Sellers don't want to admit that the market has changed!

[FantaLemonade]

I'm a ftb and have been house hunting for nearly a year. I'm taking my time and not rushing into anything as I want to find the right house within my budget etc, but I do check right move most days (has become a bit of an obsession tbh!) so I tend to remember certain properties. I've noticed a lot more sales falling through recently and properties being re advertised online. It doesn't surprise me with all the uncertainty, interests rate rises and affordability criteria changing. Anyway, this one made me laugh (pic attached). Obviously the seller is entitled to list and sell the property at whatever price they want, but what on earth are they thinking?!. The house was only taken off the market around 3 weeks ago after being on the market since end of March and having 2 reductions, which even in todays market is still a long time for the area. Clearly the sale has fallen through, but I have no idea why they think it would be a good idea to re-list and add on an extra 5k. It's not as if the market has improved in the last 3 weeks, is it?! Utterly bizarre I think. Is this just another example of sellers not wanting to admit that the market has changed?!

Did York house prices go sillier than other places during COVID?

That would explain the steeper than expected decline.

I can't say I did a detailed market analysis but the prices definitely flew up. It was a very desirable place for those leaving London. I'm pretty sure the market is feeling the lack of London cash buyers now, as they've all already moved I suspect. Or at least, the big influx; there'll always be some.

No offence to York but I just cant imagine someone used to, and liking London life being happy there, isnt the reality just that a lot of people needed to work in London but couldn`t afford to buy a house there and just accepted they would need to get on a train twice a day?

York was cheaper than Harrogate 15 years ago and it isnt now. Not the pandemic but a gradual shift I would say.

I think the really silly mega-bubbles outside London were in Bristol, Edinburgh, Brighton, Cambridge, Oxford and Aberdeen, Aberdeen has already popped (oil money on top of cheap debt followed by no more big oil money and no more cheap debt was like an Elephant gun to the city) I think the rest will now also burst in spectacular fashion.

We had a rental property that became vacant so we decided to sell it. We refurbished the place from top to bottom, replaced the wooden floors, new boiler, and had a guy come to do the block paving. We even replaced the bathroom suite downstairs. When we put it up for sale we researched the market, took advice from three agents and set a reasonable asking price.

That's when the fun started. We had ppl offering 15-20% below the asking price ( because that was the mortgage they could get ) and getting shitty when we declined their kind offer. We had one guy view five times, who then started to pick holes in the walls with a screw driver ( he had to be escorted out of the building ). And twice we had buyers offer substantially less than the agreed price just before contracts were signed.

In the end, we had enough. We looked at the current rental opportunity, which was a good 25% higher than previously, and appointed a property agent to handle everything. There was a queue to view and contracts were signed and deposit paid within 48 hours.

We will review the situation, and the rental income, in 12/24 months.

Where I live prices have never fallen, only failed to rise as quickly.

Not with five hours on the train today before you have got to and from either station. It will have been WFH folks, possibly some hybrid, some of whom will have been called back to the office full time and/or got fed up with the lack of amenities in the North.

Houses in York are also pretty small as a general rule. If you bought with a mortgage in 21 and it's remortgaging at 80% more in 2023, those minor inconveniences you put up with to be able to afford a cute house suddenly feel like major inconveniences when your mortgage is swallowing your entire income.

I have no idea what proportion of people fleeing London were cash buyers, mind you.

If you're going to spend that long on a train every day there are far cheaper places to buy than York. Almost no one is commuting daily from York to London.

York is full of ex-Londoners living perfectly happily. People change in what they want, people's priorities change, some people would have always rather been somewhere other than London. It has excellent schools and is regularly described as a great place to live.

Plenty of cash buyers getting Georgian townhouses with the equity from a semi in London. A decent sized period terrace/semi (4 bedrooms) can be bought for 500k or so - this is a random one off RM, 550k, five bedrooms, nice gardens, good school catchments and within walking distance of the town centre. 5 bedroom semi-detached house for sale in Irwin Avenue, York, YO31 7TX, YO31 (rightmove.co.uk)

My god, that’s insane! We secured 8% under but the reduction is what we calculated to bring it up to asking price when finished. Safe to say we were not walking attacking lunatics!

I think the really silly mega-bubbles outside London were in Bristol, Edinburgh, Brighton, Cambridge, Oxford and Aberdeen, Aberdeen has already popped (oil money on top of cheap debt followed by no more big oil money and no more cheap debt was like an Elephant gun to the city) I think the rest will now also burst in spectacular fashion.

