To Be Completely Fed Up of this market - solidarity please!

[VimtoQueen90]

Just a bit of a moan really!

My husband and I bought a 3 bed property in South Wales in 2016 for 240k. It's in a lovely area and a 6 minute walk to the train station which was one of the main reasons why we chose it as we have 1 car and mainly use the train to get to the town centre for work.

When we originally bought, we planned to hopefully have a family and move to a 4 bed in 5-8 years hopefully if we saved enough and got better paying jobs. At the time the price of a 4 bed was about 380k but we didn't really expect it to exceed about 450k in this timeframe. Anyway, long story short, we believe our house is now possibly worth 330k but the price of a 4 bed is now around 550-575k! We've been saving to eventually make the move since we first bought our house and have saved quite a lot but just can't save at the pace prices are increasing. The stamp duty holiday and lockdown increased prices in the area like crazy and it seems a lot of people relocated here as it was cheaper with a good standard of living. We now have 2 kids and managed to get new jobs but in order to stay in the area (our first child starts school locally in September), it's looking like we might have to jump and buy a house around the 525k mark as we can't see prices coming down anytime soon but our mortgage may be around 1500pcm (currently paying £800). We're both quite hesitant to pay this as we're wary about having too large a mortgage and interest rates and also the increase in bills/council tax/life.

I just can't get my head around how much prices have jumped! Everything on Rightmove seems to be getting reduced which indicates to me that everyone feels the same about prices but I just can't see them coming down?! Is it better to just jump and buy before we get priced out completely? We've looked at moving to other areas but love it here and it's not hugely cheaper elsewhere for a 4 bed!

I’m in south Wales and houses aren’t moving, my mate has dropped the price of her 4 bed in the most amazing location you can imagine.

@Temporaryanonymity I'd say we'd buy it, but we probably can't afford it!! 😂

You have my sympathy, the stamp duty holiday caused a great deal of damage.

Re: 525k, are these prices you are seeing come through on the land registry or sold stc prices? Because those are very different things.

Have you started viewing these houses and/or making offers? The reason I ask is because you may find it’s a very different experience once you start viewing. We have been told numerous times recently that anything over 300k is proving very hard to shift, and when we viewed a 475k property the agent told us whilst in the front room “they are really motivated to move, so I would encourage you to make an offer, any offer.” That house, which was far from in great condition on two of the three floors, sold within a month.

I don’t think Righmove reflects the reality of what people are actually accepting for their houses. There seems to be a sense of shame in publicly reducing your price on a website but I think there is a lot of quiet price slashing going on behind the scenes - at least in England anyway.

I'm in the west of Scotland and it's the total opposite here. My brother bought a house that had been on the market a week, sold his in 3 days & his buyers sold in under a week. All went for above the asking price

@KievLoverTwo Thank you! This is really interesting because my husband is convinced of this too! He's always checking sold house prices of houses that had come up that we thought were out of our budget and are some are selling for less than we thought (although still slightly out of budget!) I think I'm still stuck in the mentality of 'offer asking or above to secure what you want'
The price increases of some of these houses are insane. There was a 5 bed that sold in 2021 for 450k and came back on the market in late 2023 for 575k with no additional work done to the property. An 125k in 2 years is a joke!

You make a great point though, maybe we need to start viewing and figuring out what the actual wiggle room is on these properties!

Same here in Essex , houses not selling ( due to millions of new houses being built no doubt) and owners having to take big drops despite estate agents doing the ' we can sell your house at this high price etc'

I'm on the Mid/North Wales border and its much the same here. Lovely properties with nothing wrong with them have been sitting on the market pretty much all year. We have had ours on since last month and only 3 viewings, no offers. I have been keeping an eye on the market closely and nothing seems to be shifting. People are reducing their prices and still not selling. Its most frustrating.

That is insane. Makes me quite angry.

If you install Property Log for chrome, you will soon be able to figure out which agencies are regularly overpricing by looking at the number of price drops they have across their stock, versus those who are pricing for what people are able to actually pay these days. And no, I doubt anything is going for offers over except for in the most in demand areas right now. So unless you are in one of those, shake off that mentality.

Arrange some viewings and see what the agents say to you in person.

So yours has increased about 35% and your 380 4 bed example would be about 515 with the same increase. Probably about right that they’re trying for 550 if that’s the case. plus maybe the bigger houses are more in demand from the Surrey retirees.

We’re in that period where people just aren’t moving unless they have to. Anything less than ideal will just sit there.

@VimtoQueen90 I wouldn't be offering asking let alone above asking unless you happen to live in a particularly hot local market. In this current market, realistic sellers will generally be expecting to have to accept an offer below asking price.

