Properties on for £800k+ not selling? Why?

[MuckyBrass]

Near me, there are loads of houses on Rightmove for around £800k, £900k, even up to £1m ish which have sat on the market for a year or two. I've long been desperate to move to a bigger house so I check Rightmove all the time, but my budget is more like £600k so I've never viewed any of them, and really I'm just being nosy. They are all lovely houses, I'd buy any of them in a heartbeat if they were on for £600k. I don't understand. Are they really for sale? Or are they just sitting on Rightmove as pretty houses to make the estate agents's rosters look good? Some of them have had their prices reduced by £100k or even more at various points, but they're still evidently not selling at the £800k plus mark.

I'm in a small (but fairly naice) market town with no train station, not an easy commute to any major city, so I actually struggle to think who would be earning enough or have the cash around here to be the actual buyers for houses in that price bracket anyway. We're not talking loads of land, either. These are normal town houses, period properties mostly, small gardens, 4-6 bedrooms.

Thanks Binus
but as you can see from that post I copied I’m not telling anyone they can’t say anything

I said ‘ intention I think does matter’

Thats my view and I’m not telling anyone to think otherwise, I’m clearly offering my view

In your post at 13.49 you wrote:

It matters because you can’t say someone intentionally did something when they are just living their lives

That's what I'm referring to.

You are missing the point of the wording

It’s Not you CAN’T say something as in an order not to say it

Its you can’t say something is something, when it isn’t.

You CAN’T scale Mount Everest on a yak 🤣 ( bizarre comparison there but hayho) = that’s an order you are not allowed to do it

compared to
You can’t scale Mount Everest on a yak because it’s not possible to do so ( disclaimer to note I have no idea if in fact you can scale Mount Everest on a yak )

So my words ‘you can’t’ were not an order to stand down and stop
because this is a discussion on mumsnet and not the army

Hope the comparisons have sewn up the confusion there
All sorted 😁

You can't scale Everest on a Yak. You scale Everest on a Sherpa treated as if he's a yak...

Eh not really, because neither explanation relates to anything in either my post or the one that kicked the subdiscussion off. The latter didn't say anything about intention at all, and mine only mentioned it to question whether it matters either way. There are people on this thread who do think intention is important, but you've hooked your post onto one who actively doesn't and one who didn't mention it!

You mentioned the word intention
I responded
Job done

wow 😮

Sadly that unfortunately how Sherpas get treated by westerners. It's wholly wrong.

Would that saying 'job done' meant the job were done!

I should think if first time buyers are skipping the first stage, maybe as they're buying in their 30s and need at least a 2 bed, that could be a problem for one bed flats. Also some who might have bought flats like that in a city are presumably moving a bit further out to get more for their money. Makes you wonder if these kind of changes are permanent as it seems like the whole rules have changed in a way.

Guessing, but I wonder as well whether smaller flats in cities, the sort that would previously have been FTB territory, are less likely to have private outside space. If so, the experience of lockdown might have an impact on desirability.

Lockdown and WFH must surely have made one bedroom flats less attractive. They seem to stick around a long time in the south east towns where I follow the market for my DC.

Yes good point about lockdown. I think it's a real risk buyers could get stuck in them if they want to move in a few years, it must put people off when they've no guarantee the price will go up. Just paying off the mortgage for the first few years and all the maintenance costs probably isn't that much different from renting cost wise.

Agree
I also think with Labour mucking about with taxes on people who own property it’s a really worrying time to own
You just don’t know what might happen next

you have a 4 year time limit in which you can substitute actual sale price for the probate "value" used in the IHT calculation. You can then apply for a tax refund if applicable.

If the sales price is more than the IHT base price within 4 years then the difference becomes subject to capital gains tax. You do not pay extra IHT, instead you pay CGT.
Obviously you cannot pay CGT on a capital loss becuase you never paid CGT to start with, you paid IHT, hence the refund is of the IHT previously paid.

