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

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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!

The only test of how far they have dropped is to buy a house at peak prices and then sell it now, or in the near future when rates are even higher, that is the only realistic measure of how far prices have dropped for the individual house seller.

We bought our zone 3 London flat 19 years ago. It was a BTL , had horrid decor, filthy carpets, poor plastering and lease issue which cost me over £10000 to rectify. It’s all we could afford ( we paid asking price) so I’m not sure things are substantially worse now. We also looked at buying in Bristol about 15 years ago, there was a Reno ( condemned electrics, unsafe floorboards, not touched since the 60s) in a good school catchment area, it was priced more or less the same as an immaculate house on the same street, and attracted huge interest, even back then it was going to need about £75000 to do up. I found that very puzzling. So I’m not sure all the issues outlined on here are new.

Just thought I'd include this:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/house-prices/why-your-house-price-has-fallen/

Perhaps people who argue here about the house price falls are actually talking about the same thing, just looking at it in a different way 😄

We are in the process of purchasing a property and hopefully exchanging in the next few weeks. We are purchasing a modern new build, not one of those horrible identikit houses though, a proper modern one. Anyway, the house isn't cheap, at all, and the house was marketed as having high end finishes, floors, hand painted this and that, glass and steel stair case etc etc. Also it was marketed as having the ability to choose finishes and colours. Anyway, a week ago we were given an additional bill, on top of the high price we are already paying, for the "changes" we have made. It was not a small bill. We came back to them and said, for the massive price we are paying for this house, we did expect not to have to make the upgrades you are charging us for. For example the standard flooring is a shitty laminate with horrible reviews. the Kitchen layout made no sense. The house has top of the line solar panels with no battery, etc. To this the estate agent said everybody else has just either agreed to pay the additional costs (many upwards of 50k on top of the house price) or have taken the standard items. 1. I can't believe anybody paying that kind of money for a house would be happy with low end finishings and flooring and 2. I highly doubt any of that could be true in this market. I finally responded saying, we are overpaying on the house in a bad market where most developers are giving incentives and the changes we have made are just to get the house up to the spec it already should be for the price tag. We won't pay this extra money. They have now come back and said they will cover the costs. Now I'm wondering if the estate agent was lying about the other buyers or if I'm going to start hearing loads of complaining when we move in from people who didn't bother to push back or do any research. The ones who have the crappy laminate floor complaining that it's changing colour in the sun, lifting up, scratching easily, or people who didn't make the kitchen design changes we did complaining that they can't reach their oven bc why the hell would the original design be 2 stacked ovens, the second one too high for an average person to reach?? Just ridiculous. Anyway, even with no chain on either side in a buyer's market it has not been a fun experience.

Yes, you have to account for inflation and how much you can now get on a savings account, and how cheap your rent could be if there is a load of AirBnB going to long term rental in a recession etc. .etc. The government have back peddled on the insulation standards for BTL I think so all the silly stories about millions of homeless renters probably won`t materialise now, LOL. As soon as inflation turned up property stopped being a good investment, and as soon as higher borrowing costs kicked in property started losing value.

hi, thanks for sharing your experiences, appreciated

the thread isn't about whether they are old or new issues, but that they (sadly) still exist . if anything, what you've described sounds like the property culture in the UK has been in dire need of change and that change is a long time coming with younger people in the market now who will not buy crap that perhaps generations before put up with.

it's behind a subscription wall so can't read it :(
do you mind summarising it I really don't want to pay to read an article haha?

I'm sorry you've had a horrible time. that sounds really stressful and just shows how bonkers and "unprofessional" people are in the property market. the standards in the property market are so low, yet we wouldn't accept it if we were buying a new kettle from Argos! yet, here we are, spending hundreds of thousands if not £millions on a house and many people taking absolute shit from sellers, developers etc. but you haven't so well done you!! this is what i wanted for this thread. to hear about the experiences from the people who have standards and won't take low quality or crap just because other people seem to.

and this is what i can see changing in this market. many buyers are saying no, i want value for money. now.

again congrats! would love to know how you get on when you move in. hope you will write back here then :)

The main bit is that although house prices have fallen by only 5% in nominal terms, if you account for inflation they have fallen by about 15% (real terms). And they expect the final fall to be around 20% in real terms (adjusted for inflation).

They argue that the main "fall" in house price value will be because of inflation and wage growth. So they might not be cheaper on paper, but will "feel" cheaper because everything else is becoming more expensive. So not a huge crash, but rather a small fall + protracted stagnation.

