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 was a pyramid scheme from the start, built on cheap credit, the money is only "in the house" if you can find a buyer, no way that the younger generation are paying these prices.

JP Morgan think interest rates are going to start going up, no way you want to be out on a limb with massive property debt.

People forget that all those years of low interest rates have consequences ...

Because it doesn’t work like that anymore, I have the big family house but this house is the same or less value than the bungalow (if you can find one) that I want to downsize to, after moving costs, stamp duty plus getting the next property up to standard I would probably end up in a worse financial position, there certainly wouldn’t be money left in the bank to help fund my retirement, that’s why people like me stay where they are, it would be far cheaper to stay where I am now and adapt the house if needed, though in my case the house already has the necessary facilities downstairs, it’s a no brainier.

Savings/investments will always trump debt.

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/how-28-year-old-stayed-home-saved-six-figures-2025-12-01/

The bigger, overlooked issue is the demographic timebomb. Who is going to buy these homes after the babyboomers have died/moved? And after Gen X? This is what has stopped me from making the next (big leap) up the housing ladder. That, and wanting a life. And accepting that my DC will not have a garden big enough to play cricket in without annoying the neighbours.

Most of the housing wealth is concentrated in the hands of our biggest generation. There are fewer people coming up behind them to acquire these properties. The days of wealthy foreigners boosting the market have also gone. And no one is making money under the present government in the present circumstances.

It is a pyramid scheme but an inverted one: the fattest ‘base’ layer is pulling away and there isn’t enough wealth in the layers below to prop up prices.

Holiday homes will be even more vulnerable: councils have extra powers to levy multiple council taxes on non-residents.

And anything over the £1.5m bracket is snookered thanks to the ‘mansion’ (London terrace) tax coming.

As a nation we spend way too much of our income on housing. (Me included so I do stand to lose from this personally). But overall, it will be good for our economy if people start spending again and even better, investing in shares and the productive economy.

"For those looking to buy
Check the news out
There’s a predicted mortgage war coming in the Spring
So you might all get lower rates
Some Good news for the market"

What is good news for buyers is that prices may start falling. So hold your horses this spring and wait. Surely cheaper rates just mean increasing prices again which is how the market got in such a mess in the first place ? I think rates are more likley to tick up again by the middle of the year as per the Jp morgan suggestion another poster mentioned- and that will really get the bargains going in terms of prices. Don't buy now unless your situation is that you really need to imo.

With the mansion tax, I think I’m just going to give up on trying to own a bigger family house in London.

As a millennial, accruing enough equity + £150k+ stamp duty + mortgage is several thousand a month + mansion tax.., all for a terraced house?

The cost just makes no sense at all - even if you can earn enough to do it.

The sticking price point in my area is from £600k, anything below that will sell but above that they languish on the market.

But

‘Competition among lenders suggests that mortgage rates could be cut in the coming weeks, according to brokers and analysts.
In a newly-published report, financial information service Moneyfacts said "expectations are high for a booming market in 2026".
Its data shows the choice of mortgage products has risen to its highest level in 18 years, with first-time buyers now also being helped by looser requirements from lenders.

Mortgage rates fell over the last year, but wider global and economic uncertainty still has the potential to derail any further improvements. Some borrowers also still face a financial hit when their current deal comes to an end.

More than eight in 10 mortgage customers have fixed-rate deals.
The interest rate on this kind of mortgage does not change until the deal expires, usually after two or five years, and a new one is chosen to replace it.

In August last year, the average two-year fixed mortgage rate dipped below 5% for the first time since former Prime Minister Liz Truss's mini-budget in September 2022.

Rates have fallen further, with some movement in recent days, and Moneyfacts has predicted more declines early this year.
"Expectations are high for a booming market in 2026. Mortgage rates are lower year-on-year, and the choice of deals is abundant," said Rachel Springall, finance expert at Moneyfacts.
"First-time buyers are not being left out of the offers.

Regulators have recently allowed lenders to be more flexible with mortgage affordability so Jo Jingree, director of broker Mortgage Confidence, said more innovative products to help people buy a first home were now available.
"These include allowing borrowing up to six times your income, where affordability allows," she said.
Some lenders were offering low, or no, deposit mortgages, she added. Family and friends were able to support borrowers through new, so-called joint borrower, sole proprietor mortgages.
…….

"Interest rates seem to be coming down, [housing] supply remains constrained but people have choice and are more cautious. The biggest problem remains price - sellers think that it's 2022 while buyers think it's 2014."

etc etc. article on the bbc

I agree - I’ve been piled on on similar posts for suggesting that it is a little selfish for 80 year olds to be sitting in £2m five-bed houses that they cannot maintain and could free up the money to get their children and grandchildren on the property ladder.

