Why isn't my house selling - is this you?

[EarthSight]

There's yet another one that's trending at the moment - why isn't my house selling.

If you're wondering this, your house isn’t selling because -

a) Your estate agent is not replying to people when they should. No buyer should have to chase & chase just to ask a question or book a viewing.

b) You've entered into one of those 'modern methods of auction' contracts, which puts off a lot of buyers

c) Your house is too expensive for what people are willing to offer in your area's market.

It's usually the last one.

From tracking the market in my own area for a while now, people massively over estimate what their expensive kitchen or decor taste is worth to a buyer, when buyers might want to put their own stamp on somewhere or might want a hard floor instead carpets everywhere. A seller might love grey neutrals & modern style the house, but many buyers might think it looks clinical or prison-like. You might love your large kitchen and island, but a buyer might prefer a larger living room and think the island is a bit awkward where it is. One person's 'low maintenance garden' is another person's drab yard.

It also seems very common for sellers to underestimate how much renovation and fixing things is going to cost their buyer, so instead of reducing it by 30k compared to the general market, they reduce it only by 5k.

Don't just look at how much people are listing their houses for (they could be listed for a long time), and be aware that estate agents might inflate the realistic selling price in order to get your business. Go on GOV.UK and look at how much houses are actually completing for. There is often a few months' lag before sales prices are uploaded onto the site which is not as useful in a fast changing market, but it will give you an idea of longer term trends.

I can't read the article as it says I need to subscribe but I know that it will be absolute rubbish. It is written by Nationwide, a lender! Hardly a non biased commentator and certainly not one that I would take as fact. In any case, they have deliberately chosen 2005 to make the comparison, which is just before the pre GFC peak. We all know what happened after that. I'm afraid it doesn't blow a hole in my argument at all. My argument is Economics 101, supply and demand. We have low demand and high supply in most areas. House prices peaked on average in 2022. The escalated a lot in the couple of years before because of all the QE that the BOE did and because they dropped rates to zero and gave everyone free money. All those factors have subsequently reversed and people are struggling with the high cost of living and falling real wages, not to speak of the job losses that have started. For those reasons, I do think that prices will continue to come down in general. Sure, governments will continue to intervene to prevent this but I'm not convinced they will succeed.

Here are some other articles showing the opposite. It is so well documented such that I haven't seen people argue that houses are more affordable now than they were in previous decades:
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5568/housing/uk-house-price-affordability/
https://www.bestbrokers.com/2024/06/20/what-nearly-six-decades-of-housing-data-reveal-about-home-affordability-in-the-united-kingdom/

I think lots of people are making the same decisions for the same reasons.

That's definitely DH, although we've had one offer which was £70k under asking. Our house is the cheapest in the town that doesn't need major refurbishment

Honestly, I know you really, really want to push your narrative about Britain's house prices being too high but you really need to look at the data sources you have posted. The first graph on the economicshelp page proves exactly what I'm claiming. Real house prices are the same now as they were in 2005.

Even when you look at the data from 2015 to now and including the COVID peak years, you can see that the UK's earnings to house price ratio didn't increase massively, especially compared with other OECD and Euro countries:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237529/price-to-income-ratio-of-housing-worldwide/

I know that the ONS are having a hard time recently, but why are you ignoring the official stats @Marshmallow4545 ?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingaffordabilityinenglandandwales/2024

You seem to be completely unable to interpret a basic graph @Marshmallow4545.

This graph shows a house price:income ratio of 3.5 in 1983, below 3.0 in the mid 90s. It rises to just under 6 in 2005 (as I've already pointed out twice, 2005 was just before the GFC peak and house prices then FELL) and is at 7.0 in 2022. The ratios are much higher in some areas of the country. This is well known, regularly talked about in the press and not a matter of debate. It doesn't take the higher rates after 2022 into account but it does show that either you are unable to interpret simple graphs or it is you that have a particular narrative that you are pushing. It's bizarre that you are arguing so much on this point.

www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/uk-house-price-to-earnings-ratios-1000x667.png

I second this - Purple Bricks are a nightmare - use a regular estate agent instead!

The main reason houses aren’t selling at the moment, especially at the top end, is because of this government and the budget. A estate agent told me the market is pretty much on hold at the moment. People are waiting to see what this government are going to come after and then they’ll act accordingly.

Generally however your house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, people do typically over value.

I have a house for sale at the moment. I find it really frustrating because I took the estate agent's advice and valuation but now he's saying 'it's the price'.

It needs a lot of renovations and it absolutely is reflected in the price. Other houses have sold for 200k all done up. I have already knocked off 50k so it can be renovated. They said not to bother doing it myself.

I am thinking of taking it off the market, doing the basic renovations and renting it out.

This is such a bizarre discussion. I must firstly apologise as the page didn't fully load when I referenced the first graph in the article you linked when in fact it was the third graph I was alluding to. I did specifically state though I was talking about real house price growth and the fact that even in 2005 it wasn't vastly different than 2022. Regarding earnings:house price ratios, house prices have subsequently dropped since 2022 and earnings have risen. Median house sales prices have increased by 1% since 2021, while average earnings have increased by 20%. This is not insignificant and we can extrapolate from the graphs you have posted and actually using more recent graphs and data that affordability is back down to 2005 level across the UK. Yes, there is some regional variance. Nobody is denying that but inflation is hugely relevant to affordability.