Then they go through all the various house price indices and why some of the falls might not have been captured properly (they appear smaller than they are): the mortgage indices don't include cash buyers who get bigger discounts on price; rightmove index only looks at listing price (sellers are optimisyic) and so forth.

I had an EA try and tell me yesterday that the lower end of the market the prices have fallen but not in the £1m+ mark. Which did make me chuckle as I’m not sure how that part of the market just operates in a vacuum with the houses that would form the chain underneath not selling for what they were.

They were telling us that we would have to relist our house at 10% less than we did in the spring, which I fully accept, but what I then buy needs to be 10% less not 10% on what prices were in 2021/2022.

TBH I feel like pulling out and giving up (we have a buyer) if we can’t negotiate the onward purchase. Then try again when what we want to move to in the £1m+ market has ‘readjusted’.

lots of very nice houses round here not selling too. After being on the market for 6 weeks, the sellers are now just blaming the market and saying they’ll wait longer ‘as that’s just the market’ but 6 weeks says to me that it’s too expensive.

I agree the market is adjusting. I am a RM addict, seriously 😂 I see a lot coming onto market at very optimistic pricing, that would have sold very quickly in late 21/22, that is just sticking. Then reducing, still remaining unsold. What I have noticed up to £299k seems to be going under offer, but £300-£550ish k seems to be struggling. More expensive properties are selling, but not for the kind of inflated prices they would be before.

Hi, thanks for this and for sharing. It's absolutely not true what the EA is saying that the £1m+ mark houses aren't affected. Wimbledon is a prime example (my friend lives there). Lots of £1m+ mark houses there have dropped because they aren't selling, sitting on the market for months. You can check RM and PropertyLog right now. Quite a few houses have reduced by more than 5% and a good 50-70k knocked off already bringing them into the 900k region now lol. Some of those sellers though that had houses for 1.1- 1.2million ha! The joke is house one house is 1.2million and literally the next road it is 950k, they are literally identical in how they look too.

They were telling us that we would have to relist our house at 10% less than we did in the spring, which I fully accept, but what I then buy needs to be 10% less not 10% on what prices were in 2021/2022.

I agree with you on this completely! I think sellers who are also buyers in a chain are in a tricky situation and it just shows how house prices right now are an absolute joke and over inflated. but it's not your r buyers fault as well (not that you implied this). most sellers are still unrealistic but they're getting there.

As a buyer, i'd rather my seller tell me they want to pull out so i'm not spending thousands on solicitors and surveyors - perhaps you can let them know? but i think you'll find your house soon so if they are good buyers just be transparent! :)

anyways, i think 2024 will be an interesting year and imo, a buyer's market that seller's will have no excuse for their over-priced houses. i hope it will help sellers who are buyers too, as it's a sticky situation! if anything, we need people in your situation (in a chain) to demand reductions from the next seller up as that's where the problem is - those sellers in the middle who think it's still 2021.

i also think EAs will also start telling sellers to get real as their own commissions and profit declines between now and Jan 2024, based on the data that there are far less people even buying right now.

thank you :) Now we just need to exchange and complete on time which is a whole other issue :(. I will def let you know how we get on. And tbf, I'm not entirely sure the real estate agent has been honest with us. I mean, would you pay over 1 mill for a house and then fork out another 50k just to have decent flooring and finishes? I suppose it depends where you are buying, in london they could prob get away with selling you a shed for that amount, but we are buying in St Ives, which is a very pretty area, but the houses certainly aren't London prices.

House building suffers sharpest decline in 14 years as borrowing costs surge - latest updates (msn.com)

So much for "supply and demand", looks like it was all about mortgage costs after all?

Exactly, you can make stats say anything, if your business is selling mortgage debt you want to minimise the house price falls that you show if possible. Just follow bond markets is the best way IMO, the "10 Year Yield" is the best guide to where house prices are going.

I think when people live in a house they often forget how long ago work was done ( initial info for ours from HA said boiler age was about 3 years. Actual age when I checked the installation forms, 6 years. And I genuinely don't think thy were telling porkies. And after all, when the house went up for sale it had only been 4 years old....) and vendors who have lived somewhere a long time get used to odd or old-fashioned things and just don't see them. I'm living in a doer-upper and I've got so used to seeing half-stripped walls and bits of bare brick here and there waiting for the plasterer to find the next slot that I don't even see them now- but anyone new coming into the house they would stand out like chapel hat-pegs and really 'particular' householders would think the house was a building site.