You do need to check what local houses have actually sold for, not just what they are currently advertised as for sale at. I believe Property Log for Chrome is a useful tool for this, though I personally use Rightmove Sold prices. Whatever method you use, you need to do lots of research so you can get a good idea yourself of what properties are overpriced and how much they can realistically be expected to achieve compared to other houses that have sold.

You raise a good point that more expensive houses will appear to have risen more steeply even if the same percentage increase is applied.

@VimtoQueen90 If a house was listed at 550k is is quite likely you could get it for 525k or 515k or even 500k if it has been hanging around for ages.

515k is only the same percentage increase as your own house has increased according to @Sfxde24 (I haven't checked the sums).

Yes the same thing has happened where I am (Worcestershire). We have gone for a probate house that needs work but is liveable so it is more affordable for our move up the ladder.

Thanks everyone! @KievLoverTwo Honestly it makes me angry too, its crazy. I've never heard of Property Log for Chrome - thank you, will check this out!

@Sfxde24 This is an interesting point about the increase, I hadn't considered that, it seems so much bigger on the 4 beds, but I also realise that our house must be equally out of reach for first time buyers now, it's all crazy! I think a lot of people that have moved have been from the South East as a lot of the parents in my son's nursery class seem to have relocated from London and surrounding because they could get bigger houses for less money here.

Husband and I have decided that we're going to fix up the house a little bit (just a few bits that needs painting etc) and actively start viewing properties and making some offers - hopefully we manage to get something!

Can you extend yours to get the house to the size you want?

Any update @VimtoQueen90 ?

@MooFroo Unfortunately not, our main issues are that the kitchen is too small (which is at the front of the house so unable to extend there) and we'd like a proper garden (as opposed to more of a paved patio which is what we have now) for as the kids get older!

@Twiglets1 a bit of an update! Thanks to the great advice on this thread, we booked in some viewings for 2 houses that had come up on a street we'd always wanted to move to because of the location to the train station, both 4 beds on for 565k and 550k but on viewing them we realised that although both were well presented, they'd been built around 1999/2000 and needed bathroom and/or kitchen upgrades/modernisation throughout (although perfectly liveable) and for various other reasons we just decided for the price and the higher mortgage we'd be paying, we didn't really want to be having to do work to a property with the high costs currently of doing building work and with small children. Both houses have had lots of viewings and are still on the market so it definitely seems they'll have to drop the price if they want to sell.
We've had our house valued and had pictures taken for it to go on the market in January as we've decided to go for a new build house on an estate about a 15/20 minute walk from where we currently are, it's still walking distance to the station and primary school for the kids and is a 4 bedroom house with 3 equal sized double bedrooms and the smallest bedroom can fit an office and a double sofabed so we can have guests. There's also an open plan kitchen and a good sized garden for the kids to be able to play. It seems much more of a 'forever' home for us and more long term for the kids as they grow into teens/young adults. However, we need a buyer for our house before we can reserve a plot so hopefully someone will be interested when we list the house in January although we have tried to budget to allow people to offer under asking, as seems to be the market! We did want to list sooner, but estate agent advised that there's not much movement this close to Christmas and if we list for the boxing day 'Rightmove rush' your house becomes more of a statistic (apparently in Cardiff last Boxing day, 200 new properties were listed and in their opinion, you don't get the views or interest you normally would because there's a lot more competition) so we're hoping to list in early-Mid Jan and we'll just see where it goes!

Thanks for the update @VimtoQueen90

Sounds like you’ve had good advice from the EA and I hope you get lots of interest in your house when you list it in January.

Our old house was valued at about £600k when everyone went mad after lockdown. On the south coast, good transport links, convenient for shops, theatre, decent size nearby town, South Downs nearby etc.

By the time we wanted to move, which was at the beginning of this year, it was valued at 500k and that’s what it went for.

I can well believe it - I live in Bristol and you can do nothing on a house and sell up the next year and ALWAYS make a profit. We're buying a neatly condemned building for just under £500k and everyone locally keeps saying how they can't believe what a deal we've gotten (it has a garden which is quite rare here).

But, if others are seeing a buyers market ie prices are coming down and things aren't shifting, then go in for cheeky offers. EAs are motivated to keep house prices high so they aren't going to start bringing them down. It only really happens when there is a critical mass of lower offer prices, which resets local expectations and subsequently the market.

Good luck - its an absolute jungle out there at the moment!

We have been in the same situation. We have needed to upsize for a few years now.

We saw slow and steady year on year price increases pre-Covid (a little dip in 2019) but saw massive overnight asking price increases immediately after the stamp duty holiday was announced. The best example of this is two identical houses on the same road where one was marketed in Feb 2020 for £425k and sold in May for £415k and the other went on the market just after the stamp duty holiday announcement for £465k. The stamp duty saving on that house would have been around 12k, so what was the justification for a £50k increase?