I like debate to be factual. 2005 wasn't just before the financial crash. It was 2 years before! This may seem insignificant to you but the timeline is that house prices actually continued up climb for a few more years after 2005, dropped in 2007 and just 5 years after the crash, house prices had returned to their 2007 peak. The idea that somehow some big day of reckoning is coming because house prices have grown out of control isn't really corroborated by the data or history. In fact the opposite is more likely to be true.

I'm not selling or buying a house so I don't have a horse in the race either. I am just really wary following my experience of selling in 2020 of prophets of doom. None of us really know what will happen in the future. People are too keen to give people potentially terrible advice and to panic people into accepting low ball offers because they think house prices are too high from a moral perspective and they think it would be good for society for them to drop.

We recently sold an inheritance property.m so no chain. Good condition. The estate agents suggested a higher price than it went for, but inline with other asking prices in the area. So we put it on at that price and waited 6 weeks - no interest.

So we dropped it by £20k. Some interest but buyers view was it was still too high.

So we dropped again and got two offers within a week.

Sale went through just fine. Sold for the price I originally thought it was worth. Very happy.

The asking prices are overblown. You can test the waters to see if you’ll get a bite, but you have to be realistic and be prepared to drop swiftly and significantly to find the true value.

The cheap mortgage rates ended around December 2021 (they went up just after I got a 5 year fix), but the selling market seems yet to catch up with the implications.

Those stats aren't for the UK unless you have forgotten Scotland and NI exist?

You're splitting hairs. I thought you liked facts?

You said "house price ratio hasn't got worse since 2005 and house prices have risen since then significantly"

Clearly, for nearly everyone in the UK, the house price ratio has got worse since 2005. Although it is improving and we hope that it improves further via house price reductions and/or wage increases.

It's not splitting hairs. You can't just discount two of the four home counties and say that it's splitting hairs!

It is possible for house price to earnings ratios to remain stable and house prices to significantly increase at the same time. It may not represent a real terms price increase as per my previous post but the nominal price can certainly rise whilst the ratio remains constant. In fact this is the norm.

No, I don't agree that the ratio has got worse for nearly everyone in the UK. This is just objectively wrong. The data you have just posted from the ONS shows that the ratio has improved in Wales (6.01 to 5.86). I think what you mean is that affordability has got worse in England and specifically in London and the South. The North of England has also seen improved ratios going from 6 in 2005 to 5.1 in 2025 and Yorkshire is showing a similar trend. I do indeed like facts!

Clearly I'm talking about where the majority of the UK live. I understand that chipping off small (population-wise) regions will help you find contradictions in the data. But you didn't specify those caveats when you made your general statement quoted above.

Anyway. It matters little. What really matters is that affordability continues to improve via further house price reductions and wage increases.

On a thread where probably a considerable amount of people are thinking about buying a property, it's hardly bizarre that some might have issues with affordability and want the market to fall and prices to become more affordable.

There are others (me included) that think high house prices are an economic disaster for the UK and need correcting. Of course there are going to be winners and losers in this process and the process itself may well be painful for everyone for some time, which is why successive governments throw everything they have at trying to keep the market afloat and rising. However there is only so long that this can go on for. Normally it ends with some sort of economic calamity that the government can blame someone else for - see the GFC.

The ideal that sellers can't sell because their buyers can't sell their own houses is a nicely circular argument that does nothing to address the crux of the issue, which is that market entrants/ftbs struggle to enter the market due to affordability. ftbs are the engine of the housing market. Take away the new entrants you have nothing.

At the end of the day the UK population is rising and people want housing. There is no shortage of buyers, provided the price is affordable.

Prices currently aren't affordable which is why we have a buyer/seller standoff. Thin volumes and few sales. The housing market is dysfunctional currently. The government can either cook up more schemes to make the unaffordable affordable (help to buy, shared ownership, term funding scheme, tax incentives), it can reduce prices by increasing supply, or it can let the market reach it's natural equilibrium.

^ This. A more simple way to judge affordability is to look at FTB ages. If the age is increasing then we can be pretty sure that it's likely due to affordability rather than a desire to rent or live with parents longer.

Right so by saying that the ratio had got worse for 'almost everyone' you were completely discounting 'small' regions like the whole of the north of England and Wales with a combined population of 18 million people. I suppose you are discounting 'small' Scotland too?

I'm not trying to point out contradictions in the data. It is more to point out the fact that in the ONS data you linked that London (a highly populated area of the UK) has seen a meteoric rise in house prices (in real terms and using earnings: house price ratio) and this is objectively massively skewing England's overall ratio higher. If you took away London and the South East then the figure would be very different. Over two thirds of the population don't live in these places so the England ratio isn't massively relevant to them.

Affordability has improved in the recent past in most regions. Whether it will continue to improve remains to be seen. History would suggest that any improvement will not be long lived and the market will recover over time.

