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!

Some more info for buyers! link below.

My takeS from this and other sources is that

• buyers are being extra EXTRA cautious (concerns about buying before a crash happens and negative equity)
• sellers still a bit delusional but getting there lol
• we are looking at these higher interest rates for the longer term (this will be the new normal).

"A report earlier this week said the number of first-time buyers in the UK had fallen by more than a fifth as the jump in mortgage costs made it too expensive for some people to get on to the housing ladder."

I feel more confident that there will be a crash or some major price correction now because I also thought for a long while that these higher interest rates are probably here to stay. It means that house prices have to come down significantly.

So to my fellow Buyers, think carefully before you buy now and do the math work :)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/29/uk-mortgage-approvals-interest-rates-house-sales

But the thing is if you find a property that’s fairly priced in an area you want surely if you can afford it then buy it. Renting in the expectation that there will be a mass crash just costs money that goes to pay another person’s property.

You can continue renting for another two years which will cost you xxx amount or buy something you are happy with. There are always swings and roundabouts in property but ultimately the swings always go upwards in the longer term.

"There are always swings and roundabouts in property but ultimately the swings always go upwards in the longer term."

Not really, the period after 2008 broke the cycle of normal inflation adjusted house price rises, the rises after that were based on the availability of cheap debt, if zero rates dont come back ( I dont think they will) house prices have a long way to crash to get back to the normal wage driven inflation of the pre-2008 period.

One thing that always confuses me on these threads is the division between 'buyers' and 'sellers' we are currently moving and we are both?! Isn't that the most common position?

I think we priced fairly (sold in summer) we were £45k under one a few doors down that is wildly over priced and still hasn't sold. We had 6 viewings and 3 offers. Accepted £4K under.

We have offered asking price on onward purchase. To some we might have overpaid but we were bidding against another buyer and we plan to live here 20+ years so it should all balance out. We very specifically needed a granny bedroom and bathroom on ground floor and those are like hens teeth round here so happy to pay for what we need.

I think it must be really varying in different regions. Things still selling here (ip north) but slowly. These comments from south east it seems to be much worse!

That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing, your experience is valid!

Would you say that because you are both buyer and seller, that made you price more fairly?
How did you feel when you noted over-priced houses, particularly the one on your own street and was also much over-priced compared to your own property on sale?

FYI :) This thread was created to share buyers experiences (and issues) with the market right now and the most common theme that seems to come up is the over-priced houses especially the ones that have had no work done.

Data also shows the many people are cautious of the market right now and that we are currently in a more difficult position economically as a country, and probably globally. Buyers are sitting tight (more and more). I think it's fair to say the Boom from the pandemic is over and the longer sellers wait to sell, the more they may see slashed from their property price.

Congrats on selling though . I don't know what you sold for, or your area, but if it helped you buy your next home, then good for you and your family. I hope you're happy in your new home :)

the period after 2008 broke the cycle of normal inflation adjusted house price rises

this!! we are in a new normal now.
people expecting the interest rates to go down back to 1% are going to be waiting a long time i reckon :/

@ohsobroody the SE is suffering faster and harder falls than anywhere else in the country right now.

hi, yes, sure. fairly priced is a winner :)

@KievLoverTwo yes it sounds like it's a bit crazy, we've definitely seen the impact up here but nothing like the comments on this thread!!

@wheretolivehelp
I think we just priced what we thought would sell 🤷🏻‍♀️ it wasn't a case of trying to be 'fair' to buyers although that sounds awful. We also didn't have a set amount in mind we needed. We always wanted to do a project house as we both love diy so had a bit of flexibility. We've also always 'under housed' ourselves in relation to our income so we're lucky that the interest rate changes haven't been a deal breaker. We were also perfectly content to stay put a few years if needed as our youngest is a toddler and we just want to move before she's at the age of needing to be in a catchment for a school. Eldest 2 are teens and catch the bus so only had to limit ourselves to the radius of buses to their secondary. The one down the road came on after ours. DH and I just chuckled wondering what they were thinking.

Ours was on for 300 and sold for 296 which is about right. They were selling for around 325 peak time of the boom. Theirs has gone on at 345 and according to a neighbours they were unable to accept less due to their onward purchase. We think it helped drive viewings to ours which then looked like a bargain in comparison. Both in ready to move into condition but theirs is slightly higher end appliances etc

In fairness, a house dropping by 30% in value would have to be a pretty substantial crash in the market!

But if you’re asking me as a general principle then yes, I don’t think you should renegotiate once you’ve agreed a price.

As I said, would you be happy with the reverse? The market increases and at the last minute the seller demands an extra 10%, 20%, 30% (to use your figures). I imagine most buyers would be extremely upset after they had made and agreed on an offer to suddenly be expected to pay a hefty chunk more,

The property market will always fluctuate - and in the long run it will always increase. I bought at the very peak of the market before the global crash 16 years ago. Even worse I had a 100% mortgage. My property has just sold for about 35% more than I paid for it. And I priced it very competitively- I could have probably got an extra 10% if I was willing to wait (speed was a priority for me).

If you’re trying to flip property then yes, you might have an issue but if it’s a longer term move then forget about the value. But a house you love that you can comfortably afford and enjoy your home in the following years. Despite what doom merchants like to predict, property values will always steadily increase in the long term. It’s about riding about short term dips.

