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.

Surely you mean due to the stamp duty holiday? Ok, how about 2022, was that also an anomaly year?

It is Crashytimes reincarnated?

Why not do a search and let us know
Im not into doing other people’s homework 🤣🤣🤣
and I see @Aluna isn’t either

From searching on plumplot it looks like 2025 sales are the lowest in 30 years, you could say 2008 is very close but of course that is another "anomaly" year?

Use Area360 to see the 10 year numbers for a given area.

https://area360.uk

And get the add-in for RM

Agree Area360
is really useful and info pops up for every property and area

Charts like this

I have a vague sense that house (not flat) prices are holding up in London. Why do I think this? It isn’t based on numerical
analysis so perhaps not worthy of a second thought but I have observed that the papers have stopped their generation of ‘gloomy crash’ articles. I wonder if the house market is even picking up.

Flats less sure about - the costs associated with running a block or a converted house are significant and keeping capital values down.

what feel do you have for it?

I couldn't remember the previous name, but if you look at the pre-edited version of their post at on p 27 at 20: 54, it's got that weird changing typeface thing going on. At least they're persistent, I guess.

That’s a handy little tool.

Thanks, would you say it is more useful than PropertyLog?

I haven't used property log for years, but based on what I remember then yes, especially when used as the add-in for RM. It allows me to skip over flood risk and noisy property without wasting my time on those, and I can see costs per Sq foot to see if the requested price looks to be in a sensible range for the area I'm looking in.

The brave, foolish or well-informed locals can look at the properties I discard to see if they have value to them.

Sounds very useful indeed.

For example, here, the property shows a medium flood risk (amber coloured) which I can immediately skip over. There may be some flood mitigation measures that were put in place when built but I don't need to worry about it because I won't be looking. A well-informed local may take the risk.

You can also click on that area profile button to bring up the 10 year property stats for that area. Plus lots of other pertinent data.

Very good, flooding is a good thing to avoid, but as you say well informed locals can maybe cope with it and know whether it is too serious or not.

I feel a little sorry for those with property marked as flood-risk. Even that well-informed local needs to factor in that when they try to sell there will be people like me ignoring the property, so they still need to make sure that they get the property at an appropriate risk-adjusted price.

Yes, flood risk really devalues a property.

In the absence of knowing a particular area I never immediately disregard anything showing on maps as flood risk

Ive seen many properties listed with an issue when the actual property isn’t any where near the flood risk and as for the one I’m in at the moment up a hill well above the zone 2 risk.

We’ve subsequently had ours reclassified but it’s taken years just to get someone to agree that the computer is wrong.

I covered this. If you are brave or well-informed then go ahead but realise that the rest of us will make decisions based on the available data, so factor that in to the price you pay.

For me, I can reduce risk by, say, 90% by following the data. There are plenty of alternatives without the threat of risk so I'll stay in that safer zone.

True, but a lot of people will avoid these properties because all they see in their mind is people in rescue boats sailing down the local high street?

Have any of the houses sold yet?

Good to be reminded of the original OP. MN does tend to be far too London centric. The great majority of the UK population don't live in London and don't have London wages or equity, hence so many of these higher end properties are just not selling for years. In the end, the owners reduce the price slowly or remove them from the market altogether, assuming that the market will improve in a year or two. I doubt they are correct, the oppposite is more likely.

Which is why research is everything
Basic flood zone maps are Nothing more than very basic which is why they are classed as indicative only.

This is not just for those showing inaccurately as ‘at risk’ but also those showing inaccurately as ‘not at risk ie zone 1’
I wouldn't trust a zone 1 classification without thoroughly checking the actual area.

Might be better if the bond market just finally called time on the panto that is pretending unsold houses somehow still hold their "value", could a KS resignation be a trigger?

Things are warming up, I"m starting to move money back into money market funds today.

https://www.cityam.com/downing-street-resignations-trigger-bond-market-jitters/

No I don't think a KS resignation would trigger a bond crisis!
There may well be other more systemic things down the line but not that imo.