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.

I have quite a few younger colleagues who had budgets of 550-650k & they have skipped the flat stage as FTBs. So where traditionally they would have bought a flat in z2/3 they are going straight for the house in z4/5 which makes sense.
Also the service charges on some flats & cladding issues are real put offs.

Doesn"t help if you overpaid though.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/london-homeowners-most-likely-to-make-a-loss-upon-selling-their-home/ar-AA1TTwTl

As the above article shows moving from a flat to a house in London is very difficult now. And stamp duty is ridiculous.

Could you move near enough to them they wouldn't need to stay, then buy something smaller and keep some capital?

Agree with other posters that some of it is property is just becoming a less attractive investment. Even people who could afford and feel comfortable with those prices, a shrinking group, don't need a house like those you describe OP and may decide to stay at the rung below instead. Prioritising more disposable income and wiggle room over the perfect house.

Then in turn, the people not lowering prices either understand the situation and care more about getting a set price than they do about selling (may well be rational) or they're just plain delulu.

As I said, it depends where you live. My neighbours who moved out in November sold their house for £200,000 more than they paid for it just over two years earlier. There are always people with more money than sense who will pay mad prices for houses in particularly favoured roads or areas.

We're bracing ourselves to put our home of almost 30 years on the market next week. The agent has told us that the price we're likely to achieve is down by 15-20% on 2024 prices. But the objective is relocation, plus a bit of a downsize.

The problem is finding anything we like that's where we want, and has a garage and garden. We have 3000+ sq ft now, and would like around 2000 sq ft or a little less. We'd like three bedrooms, but a decent amount of social space. The assumption seems to be that after the age of 70, people should live in rabbit hutches.

The housing market, certainly at the upper end, has completely stagnated. We have just sold a very modest (less than 1000 sq ft) house on the outskirts of north London with a view to moving to a commuter town an hour outside of London for schooling. We were realistic and motivated to move, listed at less than the estate agents’ valuation figures (as we were aware of the tendency to over-value) and still ended up reducing twice and accepting an offer £45K less than what we originally listed at.

We are looking to upsize a little (only one child so don’t need a massive house and would be happy with a smallish 3 bed) but houses on the next ‘rung’ of the ladder in our target area are ridiculously overpriced - there is almost literally nothing on the market within our price bracket of £700-900K, but plenty of very ordinary 3/4 bed, 1 bath, 1500sq ft semis being listed at £1M+. None of these are selling; they are sitting on the market for months/years and then either gradually being reduced, being taken off-market entirely or disappearing then reappearing at the same price with a different agent. These sellers seem either to not be that fussed about actually moving, or are mentally stuck in the pandemic house-buying frenzy of 2021/22 and have yet to clock that the market has changed substantially since then.

In the meantime we are having to bide our time and move into a rental until something a bit more sensibly priced turns up!

"There are always people with more money than sense who will pay mad prices for houses in particularly favoured roads or areas."

Exactly, and until recently large swathes of the public also had more debt than sense when it came to property, thankfully borrowing rates are thinning their ranks considerably. If some footballer or celeb wants to lose a stack of cash on property let them get on with it.

Asking price is based on expectation. If not realised, people will wait. London property market is different from the rest of the UK. Brilliant in good times but suffers in a downturn. Unless London is no longer the UK capital a collapse will NOT happen. Too many people rely on London despite the exodus.

When boomers die their homes won't be empty. Children, other relatives will benefit and live there if they don't want to sell.

Interest rates in UK will rise. Following on from a post mentioning JP Morgan will increase interest rates, Goldman Sachs has today released a UK savings account 0.8% above current UK base interest rate (which is proportionally substantial). Banks always price in the direction of travel. This new rate will incennks to increase rates .

The problem is finding anything we like that's where we want, and has a garage and garden. We have 3000+ sq ft now, and would like around 2000 sq ft or a little less. We'd like three bedrooms, but a decent amount of social space. The assumption seems to be that after the age of 70, people should live in rabbit hutches.

