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.

It’s a vicious circle really. All these parents that gift large sums to help their kids on the property market are only furling house prices! However I totally understand why you would do so.

I'm a out 10 comments in and so far no one is down sizing.

On one wage perhaps but I doubt very much it was an average wage - if you look at the data across the country as a whole rather than simple anecdotes it’s clear that families on a single average wage with no background wealth didn’t buy a house

Maybe you are right. He did end up being a company director later in his career. Previously they lived in a council house. They should never have sold the council houses.

We downsized and I don’t like it, but didn’t want to stay where we were. We didn’t downsize to give money to our children. We’d done that some time ago. We downsized to reduce our outgoings, although they’re definitely galloping ahead again. We will have to make the best of what we have now and be more frugal.

We have bought and sold in the past, based on two salaries. DH was always self employed, so it was necessary. His parents had a bigger house and my MiL didn’t work all the time I knew her. My parents had a small house bought on one salary, although mum worked part time when I was older. There was little in the way of childcare then and, in fact, it was the same when my children were small, unless you had family to help.

I agree that single people living in large, poorly maintained houses isn’t a good thing, although there’s a lot of emotion involved in leaving a house you’ve lived in for a long time.

If you are defining a housewife as a person who does the unpaid domestic work then yes, she would have been a housewife.

Nearly everyone does unpaid domestic work now, usually in addition to a job though. Being able to be a housewife long term is considered privileged nowadays.

Generally speaking the greater part of the burden of unpaid domestic work still falls to women.
What exactly are you getting at anyway?

Housework back in 1960 was a much bigger burden than it is today - washing from dawn to dusk on a Monday - boil the whites in the big soup pan, mangle the wet out of clothes , and the net curtains were done every week because the coal smog made everything black

i recall someone using a flat iron heated in the fire - heat- iron- heat it some more ….

baths weekly because it takes a long time to boil / heat the water

food - walk every day to the shops because you didn’t have a fridge or a car

even getting the fires going was somewhat more hassle than turning up the heating

then there were clothes to make and mend
nana in the 1950s used to pad out the kids shoes with cardboard to make them last a little longer / there were holes in the soles of their only shoes - this is a standard working class family

beating the carpets ( big rugs )

washing windows because of the coal smog

I was born in 63

My dm had an electric iron, twin tub and we all had a bath every day. And she never beat a rug. Ever. We had a vacuum cleaner.

Seen loads in that price range sitting on RM for over a year. Minimal or no price drops, seems like sellers are too stubborn to price in line with the market demand. With the increase in mortgage rates it's only a small pool of people who could afford to buy them.

My upbringing was more like @itsthetea

my mum washed by hand into the late 70s, we got a fridge in the early 70s so she shopped every day for food or kept milk in a bucket of water and we had a bath once a week and shared the water. ( maybe because water and heating the water was expensive to them )

Everything is based on income, despite both my parents working.

Mortgage rates decreased over 2025 and there are predictions for further reductions come Spring

My point was that there are many people who could, in theory, afford to buy an overpriced £800k houses, if they spent less on other things as we had to in the '70s and particularly the '80s. For many of us our housing was not affordable during this period, but we took out our mortgages and got on with paying them, whilst forgoing other non-essential spending which many today see as part of their lifestyle.

Mortgage rates decreased over 2025 and there are predictions for further reductions come Spring

I think last year what was predicted and what actually happened in terms of rate drops were two different things.

My point was that there are many people who could, in theory, afford to buy an overpriced £800k houses, if they spent less on other things as we had to in the '70s and particularly the '80s. For many of us our housing was not affordable during this period, but we took out our mortgages and got on with paying them, whilst forgoing other non-essential spending which many today see as part of their lifestyle.

I disagree that people could afford £800k mortgages by spending less, that seems very out of touch. Earnings would have to be a lot higher and taxes lower.

They don’t shift because they are ridiculously overpriced. Demographically the people who might need a large house for kids are also people with wages that won’t get anywhere near this figure.

It’s all around the south east of England. Huge houses, big prices, no sale. Salaries even with two working parents just make it unaffordable.

You see these massive houses with a Honda Jazz parked outside. They are just for old people.

No if people lived like they did in the 1970s they still wouldn’t be able to afford those houses as the house prices have increased at a far greater rate than anything else

it might help some people get a house / get a bigger home but there is a basic problem that house prices have gone nuts

you are looking there at ten times combined average salary rather than 2.5 times your combined salary and no amount of cutting back will make that much impact

They don’t shift because they are ridiculously overpriced. Demographically the people who might need a large house for kids are also people with wages that won’t get anywhere near this figure.

Also they are the ones with two working parents so also having to pay for childcare, commuting, and all the costs of raising a family.

I shall be interested to find out! My house, that we bought in 1997, is about to hit the market. It is a one-off, detached 4-bedroom house with 3000 square feet of habitable space, plus a cellar, overlooking an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with multiple sites of significant scientific interest. The buyer may like to do some decorating, but it is in apple pie order. And it has a view to die for.

@paddleboardingmum just out of interest, because I don't think you are able to buy my house, what would be your budget for the perfect house to be affordable?

I don't think my house is overpriced. It's mid range locally, there are 4-beds asking for £1.5 million and 4-beds expecting £425k, and several (like us) in between.

Yes. So actually working families need somewhere which is closer or more suburban, rail links, shopping, nursery, childcare etc. It is easier and more affordable to do that in towns.

I was raised in one of these enormous houses in the SE of England. My mother did not work and could facilitate this lifestyle. The place was crammed with families living the same way. This was the 1980s.

I go back now and the area is elderly. There are very few children being raised there. Still nice cars and signs of wealth. But not families

We are on a suburban rail link to the local city. About six return services a day, but nothing after 9:30pm, which limits going to the theatre for example.

@Papyrophile - I think the clue is who you think your buyer is. And you will know from who bought close to your property.

Busy parents need accessibility. There are now a lot of overpriced properties on the Kent coast on the market who are clearly Londoners who cannot bear the long commute as home working becomes rarer and rarer. Very nice houses too. But big commutes are the enemy of equal marriage.