So to return to your original question again - if you can truly and honestly say that you’d happily pay extra if the sellers asked you to (in a rising market) then fair enough. But the vast majority of people would be very very pissed off to be asked for more money after previously agreeing a price solely due to markets climbing. The principle cuts both ways. It’s a shitty move.

To use your analogy, you buy a Hoover online at Currys but when you go to pick it up they say you have to pay an extra £50 because that’s what Argos is charging. Would you be happy to pay up the extra? If you wouldn’t pay the extra then you shouldn’t expect money off either. You honour the agreement you made - and that applies to both sides.

The only exception for me would be if the other party had unreasonably delayed things. Then I would say that a renegotiated price is the consequence of their poor behaviour.

This is crazy. Yes, if market is up by 10, 20, 30 percent Id expect seller to want more money too. It works both ways. And if large market swings happen all over sudden, I don’t believe buyers or sellers owe anything to one another. So no, if I’d put offer 6 months ago, I would probably be renegotiating now. And I see absolutely nothing unethical about it, given current market conditions.

The only reason why buyers and sellers are so stressed about this in UK, is because it’s a norm to sit in insanely long chains. Price renegotiations would never happen if purchase/sale wouldn’t be taking 6-12 months.

The hoover analogy is a really poor one. Consumer products are mass produced. if you don't like the price in Curry's or Argos, you can look at the price for an identical one on Amazon (or whatever). Houses aren't interchangeable in the same way.

And I would say that sellers calling off a transaction and putting a house back on the market at a higher price is pretty commonplace in a rising market. If you are the buyer that could previously afford it and now can't, obviously you'd be pissed off, but you can't reasonably argue that the seller should treat you as some kind of charity case and sell at the lower price anyway. Likewise, it isn't reasonable right at the moment to expect buyers to act as a source of charitable funds for distressed sellers, but many of them (and their agents) seem to be hoping that we will.

Might not be the best analogy, but my point was to say that we don’t think twice about withdrawing from other purchases if we can find it cheaper. No sentiments attached. Yet somehow some of the sellers or buyers expects an offer on the property to stay unchanged even after 6-12 months of waiting during volatile market conditions.

"a house dropping by 30% in value would have to be a pretty substantial crash in the market!"

Yep, and interest rates moving from sub 1% to pushing 6% is exactly the type of environment to cause those sorts of price drops, I would say many people who bought during the last couple of years are already down 30% on what they could realistically get for their property now, if they could find a buyer.

I would echo what oh so broody said this isn't true everywhere. I'm also further away from SE in Yorkshire and it's approx 5/10% down here no where near 30 suppose we've got less house values in the first place though lol less wriggle room

Our purchase was fine. We really liked the house so offered asking price in January. Completed in August.

Our own sale fell through twice but the purchase went along ok. We were quite lucky the market was slowing so we didn't have to panic about losing the purchase.

Unless you have mortgage approvals and sales transactions the same as before the interest rate changes saying it is nowhere near 30% isnt really accurate IMO, a smaller pool of sold houses (from transactions made many months ago) tends to skew the data upwards? Most parts of the country have mortgage applications and houses sales dropping substantially, I dont think your part of the world has bucked the trend for this?

Just because you would say something Crashy, don’t make it so.

It’s very unlikely that a property someone bought in the last couple of years would be worth 30% less today. That’s not normal for this market.

5/10% maybe depending on area but not 30%…. That would be highly unusual. You do have a certain view of the housing market as evidenced from your username but it doesn’t align with what mainstream financial experts have been saying & so far they seem more accurate than you, maybe unsurprisingly.

"t’s very unlikely that a property someone bought in the last couple of years would be worth 30% less today. That’s not normal for this market."

My thinking is that a market that moves very rapidly from people borrowing at 1% to borrowing based on a base rate at 6% and bond yields now testing 2007 highs is exactly the sort of market to create 30% drops, we can`t have full price discovery though because transactions and mortgage applications are down about 50%! But as we have never had "this market" before I am interested in how you conclude what is normal for this market?

@CrashyTime I've been keeping a really close eye in case we needed to make a move but you're right neither of us can fully know what's happening right now as the data is so delayed!!
Truthfully I don't think the drops are as hard and fast here as in the SE but we can come back and review in 6 months
Hopefully you find something you love soon at the right price for you 🤞🏼

I conclude it’s not normal for this market because it’s very unusual you see a property being reduced by 30%. Sometimes you hear of people making silly low offers on Mumsnet for example, but they never seem to get accepted do they?
If you looked hard enough at the data of all house price sales you could probably find the odd example here & there of a house being reduced by 30% from its original asking price. But it would not be a typical example, it would be very unusual.

Already found it! Yes, seeing where things are in six months will be interesting.

@CrashyTime ah brill wish we could set reminders so this pops up in a few months to review particularly after the next general election!

If you use PropertyLog you will find massive reductions from original asking prices, but I am mainly saying that people withdrawing from the buyers market and sellers refusing to reduce price just leads to a stand off with no real price discovery. Do a costing with an online mortgage calculator for a basic house and a basic wage then tell me that 30%+ price drop isn`t extremely realistic?

House prices haven’t dropped 30% and you can’t claim that they have just based on your assumptions.
There is actual data as you know. And you won’t find many that have dropped by 30%. The average reduction is probably more in the range of 5-10%.