I don't think Brighton can be described as a silly mega-bubble so much as a place where identifiable structural factors have led to slow and steady appreciation. Brighton changed significantly in character after it merged with Hove to acquire unitary authority (and then city) status, which is the best part of 30 years ago now. The high speed rail service that followed gave it the London-on-Sea identity that encouraged a considerable amount of corporate investment and relocation, ex-Londoners flooded in, and for the first time ever property values outstripped hitherto more desirable locations, like Lewes and the villages or the Wealden district. In the time since, what counts as central Brighton has expanded considerably, the housing stock has increased hugely, and yet both demand and prices continue to hold up.

I bought there in 1998 and doubled my money by selling in 2000, amid huge anxiety that the bubble would burst at any moment and we'd all be plunged back into the negative equity of a few years earlier. If I'd hung on to that property and sold it now, I'd be looking at about a 1500% profit.* That kind of steady appreciation is never going to burst now, because it was generated by factors that are longer-standing and less reversible than the conditions driving the recent property boom and current market slide.

I don't know the other cities well enough to say but personally I'd be cautious about hanging on for a mega-crash in any of them (Aberdeen excepted) without understanding more about the context surrounding what may superficially look like silly prices.

*See my forthcoming autobiography, Property Mistakes I Have Made, a tragedy in multiple volumes, featuring limited edition endpapers marinaded in real human tears.

That sounds like a bit of a rubbish read tbh.

But I concur re Brighton. It's not a bubble. I know people who have yearned to move or fought tooth and nail to be able to afford to stay there for decades. The attraction of living there is not going away any time soon.

Oxford wasn’t/isn’t a COVID megabubble either. Always hugely expensive and popular for commuters to London. No sign of activity slowing or prices dropping either. But the university contributes a lot to that.

I agree, I work with lifelong Oxford dwellers who tell me prices never really fall here. I expect this is also true for Cambridge.
Some places are protected from the vagaries of the housing market by multiple factors, some aren't.

"It's not a bubble", "No sign of prices dropping", "Prices never really fall here", etc.

This is why people will be shocked. They cannot see what is coming (and is already happening). Let's take a look at Cambridge and the latest registered sold properties. Largely orange (price hasn't increased versus inflation) and some red (price actually fell since previous purchase).

You are trying to imply that people/ businesses (and governments) were as indebted back in the 1980s as they are today which is simply incorrect. I am pointing this out and you don't like it.

Where did I say people/businesses were AS indebted back in the 1980s as they are today? Where did I mention governments at all?

You haven’t pointed out anything I have actually said.

On the high speed trains it should be under 4hrs, there must be people doing that, if not daily every other day for a cheap(er) house in York?

Idk. As a general rule, if you tell a Londoner a commute's going to be more than 45 minutes each way, you get a lemon face reaction.

Sales stats for under 500k: 2018 3.4k, 2019, 3.3k, 2020: 2.7k (covid), 2021 - 3.9k. It kinda looks like those who couldn't move there in 2020 just did it in 2021 instead.

I haven't analysed 500k plus because it's of no relevance to me.

I agree. It's bonkers.

My next door neighbour bought his house for £430k in 2018. It's on the market for £765k. They have literally not done a thing to it.

House down the road bought for £340k in 2021. Now on the market gor £450k. They have converted a tiny garage into a bedroom, but surely that doesn't add 100k?

Can`t see them selling now TBH.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/uk-30-year-borrowing-costs-rise-to-highest-since-1998/ar-AA1iyCmv

This is a reasonably priced house for the area and in line with the pricing for other similar houses. I really am struggling to see the issue and I’m fairly positive any lender would value In that region.

Bloody hell, where on earth is this (roughly)?

The fastest train from York to London is just under two hours. Unless you live and work by the stations you have the extra journey time on top. Then, as trains aren’t free, you will be spending thousands on your train fare each month to commute (monthly season ticket is around £1700). And York is the most expensive city in Yorkshire. So it makes no sense at all to choose it as a place to live and commute to London for most people.

There are an awful lot of places closer to London with cheaper housing than York.

Fair points, working people can`t really do it, maybe retired people wanting a break from London but needing to still be in touch with friends/family there from time to time taking their equity up and pumping the York bubble? The good news I suppose is that as interest rates rise there will be less London bubble money sloshing around the country, meaning price drops in London AND the other mini-bubbles?

I think the fall in prices is also being prompted by landlords selling up and leaving the market, increasing supply. There seem to be a lot of ex BTL properties on the market. I still think the rise in interest rates is the game changer.

Interestingly, the rental market seems to simultaneously gone mental, round here at least, which I think must be because of the reduced supply. Landlords are selling up for numerous reasons, including the huge delays in the courts when seeking to recover a property from a non-paying tenant.

I have to say, I don't think a fall in prices is a bad thing in the long term. My sympathies are with those who have taken on a huge mortgage, perhaps during the Covid race for space, and whose fixed rates are coming to an end.