Obviously people actually offered near those asking prices, the stamp duty holiday also generated more interest and alongside the general rise in year on year prices anyway house prices inevitably rose sharply. I believe estate agent pricing tactics is the main reason for this and it created a step change in house prices in an housing market that was steadily increasing year on year anyway.

For us we thought there is rising prices without the backing of a strong economy and price increases can therefore not be sustained and prices will only go one way as a result. We decided to wait to buy therefore and we are glad we did because prices as predicted did go down after the peak in prices which was around March 2022 (sales data will show this to be around July 2022 because of the delay).

We did go and see a house early this year that was on for 30-40k less than the couple bought it for in 2022, but I don’t think they even go that for it! I feel for anyone who bought in 2022!

So after waiting for the houses to drop and the interest rates to stabilise a bit we decided to buy this year because we couldn’t put our lives on hold much longer.

If I didn’t really want to move though I would have waited for prices to drop a little further into next year but not waited too long because once the interest rates start dropping that could increase prices. I don’t think they will drop much more now though unless something drastic happens.

It all depends on your life situation, if you’ve waited long enough and want to move to get on with your lives buy now as it’s a good time, if you want to get a bargain maybe wait a little bit but be mindful of the interest rates and the impact on prices!

I know how frustrating it is because we have definitely lost out by not upsizing before Covid even though our old house also went for more, but in the end we just wanted to get on with our lives so we bought this year!

@Twiglets1 Thank you and thanks for your earlier advice!

@Bluevelvetsofa @Nic834 The price increases were crazy, its almost weird to see houses not shifting now as the same houses were flying off the shelves in 2022 for well beyond asking! I couldn't understand where people were suddenly able to pull 50k out of nowhere to offer over well asking?! I do feel for 2022 buyers though because a lot really did pay crazy prices for their houses and it seemed like if you didn't buy then, you'd be priced out forever, I'm glad you waited and found something you wanted! We're also concerned about interest rates going down and potentially prices slowly going back up which is why we're really hoping to be able to move next year!

@TaupePanda Bristol is crazy!! We have a family member trying to buy there and it almost makes me grateful for the market here because it seems so competitive!! I hope you enjoy your new home!

It’s very odd. We moved last week, after several offers and a couple of purchasers. We had no interest in early spring and quite a lot later on. It sold finally, within two days of being on the market with the third agent and at the asking price.

Our next door but one neighbour listed in October and has had no viewings, despite the house being in excellent condition. I don’t understand. Right time, right place I suppose.

Just taken ours off after almost a year with offer that were unproceedable or fell through. It’s a fairly niche property but again in a beautiful area, great schools, rural but within 30 mins of two major cities and an hour from london, properly detached with a wrap around garden, we’ve had a brand new bathroom, kitchen, carpets, floors, damp proofing - we’ll never ever make our money back but I assumed we’d sell! It’s awful atm. Reduced by 40k!!

Will you put yours back on in the new year? We have been on the market since July with 5 viewings and 1 viewing request we turned down because the potential buyers were not even on the market yet. No offers or even second viewings!

Its a grade 2 listed character cottage and we are in a nice desirable semi rural location in Mid Wales and we have decorated throughout and the house has recently had a new kitchen and bathroom and carpets. Its neutrally decorated and ready for someone to move straight into. We have parking, gorgeous views, a nice garden and outbuildings.

When we were putting it on the market all our family, friends and neighbours said what a lovely home we have and everyone thought we would sell it quickly. Yet here we are. Still unsold and unsure whether to just pull it off the market now or leave it. It is pretty depressing.

We are prepared to drop the price in the New Year to see if that generates more interest although we are priced to receive offers with a hope to getting the price we would like for it as we know that potential buyers will come in with offers as much as 20K less than asking in this current market. A reason we were nervous to drop the price. But we may have no choice going forwards. I will be honest, I did think we would sell it, so its disheartening to have had such little interest.

I just keep wanting to say 'what's wrong with you people, our home is lovely!' 😂😂We fell in love with it the first time we even drove past it and that is when it was not in the same great condition that we have worked hard to get it to. Its boggling!! Its tough out there!!

If it’s been on since July you really should have tried reducing the price by about September, in my opinion. It sounds beautiful but also a bit niche being grade 2 listed and niche houses are always harder to sell (the hardest house we sold out of 5 was a converted barn in a town centre - lovely but unusual).

While the asking price seems reasonable to you, it probably does seem too high to potential buyers. I’m not saying that to be horrible but it is a buyers market at the moment so it seems that houses have to be priced very realistically to get offers in most parts of the country.