If anyone is looking for a 2 bed flat in Worthing...

[TeddyBeans]

Here's ours 🤣

Feel free to critique the listing, we had a fluke viewing the day after it went live and radio silence since... Would love to sell, the kids need their own rooms and we desperately want a garden

Good news. You sound like a lovely, reasonable person but, unfortunately, I don't think you will sell the flat at or v near your asking price. Pot sellers like @Maggie1998 will look at your neighbour's flat at around 14% lower and think it is over priced. Once your neighbour's flat sells, it will give you some idea of what the market will pay currently.

@rainingsnoring agree, at least once it sells we'll know where we stand!

Bedrooms at the opposite end of a flat is better than adjoining, for all sorts of reasons.

Curious at to the reasons re bedrooms at the opposite end of the flat rather adjoining? Just trying to learn.

Because you don"t have to listen to your BIL snoring when he visits? I"m sure you could come up with a few of your own?

I think its a lovely spacious flat and a great price for the south east, a lot of people cant be bothered with gardens. Also no nightmare neighbour noise from above and a nice view from the top.
The service charge is good too. When I lived in Seaford they were all at least twice that.

One of the other 240 flats has reduced to 235 today. Think there's a lot of twitchy feet about 😬

Little update, I had the EA over today to see what his impression was. He was very nice and very experienced, was telling us about a recent almost identical flat he's sold in Southwick with the same name and practically the same layout as our flat. I checked it later and it legitimately looks like they were built from the same plans, down to the curved entry door on the street facing buildings!

He said should we decide to move over to him that he would test the market for a few weeks at 240 to see what the interest is like but he thinks the sweet spot is somewhere around 220-230. Wasn't worried about the 210 flat at all which is reassuring.

So now we just have to decide whether to stick or twist which is a tomorrow conversation

I mean no disrespect, but Southwick is much more attractive proposition than Durrington. Check out the comparative Area360 profiles and price trends. Last year flats in Southwick had a P75 of £265K versus yours of £221K, so I'd expect yours to be 15% cheaper than Southwick.

I wish you good luck but I'm just not sure that you are getting good advice here. Challenge the EA to explain.

You're talking about Medway Court?

If you take the £255K sale last year and reduce by 15% you get £217k.

Last year is a Universe away, people were expecting the BOE to start cutting rates at that point, they will be hiking very soon IMO, there might have to be an "emergency meeting" , have not had one of them in quite a while?

That may be the case but until it translates into actual data I'll discount it. I have no crystal ball and I have been as guilty as anyone here predicting worse outcomes than were seen.

So, I'm just using real data to hopefully get the OP into the right position to make a sale.

@XVGN sorry, can you explain like I'm 10 please? 😅 What's a p75?

Challenge accepted! If there were 99 flats sold in a given location and you ordered them from most expensive to least expensive, e.g. £600, £599, £599, ...... £218, £216, £199. Then the median (or middle or P50) is the price of the 50th flat on that list. If only 9 flats had sold then the P50 would be the price of the 5th flat on that list - the one in the middle of the list of prices in order.

The P75 is price at which 25% of the flats were more expensive, and 75% were less expensive. So in your case, the year you bought, 25% of flats bought in that year in that location were more expensive and 75% were cheaper than yours. It gives an indication of where the value of your flat ranks against it's competitors in that location.

It's also useful as a guide to compare values in different locations, i.e. Southwick is 15% more expensive because it's P75 is 15% higher than yours. It's only rough indications and not absolute. But you can check the price trends in Southwick versus Durrington and see that prices are generally higher. It's a reasonably nice town (I lived there 25 years!) and is closer to Brighton with more employment opportunities and better access to London.

Just a bit more ..... pretend 4 flats sold as shown below. UK Property Stats Show guru says that average price is £430K even though 3 sold for much less and only one sold for a lot more (1M). A geometric average smooths the distortion caused by the £1M property but still overshoots typical prices. The median (P50) just says the middle price was between 250 and 240, i.e. £245K and is a far better indication of typical values versus the average. I have added the other P values for this example, e.g. P75 says 25% of flats sold in this example were more than £437,500.

Flats Sold (£)

1,000,000 Arithmetic Average 430,000
250,000 Geometric Average 342,744
240,000 Median (P50) 245,000
230,000

P95 887,500
P75 437,500
P50 245,000
P25 237,500
P05 231,500

An estate agent is going to say what you want them to say! If you think out of the 5 flats that yours is the best ie top floor, best orientation then if you are willing to wait then you may well get your asking price or close to it. If not the best flat then consider a lower price after a few more weeks if not before.

I note that the flat selling for £210k has sold in the last few days.

That’s probably a good thing that it has sold. Less competition.

@berlinbaby2025 oh has it!? I haven't done my Rightmove sweep yet today (been building a sandpit for DD in the in laws' garden and other family stuff - yay weekends!) so that's good news. I know their EA won't give details about the offer was but I would love to know what price they achieved

So we've agreed to switch agents and we're also dropping the price to 229 when we do switch. I tried to push dropping it lower but DP wasn't having it. He wants 'wriggle room'... It's frustrating as I know we won't get anyone through the door for that. We worked out that we can get by on 215 as an absolute minimum but it would involve using all of the savings I currently have for the kids' futures as well as a substantial gift from his parents. 220 would be preferable so I don't have to use all of the kids savings but if it doesn't happen, then we just stay put

Thanks for updating. Hopefully you will get a few viewings especially with Easter coming up. It only needs one person to come along and a top floor flat to be is the best.

Fingers crossed for you @TeddyBeans!

Good luck. You sound lovely and I hope you get a buyer. Your flat looks like a solid buy to me.

Just out of interest - have you done the sums on renting it out and using the rental income to help pay the mortgage on your new place? Or is this not financially viable?

I did look at renting it but we'd need to remortgage it to the max amount we paid for it again to get the money we need for the deposit for the next place. Then DP doesn't want that much debt sitting on our heads which I can understand. Plus banks want you to rent it at 125% (I think, I haven't looked at it for a while) of the monthly mortgage amount which is why rents are always more expensive than mortgages! I'd never realised that, probably foolishly tbh.

I know btl rates are different but with the remortgage rate we were offered, we're looking at 900 a month for here. That would be £1125 as a rental amount which is ridiculous, I doubt we'd get anyone in for that

Renting is often cheaper than a mortgage, especially now! Wages drive rents, once you have the loan the bank won"t care what you rent it for as long as you pay the BTL debt.