Cuts 2 ways, though- I'd not pay more for an immaculate house than one that needed a lot of redecorating because my taste is definitely not for the current fashion, which I find a bit dreary, and it would only cost me materials, because I do all the decorating and superficial jobs myself. Even if it needed heavier work, I might still not knock off the total cost of the work, as I'd be sure it was done properly if I did it, or had it done. An 'immaculate' house can be concealing a lot of things that need redoing, just like your repaint job.
But I take your point about some vendors being unrealistic. Round here they seem to be less clueless on the whole- renos are significantly cheaper. But if you are paying for all the reno work and not doing any yourself, they will still cost you more- you will have control over the quality of the work, that's all.

hi thanks for sharing!

I think that it's fair enough and somewhat understandable if a homeowner gets used to their home e.g. "vendors who have lived somewhere a long time get used to odd or old-fashioned things and just don't see them. I'm living in a doer-upper and I've got so used to seeing half-stripped walls and bits of bare brick here and there waiting for the plasterer to find the next slot that I don't even see them now"

But it's not "understandable" if you think you can sell it for a bomb.

a house that's not "done up" to me includes safe re-wiring, good plumping, and a general reno (which means taking it from poor quality to high(er) quality.) The value of this house would reflect that modernisation.

Old house that haven't been touched for 30 years are currently money pits -this type of house is deemed unmodernised, i.e. it usually isn't in a liveable state...

Regardless of how little the homeowner "sees" the issues (or has actually ignored them), it doesn't make the house a quality house. It might even make it unsafe. If it's not a quality house, it's not worth the same as a home that has had that work done. And even in today's market, those "done up" houses are still over-priced.

A house that requires a reno should be cheaper, to take into consideration all the work need doing, materials, time and labour etc. As the pp states, some people like to buy fixer uppers so they know the quality of work that's gone into it, and that's fine, I would feel the same. But I and many buyers wouldn't buy a property that's the same "value" as other houses that have been essentially, "modernised" (regardless of decor taste). Otherwise, if you do and then spend a bomb on the reno work, you've got a house that costs way more than the current market value, and in a market that's going down down down and is essentially a buyer's market, it's madness to purchase now due to risk of negative equity and all sorts.

if someone has the budget and doesn't care about the reno costs, then that's fine too. but most buyers aren't in that category.

Some more good news for buyers :)

Buyer’s market fuels fastest fall in UK house prices in 14 years (link below).

I still think buyers are reluctant to buy right now given drops in prices are still expected in 2024.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/06/buyers-market-fuels-fastest-fall-in-house-prices-in-14-years

It’s not THAT good news though, as mortgage rates are still where they are. It’s going to be just as difficult to afford a house as it ever was.

Maybe so, but it's definitely good news to me, not fantastic news I hear you, but definitely good and on the right path for sure. this includes buyers who are also selling - surely they want to move on and get the upgrade house they want for far less.

For others who are new to this thread, you can check when I first created it and see the speed of changes since and how much more of a buyer's market it has become. that's definitely good news for buyers :)

Mortgages become affordable (regardless of the interest rates) when house prices come down generally. Interest rates dictate the affordability in this current market i.e. they are not affordable. House prices have to give. And they are. Good news for everyone (or most people at least).

Not really, as prices fall it gets slightly easier with each price drop, the moves on bond markets this week have convinced me that there will be significant house price falls now. Mortgage rates look likely to stay where they are or go higher for a long time to come, it is prices that will have to drop to meet the new reality.

My experience is that many sellers are clinging onto 2022 prices. As a result, more and more houses are still on the market for months.

I'm a first time buyer in a great buying position who has put in a safe offer, and it's been rejected, unfortunately. I'm trying to look at it as a blessing in disguise as it will allow me some time to assess the market next year. If that seller comes back then and changes their mind.....well if the market is even poorer then, then I'm not even sure if I'll want to offer my current amount.

Errrmmm....yes they can be. It's possible for the market to be overpriced overall, but for there still to be some houses within that market that are sensibly priced and so sell quickly as a result.

@Twiglets1 Or sometimes, a fucking cupboard as a bedroom, or 'baby room' as I sometimes call them. Like there's just about enough room to fit a cot in there or maybe a single bed, but nothing else.