Surely the majority of young families with kids have no chance ever of getting a house with that kind of space (2000 sq ft) I don't think over 70s are being discriminated against at all, it's that they have a different idea about how much space the average family is living in.

I’d take no notice of other people’s assumptions
Do as you wish

@Papyrophile I did read an article some time ago that said the most resilient property is the 3 bed house. Downsizers want them but so do families upsizing.

I love traditional properties but I’m conscious that my dc will likely live with me for some time so for my next property I want a good sized living space (ideally 2 separate living rooms) with off street parking as it’s also getting more & more expensive to park on the road!

Is that the Marcus account? In volatility you will do better with a money market fund though as all the risk pushes yields up.

Although most 3 beds are not 2000 sq ft!

I think the point is that there aren't as many of those people to go round as there used to be!

Yes and yes. Just saying where interest rates are heading.

As a suggestion we find out dc 21,21 and 25 when home benefit from a decent sized bedroom

Our sitting rooms are rarely occupied by them unless we arrange a games/film etc night

Id think about prioritising bedroom and kitchen/diner sizes over living rooms. If you have to sacrifice something that is

When boomers die their homes won't be empty. Children, other relatives will benefit and live there if they don't want to sell

But there will be IHT to pay so they won’t all be able to just move in and they may have lives elsewhere.
Plus I think governments will target this money some how as they can’t increase income taxes much more eg care in the home will involve a charge on the house etc.

Owners may need to target this money too for private healthcare etc as the NHS is in a right state at the moment and I can’t see it improving.

I don't think it's discrimination against the over 70s, @paddleboardingmum., it's what we are prepared to compromise on. We already have a house, which we love. If I could move it 150 miles to where we want to live, I would. We can afford to wait for something we do like to turn up, even if we have to rent for a while.

@BrownTroutBluesAgain my experience living at home with my siblings after uni was the other way round. My parents house is big so we had big bedrooms but we spent a lot of time in the kitchen, various living rooms.

What part of North London ?
Commutes in from outlying areas are quick
eg Watford ,

Me too
but I didn’t have a phone, iPad, laptop and tv in my room back then

They have these things now ( mine gav never had a tv but who needs one anyway these days) and can keep
in contact with all their mates
If I wanted to chat with mates I had to leave the house when I was their age

Time spent chatting in our house is around dinner time prep and in the dining room eating…. or if I bump into them on the way to the loo🤣

it’s interesting because none of the houses that have sold in our part of the road recently have been bought by the sort of people you might think would spend thst much money on a house - they've all been bought by people in fairly ordinary professions, although obviously well paid. When we decided we would sell, the estate agent told us prices in this area were still rising and they had as many potential buyers at ever. They told us that all the houses they’ve sold in our road don’t even get on the market, and we ended up with a bidding war on our house within a week of deciding to move, and accepted an offer of above the asking price. I do accept that the London market is different from many other areas, but it’s still very strong in some areas, with a plentiful supply of people who can spend silly amounts. If interest rates were anything like they were when we moved into our house 33 years ago, I doubt that there would be many people prepared or able to have the enormous mortgages that people today have.

I don’t know that I necessarily agree. Whilst agents may price things up or down slightly - usually according to condition/location/size/renovations, they use a desktop valuation system that tracks historical sales data of houses in the same postcode/on surrounding roads. Agents don’t want something vastly over priced, it costs them time in terms of agents doing showrounds. I also disagree that 800k will be a price point that is unaffordable, to those wishing to escape potential mansion tax, they will seem cheap. It’s all about the place you hold in the current market and the equity you have. Someone who has bought and sold 5 times, and has staircased the market may have a very small mortgage and access to the cheapest mortgage rates - people in that position aren’t likely to be a rush to sell their house on the cheap. It will be cheaper to stay longer, which is why the current market is so sluggish… and remains unaffordable to those who didn’t leap quickly from starter homes/flats.