£800K houses in nice but not uber desirable areas of the north

[Fibrous]

I live in a nice enough but not particularly trendy area not a million miles from Manchester. It's not Trafford or Cheshire or any of the traditionally expensive areas surrounding Manchester. There are loads of houses on the market around the £800K mark and upwards. These are older houses, beautiful, but not necessarily modernised.

I'm just wondering who can afford these houses? They seem to be sitting on the market for ages - so maybe that answers my question. But my DP and I are on fairly good (well above average) professional wages with no kids, and we can't justify the massive mortgages on them or the modernisation costs. All of our friends are dual income professionals with good jobs (medics, engineers, business owners etc), and none of them are buying anything more than about £500K.

Are these houses now just out of people's price range, or who are they for? We had an influx of Londoners cashing in and moving up in covid but that was a brief spurt.

Is this the same elsewhere in the country?

Looking at the sale history for some that are on sale for about 900K, they last sold for about 200K twenty years ago. That sounds infinitely more affordable!

My 70 something aunt and her husband have just bought a large house with a big garden in that price bracket, although not in Manchester. They have both been retired for many years and I don't think have a huge income. Neither of them come from money or had an inheritance. They worked in the middle east in the 80s tax free and made a lot of money there, then they have bought, renovated and sold houses in the UK every 5 years or so for the last 30 years. Each time they made a profit.

They show no signs of wanting to downsize.

That’s interesting about them not wanting to downsize

one thing I’ve never asked anyone my age is about the size of property they want in an ideal world. I am early 30s and couldn’t think of anything worse than owning a large property in some of OP’s original post - because all I see is huge maintenance costs and garden costs. Wonder if it’s just me or common in my age group, or common across all ages