One side is lovely but the other side is a horrible lady who sends us long text essays about how awful we are and has screamed at me in the street multiple times in the last 6 months about perceived slights and noise despite her dog barking for 7am - 11pm every day. She’s fallen out with all our immediate neighbours (both sides of the street) so everybody is like “take no notice, she’s hated everyone at some point” 😂we aren’t selling though because we’ve spent too much on renovations!

could be just people who bought it tarted it up a bit then sold again

I think seeing as it is OIEO 450k they wouldn't even consider anything below 400k so I would probably offer 400k if after viewing it you do feel it's nicer than the other properties you have seen on at 375k and 385k.

I know some people will say no harm in starting at 385 and you could do that, but personally I don't see the point in irritating a vendor with an offer you are almost certain they wouldn't accept.

That’s my thinking too 😕 especially given what the vendor(s) paid for it last year, presumably they’ll want to recoup what they spent even in a falling market. That makes it tricky!

Looking at the floorplan, the dimensions are bigger than the £385k detached that I like (DH prefers the PB house), and it has rhe off-road parking in its favour too. Here’s the detached, in case anyone is interested 🙂 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137568422#/?channel=RES_BUY

While that's also a nice house, the PB house definitely looks grander @IntriguedPotentialBuyer and the off-road parking is useful and gives it more kerb appeal.

I think you should arrange to view both of them and take it from there.

Thank you @Twiglets1 🙂 I’ll have a chat with DH and sort some viewings!

what's going on with the brickwork on the 2nd house? To the left of the lounge the bricks look a different colour as if they have been replaced.

Just to add, it's not necessarily realistic for the vendors to think they can recoup what they spent on it. Not if prices have been falling in your area.

It's just a case of trying to find a reasonable price. I think start at 400k if you like it but be prepared to be talked up slightly to maybe 410k if you think it's worth it.

Great, would be interested to hear what you think of the houses after the viewings.

It wouldn't out me off at all. There could be all sorts of reasons why it's being sold after only a year eg . Relocation for work, economic reasons, bereavement, divorce

You don't have a cat in hell's chance of getting it for less than the owner paid for it.

They would possibly end up in negative equity.

That’s interesting, thank you. Houses have been hanging around for a long time recently and nearly everything we’ve had half an eye on over the past few months (we’ve been low-key looking for a little while but haven’t started properly viewing yet) has been reduced. Even with reductions, things aren’t shifting, or at least not quickly at all.

@IntriguedPotentialBuyer Do some simple research. It's all om RM.
Property in Exmouth rose on average by 15% in the last 12 months.

I don't get that it's second hand furniture . I get that it is probably cheap and bought all at the same time - very plain white . It doesn't seem to match the house though .

Perhaps a change of circumstances , can no longer afford the mortgage , job loss etc . I would also imagine that, although there is nothing actually wrong with the kitchen and bathroom , they could probably do with a bit of updating .

Thanks, @SouthernLassies. As I said, we’re not experienced at this, hence asking a lot of questions on here. It’s interesting that prices have risen by 15% but very little seems to be moving on Rightmove.

A lot of people seem to be downsizing. Fewer homes at higher prices, hence a 15% rise in a falling market.

We sold our house less than a year after we’d bought it. Brexit Britain just got too anti-foreigner in our neck of the woods and we left the UK after 25 years.

We sold it for 22k more than we paid for it, to our surprise (although there was a lot of new housing in the area, we’d done very little to it, and we sold it empty and un’staged’) — turns out the newbuilds were so small and corner-cutting, our solid 1970s house on a nice, non-overlooked site with lots of trees, looked extra good in comparison.

Bear in mind that the Land Registry data (which feeds RM) lags massively. House sales can take anyway from 4 weeks to a year.
In the first half of 2022 (when we made our offer) prices were high still. Rates had just started to rise but prices hadn't come down. However plenty like myself were rushing to buy and complete before a) rates rose further and b) this lead to a drop in affordability, but also supply.
We completed in Dec and our house only appeared on the Land Registry in Jan 2023... which didn't reflect the climate at that time accurately.

Arithmetically speaking the average is the sum of all houses sold, divided by the number of sales. If people are ONLY selling when it suits them - i.e., when they can get a good price, then of course the 'average price' will show a rise.

You can't take any figures at face value I'm afraid, you need to do detailed research into what's selling, where, and why.

The area we originally wanted to buy prices haven't dropped but very little came up for sale... even in the Covid boom. Desirable suburb with good connections snapped up ASAP.

Also the stamp duty holiday/Covid boom pushed house prices up past their 'natural' growth rate. Your last sold in March 2022 means the offer could have been made much earlier... at the peak of the Covid boom (i.e., just before the stamp duty holiday was finished... Sept 2021).

So 425 is already overpriced but not accounting for that , 10% off 382.5 which is close to your figure.

As much as people bang on about insulting offers offering people to pay more than 'peak price' in a falling market is stupid. I don't know why people get upset at insulting offers but not insulting prices. This country has been used to house prices going up and up for too long... it wasn't always the case, and it's now returning to how it used to be before cheap credit arrived to prop it up.

Haunted by ghost of previous owner of long-standing??

Presumably that means you're selling? Have a friendly word with your own estate agent. We saw a house that was obviously overpriced, so I sent it to him and asked what he thought it was worth. He told me a figure close to what I had been thinking too, so we offered close to that. It was rejected and eventually 6 months later was taken off the market and has never sold since.

Thing is in the current climate, it could be that the sellers of that house could only afford to sell at that price, and if it won’t go for that price, better to just go off the market for now.