Back to the original question. This video is from the US but all the same principles apply here. The reason homes don't sell are pictures, condition and, most importantly, price. There is some useful advice on pricing here.

It is indeed bizarre, bizarre how you keep making the same incorrect points and then doubling down on them.
You didn't say 'real house prices'. You said this: 'House prices are more affordable now than they were 20 years ago if you look at the salary to house price ratio'.
I agree that, on average (almost pointless to look at national averages as there is so much variability), real house prices haven't risen significantly. They have, however, continued to rise in relation to incomes, a lot in some areas. I know that HP: income ratios have fallen somewhat since 2022, the peak, but that fails to take into account the mortgage rates quadrupling and the high inflation rates, meaning that all essentials cost far more, and the escalating job losses and insolvencies, and the higher taxes. All these factors mean that house prices are even more unaffordable for many people in most areas than they were in 2022. This is the reason why there is low demand. Your explanation that people can't sell their house because the people below them can't sell really is bizarre. You seem to have no better explanation about why so many people are struggling to sell. It reminds me of the Biden administration in the US gaslighting people that the economy was great so they shouldn't be saying that they felt negative in the surveys, ie that the government had a better handle on individual's finances than they did themselves.
There is plenty of data to suggest that asset prices (I include the bubble of a stock market here) do revert to the mean eventually. The Covid period was a complete anomaly. @XVGN and @GasPanic have also offered good explanations and many people on this thread have confirmed what has been said about unaffordable prices and the fact that dropping by a large enough figure yields results.

I stand by everything I have written. I referenced 'real prices' when commenting on a graph you posted. My error was stating the graph was first in the article instead of third. The graph you posted regarding ratios is unhelpful as it stops at 2022 so doesn't include the most recent changes to the ratio (20% increase in earnings v 2% increase in house prices). I have only ever referenced UK ratios, not England only. I have always alluded to there being regional variance

It isn't pointless to look at real house prices just because there is regional variance. You have to account for inflation when discussing house price rises. Regional variance doesn't discount this fact. Someone in London may find it much harder to buy a house versus someone in the North East due to the real terms increase in house price but this forum is National forum and you are making arguments at a national level.

Where is the data to prove that house prices have always reverted to a mean over the past 50 years? Where is the data to show this happens to the stock market?

It's all just wishful thinking.

House prices are still increasing in the UK according to the Land Registry. They have risen 3.7% in a year. This will have regional variance and yes, you do need to be cognisant of local market conditions but it certainly isn't all doom and gloom. Demand isn't low enough to drive down prices on average. Buyers are holding off because of uncertainty. It isn't some obscure theory or gaslighting. Who on earth would rush to buy now with a budget imminent that could have huge implications for house buyers?

Buyers were holding off a long time before the uncertainty over the budget.

The issues are mainly due to the increase in mortgage payments. Mortgage payments have increased hugely since 2022. But they don't impact the market all at once like they used to. People come off the cheap rates gradually over time. A lot of people are now coming off the 5 year fixes, finding their mortgage payments are increasing hugely and along with other COL increases are finding their ability to staircase is hugely reduced. So they are staying put. This is coupled with the fact that for ftbs mortgages are a lot more expensive.

So affordability is basically going down all the time, but a lot less steeply in the past when everyones mortgage was tied to the base rate.

Meanwhile sellers are sticking to older pricing and wondering why no one wants to buy their house. It's not because no one wants to buy it. It's because they can't afford it.

This would absolutely make sense if house prices were dropping (even slowly) nationally however they have been rising since mid way through 2023. Again, there will be regional variance but the figures don't align with your narrative as a national level. Certain areas are undoubtedly struggling for various reasons including the increase in interest rates and this is why sellers need to know their market. It is a very different prospect selling a house in Wigan than it is selling a house in Kensington right now.

I'm not going to continue to argue the same points again and again because you are simply incorrect.
You can make any excuse you like but buyers have been 'holding off' for three years now. This clearly isn't just related to the upcoming Labour budget. Sure, it hasn't helped and the recent rise in stamp duty has been a factor too. However, you are just ignoring the very obvious, chief factor. Lack of affordability! That is worsening and will likely continue to do so, reducing demand and house prices further.

@GasPanic has made the same point.

You are also incorrect on the last point you make about house prices rising. The peak was actually in 2022 and they have been, on average, falling since then, with regional variations. The ONS has been regularly adjusting their figures downwards and even performed a recent revision of the last 50 years. They then compare the new 'house prices' against all of the old ones that have been revised down. The ONS stats on other things such as the labour force has also been openly declared unreliable. Even Rightmove has said that asking prices are now lower than a year ago. They only publish information about initial asking prices and ignore all the many reductions entirely. Does that suggest rising house prices? Knight Frank have revised their 2025 forecast down. They will want to be as bullish as RM but clearly they are not.

Knight Frank are predicting we are in a time of house price growth. RM say the same.ONS say the same. Literally every data source available says the same but no, they are all wrong and your opinion that house prices must be going down is correct. Ok, thanks for clarifying...