I think that intention is important generally but I don't agree with your general point, as I touched on in the earlier post.
For starters, we can't generalise and say that none of the 'boomers' (using that for ease, it wasn't exclusively boomers, just mainly) had an mal-intent at all. Some of them did, and understood the likely repercussions of their actions. Someone else, not sure if it was you or not, mentioned a list of politicians starting with Cameron but it started long before that, with Thatcher, who really started the rot imo, and was very happily continued by Blair, etc. I think the New Lab government deliberately increased house prices and access to lending and the Cameron government certainly knew the likely effects of all the QE (slippery Osbourne stated it in an interview I've seen). It's not just the politicians though. Boomers and others voted for them and their policies, most of the population took on the 'every man for himself and sod everyone else' zeitgeist, perhaps instigated by Thatcher but no doubt others too. That, imo, is not a good way for a society to function, horribly destructive infact, but it is the current way. Some people became landlords and bought up masses of property. Their intent was clearly to make lots of £££ for themselves and I'm sure many were aware that they were offered favourable rates, to the detriment of others. Sure, many just bought a house and lived their lives but even these people voted and many of these people currently seem to think they are fully entitled to the sky high valuations of the properties and stubbornly refuse to accept the reality that their children and grandchildren simply can't afford them. The older generations, in general, also think that they are entitled to be taxed a disproportionatly low tax rate compared to the younger, poorer generations (no NI, much lower taxes on their assets, free prescritions, travel, etc, etc). Not many of us are wholly innocent in the mess that we are currently presented with but older generations are clearly more to blame. That doesn't mean that we should all be pointing fingers at older people but that it is clearly time to have more honest discussions and all take some responsibility for mistakes.

Totally agree with your point about there not being enough wealthy people. The wealthy foreigners have ben heading for the exit since at least the start of the Ukraine war when the government decided to freeze the assets of the Russian Oligarchs. It became obvious at that stage that these extremely wealthy foreigners wouldn't be happy with that precedent! Then there is the obvious deterioration in the UK, the deterioration in services, the rising taxes so I can only see this trend continuing.
I doubt the houses in St Georges Hill are worth a paltry one million, though I expect their values have fallen a lot already!

These things have definitely been factors plus all the cladding issues have put a lot of people off flats. London flats have fallen in value for years in general.

Agree prople vote for themselves we see that all the time just here on mumsnet. Well themselves and their children I’d say more so on mumsnet.
That's why Governments make the offers they do in order to real in certain demographics. Look at what Labour have done to farmers and the tax on private education and the MNet threads on the later on here
So it’s not a new concept

I don’t, however seek to apportion blame or assume deliberate intent on certain demographics of voters. Many of whom I do not believe had a magic wand to know wages would stagnate and prices would go up putting home ownership back to the 1970s
I don’t wag my finger at the Brexit voters now either because
we are a democracy and I accept we have to accept that democratic vote.

🤷 so I’ll partially agree

That sounds fair!
My anger is directed at policy makers but I know that even that is entirely a pointless waste of my energy. What does annoy me about the 'boomer' generation is not that they made decisions that benefitted themselves. As you say, most people do this. It is the sort of comments you frequently see on SM attacking younger people for not working hard enough, trying to patronise them and tell them how tough life was for them (often with a long list of complaints) while completely failing to grasp that houses are simply unaffordable now compared to when they were young and starting families, ie the gaslighting of the victims. Not only that but also the way in which they seem incredibly resistant to even a minor form of wealth transfer.

@rainingsnoring "Resistant to even a minor form of wealth transfer"

I'm 62 so the tail end of the boomer generation. Perhaps that reluctance is due to the costs older people now face.
My ds will go to uni in September. He will take a loan, I earn about £50k as a single mum and will be expected to support him. Realistically it will cost me £40k over the next three years. One of my colleagues has 3 dcs. She's looking at a huge bill. £100k +

My dm got her pension at 60, I must work another 7 years although I doubt my job will last that long so I'll need to finance myself as well. I'll have to help ds with a deposit on a home at some point. I don't even want to think about if I ever need adult care.

I started work part time at 13 as a cleaner so I'll have worked 50 years this summer. I've not been slacking.

Perhaps you could stop the ignorant generalisations about boomers !

Perhaps that reluctance is due to the costs older people now face

This doesn’t make sense, because younger generations will face far higher costs in their 60s & later although I’m not sure saving for your dcs deposit is the same burden as still renting in retirement….

@Meadowfinch I think that’s the point - Millennials can’t afford to save a house deposit for themselves, never mind for their children! We definitely can’t afford to support our children through university. A lot aren’t even having children because they can’t afford it. Our old age? We pay into private pensions that aren’t anywhere near as generous as the ones some of your generation had so we’re screwed in retirement too, if we are even able to retire before we drop dead. No idea what will happen with care costs when so many of us have no savings and no assets and no ability to provide for ourselves despite working hard full time in professional jobs.

We’re pissed off!

We don’t want wealth handed on a plate to us whilst we relax with our Starbucks. We want our hard work to mean we have better financial security. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel for us, that’s the problem.

A lot aren’t even having children because they can’t afford

Its quite shocking tbh

schoolsweek.co.uk/how-falling-school-rolls-are-not-just-londons-crisis/

I know people, including myself, who hasn’t moved in anticipation of university costs. When I went in the 90s I got send the odd £20 by my parents. My friend is paying nearly £1500 for accommodation for 2.