We have a large house and have made it clear to ours that although we’ve lived in it for 20 years, we will explore downsizing in 5-10 years when DH retires. A 3 bed flat somewhere with access to hospitals and social activities would give us security and quality of life, but still give us room to host children/grandchildren children - and we’ll be able to give both our kids a chunk of of money to get them established in first homes (and avoid inheritance tax if DH and I manage not to kill each other once he leaves work!).

I think it is socially responsible to plan to downsize. The reluctance, I think, comes from not being mentally prepared for it because families - and society generally - don’t like to have those conversations.

The issue though is that people won’t reduce their house prices that much
As this thread shows
Theyll just leave it on the market

If I was buying and needed a mortgage I’d jump when rates are down not hope that property will reduce in price because that’s not human nature …. Unfortunately

I think most people generally downsize. Few of my parents’ friends are still living in the family house.

Those that stay put are either a. Too attached to their property to leave or b. They leave it too late to move and one or both gets sick and they get stuck.

Two 80 year olds in a 2 million house would be ill-advised to pass on money to their kids on downsizing - they could easily blow a million on care fees between them.

Given what happened the last time there was a stamp duty holiday, everyone is of course right that SD is a big part of it.

Just ridiculous isn"t it, how did we become so brainwashed about property?

My concern is that I think my dc won't be able to buy a house like we did so we need to future proof and assume I may have 4 x 30-40 year olds living with us way into the future. So the larger 800k+ are tempting on that front but location has to be good.

Theres been a few houses stuck at around 1m mark in our village ,one for years.
Theyve reduced it from something like 1.3 to 1.1 but still not shifting. Nice barn conversion.
The others that were priced similar were taken off over xmas.
Definitely harder to sell a house over a certain price point.
There are loads of new build houses going up near us too which arent selling (400-700k)
Its a buyers market atm.
The house market needs resetting, although that will negatively impact DH and I, it would be better for our DF (if they can afford to buy and save a deposit!)
Of course if we downsize with aim of helping DC they would be negatively impacted too as we cant afford to help with deposits without this!l. Not that our house is worth anywhere near 1m mark- probably between 700-800 we are the poorer neighbours!
We did a loft conversion last year and im almost certain we wouldnt recoup cost if we sold now as building costs are high but housing market is falling.
I think a lot of people will sit tight unless they really need to move or are first time buyers.

Well no, your right in a way that the majority will not reduce -they will choose to wait or withdraw for now. Prices though are set at the margins and it only takes one or two in an area to choose, or have, to sell and it sets a new price level. It just takes time for that to filter through to new listings. It starts to make the agents job easier as they have evidence to adjust the sellers expectations. I'm old enough to have watched this happen twice before in market slumps. It hasn't got going yet but it will this year I think.

Interesting thread, it’s something I have noticed to & I think a lot is still to play out.

I think it’s about how much the landscape has shifted, how much movement up the ladder was historically driven by equity.
Flats just aren’t seeing the same increases in value and many flats bought in post Brexit have stagnated or even lost value.
Higher interest rates make it harder to pay off mortgage debt plus general increases of cost of living.
Renovation costs are astronomical and as a pp said a lot of hassle with both parents working & with no guarantee of getting back what you spent when you want to sell.
Mindset, I think there are people who can afford the prices but have realigned their thinking because do they want to service so much debt? spend so much on SD? etc. I plan one more move but it will be a lot more conservative then I previously planned. Utilities are only going to keep going up, same for taxes.

Younger generations spend far too much money on housing. It’s terrible for productivity. Compared to the cost of housing people spend very little on maintenance so a lot of houses are grossly overvalued when you consider work needed doing. Prices can’t keep going up because their isn’t the younger population to support the growth let alone the wage growths to fuel it.

Can"t see it holding up that long, another few rate hikes should be the end, the young have stepped back long ago, it is just people trading equity now, and that is harder to do as the buyers disappear.

It depends so much where you live. In my road in south London, four and five bed semis sell for £1.5m and above within a couple of days, usually off market. The larger houses take a bit longer to sell, but definitely don’t stay on the market for more than three months or so.

London is a totally different market - bigger salaries, and more international money too.

Oh and if you look at London many areas have stagnated or seen drops especially the expensive ones because affordability does matter. Often people sold up & took that money to other areas for bigger & better. Again this is often not the case anymore with less disparity between prices. Cost of travelling is expensive even if hybrid.

Yes I’ve definitely noticed this in my local area- zone 5 SE London

I am obsessed with Rightmove as we are hoping to move at some point (been saying this for a few years now!)

Just difficult to find anything realistic/we can afford

Currently in 2 bed split level maisonette with primary aged children

600k for a 3 bed semi would be amazing for us round here, most of them into 700k zone and beyond

Some not sold for many years/no prev listing and look like they will require a shit load of updating! Not that there will be any spare money left if you’re paying 700k plus for a house!

I’m seeing lots of stagnation in London too. Even with bigger salaries there aren’t enough buyers to support the prices

thenegotiator.co.uk/news/uk-housing-market-news/two-track-price-trend-takes-hold-in-london-property-market/