It's a Buyer's Market: experiences in 2023/2024 ?

[wheretolivehelp]

Just wondering what other buyer's experiences have been like on this side of 2023? Any horror stories? Issues with sellers? Guzumping? Guzundering? Problems with EA?

There's a few threads with Seller's experiences on MN (many saying their buyer can't afford the mortgage for their (overpriced?) property and so re marketing them).

What good and bad experiences have you had as a buyer?

Hope this thread will be useful to the buyers of 2023 and 2024!

No country wants to import freeloaders.

Yeah I concur with you. As a pp said already, the grass isn't always greener and with places like Australia you need to think about healthcare, even though our NHS is overburdened and struggling, we don't need health insurance here for example- both Aussie and nz have poor health systems and you need to pay for most of it or go on even longer wait lists than UK. Australia is bigger than its smaller cousin NZ, so has a bit more going for it, my friend has lived there 20 years and my DH's relative also, and they love the outdoor lifestyle for example, the food, but there are other issues like anywhere. NZ has a shortage of housing, even worse than UK, and not a lot of money, they've got higher homelessness than UK etc Of course I despair at the housing situation in the UK, but we do as a nation tend to compare ourselves unfavourably to other countries that many of us know little about. I definitely would not want to move to America!

Well, we got our offer finally accepted! Only 2% under the asking price reduction, but it's £££ in cash terms.

Now to pick which offer to accept, as we ended up with 4 asking price offers on ours. (We did get 1 under ask offer btw).

@wheretolivehelp

Hey OP, bumping this thread to let you know I had a property re-appear in my inbox with a new reduction today. I'd had half an eye on it before.

It's now been reduced to £1,000 less than they paid for it in 2016.

(NOT a new build, at least 100 years old, in fact)

That's an 81k reduction since it was listed in April (18.8%). The general area it's in rose quite a lot during Covid.

Some people are beginning to get in tune with affordability and are acting on it.

Might you be interested in it Kiev?

Sadly not, it was one of those 'clutching at straws due to desperation to get out of rental' ones.

It's quite charming and in the right area for us, but it's very old, and twisty and turny, and no amount of charm is going to make fibromyalgia lower body pain cope with that. It's not quite desirable enough to start knocking down walls and pulling out kitchens to reconfigure, either.

It's nice to see the sort of property that makes my heart flutter a bit begin to creep closer to the affordability range though, it gives me some hope that we won't actually be waiting until the end of time :)

Not quite right for you then but still an interesting one to watch

Can you link to it?

I am not prepared to do that on a public forum, it's not fair on the home owner. I will message you a link.

Fair enough, but this is free advertising for them, most home sellers would probably be pleased with the exposure TBH, they will already have accepted that they overpaid and have to cut their price to sell and most buyers won`t get the loans now to pay the 2016 price anyway.

Might have been done up to the nines in 2016 and is now looking a bit dated? Interesting though…

No, just an old fashioned countryside house that has probably looked the same for at least 30 years, but it's also the way it should look, because anything else would look really odd in it. Nothing fancy or shiny to be seen, pretty standard of its type.

I think the key thing is, that area saw spikes of over 20% in two years, now people don't have that sort of money anymore, that rise has to reverse.

I've been lurking for a while and have been watching a similar example.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/139091141

It went on the market back at the end of May for £975k, which I felt was a bit high at the time. It was reduced today to £750k, which seems a great price. It last sold in Sep 2017 for £800k.

Great to compare it to this one, which went quickly as it was priced more reasonably to start with. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/140394176

Both those houses are gorgeous!

Blimey. I had been betting with myself that the 800k-1m market would be holding out for at least six months before heftily reducing.

This economy is biting everyone in the arse, except the banks.

I like it a lot, but the semi-detached thing isn`t good, sitting in that space you need to be detached, as you say the "race for space" thing was totally absurd, just the UK public doing what they often do best, daft financial decisions with borrowed money.

2016 market was built on zero rates, people have to accept that those prices are not achievable any more.

Agreed. The current price is typical of a semi of this sort in those areas and I do still think it’s too much to be sharing walls, in its condition, and presumed current energy inefficiency. It looks like a heating money pit. I read today that our energy prices may have to go up 30% next year.

People will pay silly money for character properties. And did, during Covid.

That's a rather large reduction and less than they paid 6 years ago. Pretty house but they must really need to sell it.

I’m watching a part of Somerset, for no other reason than habit really having moved into a new house recently having decided to move in 2019, been a long haul. I’ve noticed the big country houses in what would have been 800k to a million bracket are now coming on significantly lower than they would have.

We were fortunate in March encountering a pragmatic probate seller who accepted 405k offer on 450k house which needed loads of work. I’m watching a similar one further down the road that is newly renovated but not particularly well, gradually fall in price. Started at 620k, west to 595k with stamp duty paid amd now 575k. Ours is needing about 70k ish of work so about 475k all in meaning the other is currently 100k more - not that I care what mine is worth as it is my home, I love it and hoping to never leave. I’m anticipating further drops on the one for sale.

If you look on steetview, the second house is on a more rural & quiet road compared to the first house which does help to explain why it sold easily for 850k.

The first house was overpriced when it first went on which as we discuss a lot in these threads, is a big mistake in the current market.

But it seems a huge jump down about 200k! I wonder the reason why. That in itself would make me nervous if I was a buyer. I wonder if it could even be a typo because a house listed at that price would only normally drop 50k or possibly 100k if they wanted a quick sale.

An interesting one to watch!

I think it very much depends on the area. In my ‘cool’ part of east London, housing stock is limited. Plenty of flats, with more being built, but houses are not being built, so for those young families who want to live in London rather than a suburb, the compromise is a smaller 3rd bedroom. All the Victorian and post Great War terraces and semis have a box room.

You can turn your nose up at it being too small, but plenty make it work. We used it for both kids when they were little and could realistically still have them in there had we not done a loft conversation to free up more space. Using this room gave us a spare room for guests and a desk for wfh.

In areas where the stock is similar to this, they have always been marketed as 3 beds. 3 doubles are much less likely without a loft conversion or in areas where the stock is larger (Edwardian or 30s semis) but they are often further out, or gentrified so long ago that they are £1-1.5m for a 3 bed.

I understand the frustration of not being able to afford your dream home, but I think some of your posts make you sound delusional. In desirable places, there will always be buyers. It might be that they have to take a 3 bed instead of a 4, or move a little further out, but in places like London, where there isn’t the land or the desire to build houses rather than pokey high rises, family homes will always sell.

Now, that’s not to say that I don’t think some sellers are mad - but it seems they often find buyers as mad. On a friend’s road, where the houses go for around £7-800k, one sold for over a million recently. It was beautifully done and no way would I spend £1m on that area, but someone did. All these delusional buyers only need 1 person who isn’t planning to sell anytime soon, and has a hefty deposit or full cash. And if the seller isn’t in a hurry, they may as well wait.

There’s a lot of sneering on this thread about houses not selling for months - but so what? If the seller doesn’t have to sell and is happy to wait for the 1 buyer, why not?

People sneer at houses taking ages to sell on these threads because it seems to confirm the bias they already have against Sellers and prove that they are greedy and foolish. Some may be, of course. But it’s also quite normal for houses to take months to sell in a difficult market.

And the Seller may not be in any hurry as you say, so why not wait to see if they can get the price they want? They may have received offers for all anyone knows, just not at the price they consider “worth it” to sell at.

Both those houses have poor EPC and will be cold. Nothing special tbh

Anyone know how long the land registry take is something is expedited to get a deed of release it’s the only thing that’s holding up the sale