Is anyone on the market but having zero interest?

[rootsandwings89]

We put our house on the market a month ago and only had 1 viewing so far :( our estate agent says the market is very nervous and nothing is moving …. Anyone else in the same boat?

I wouldn't say zero interest, but the market is in the deep doldrums atm, no question. On the market for 18 months now and we're lucky if we get one viewing a month.

Totally. Prices went through the roof here in lockdown. Any old crap was selling. Anyone who sold then to downsize was laughing. Sellers can’t expect those inflated prices today.

I say this having been in your shoes OP; if it's not selling, it is the price in the current market, no matter how you justify it to yourself.

In your shoes, where you don't need to move and also clearly don't want to sell at a lower price, I would remove from the market for as long as it takes for the prices to rise again.

We tried to sell ours in 22/23 and had a few viewings and then bugger all for months. Took it off for 4 months or so (so Rightmove doesn't immediately show as 'price reduced' and instead shows as 'new') and then put back on at 15% drop...sold in 6 weeks. We had to sell, as we had to move for jobs, but we then bought lower also, at approx. the same level, so it wasn't too awful.

I don’t know why I feel like telling you not to sell it. My gut just says wait a bit. The right buyers will come. In a few months you can drop the price if nothing moves but if it’s a lovely home, then one more Summer ? ☀️⭐️⭐️🤗

47 houses have been built in our village in the last 18 months, ranging from 1 bed to 5 bed eco homes. Nice village. Green, safe, good access to a town four miles away.

Only two have sold, and one has been let. The rest are standing empty.

Very few people are buying at the moment. Jobs are insecure, the economy is on its knees, people are being very cautious.

It's ALWAYS price. Which is depicted by the market. A house is only worth what someone wants to pay for it - not what others nearby have gone for. I mean, if you put your house on the market for 25% less than you are now, it would sell quickly. Similarly, if you put your house on for £100k more then it won't sell.
The market means people want to pay less for you house now. But, might not e the case in a year or two, if you can wait it out.

You have to be able to decode the feedback:

"For the price you are asking for the house, the third bedroom is too small, and I am seeing better options elsewhere at the same price."

Yes, maybe you're right. It would be lovely to have the summer here!

In our little Conservation Area in West Sussex there are currently four houses/cottages for sale - one is vastly overpriced - we looked at it two years ago before the vendor decided to give it a hideous, cheap makeover which, as they failed to obtain consent for eg removing a chimney, has actually devalued it. In fact it's now on for 100k more!

Another - a recently deceased estate - is probably only slightly over and I imagine will sell soon.

The third was reduced by 50k yesterday - after only one month for sale - and it's now on for just 25k more than the vendors paid in 2021. It's had a lick of paint since, no major work.

The last one was purchased in 2020 (during lockdown) and has since had - new roof, rewire, new boiler, kitchen and two bathrooms. The current asking price is 100k over the 2020 purchase price. It's been on since February 2025 with a series of different EAs and only a 10k reduction in all that time. Yet the elderly lady vendor is supposedly keen to sell to move closer to family. I get that she obviously invested loads in the renovation, but surely - if you're that motivated to sell - you'd drop to the next RM band? The property now obviously looks stale/she appears desperate!

I'm just relieved we sold our house in rural Wales in late 2024 as I think we'd have really struggled now.

I was at school last time we had a Labour Government, but a wise man (my dad) told me everything freezes when Labour are in government. I totally get what he means now, the housing and job market are just completely paralysed. Nobody is going to move jobs, start a business, hire anybody, buy a property, rent a property or sell a property unless they really really have to. I think it will get worse as the taxes start to bite more on redundancies, unemployment and defaults. My advice would be to anybody who can, take your house off the market and stay put for next 3 years until maybe 6 months after Labour are out.

Do you think your dad might have thought that in this instance it might have something to do with the global situation?

I doubt it. It didn’t start February this year with the Iran war, it started when Labour took over and it massively accelerated with every budget announcement since.

I mean just look at this week, kite flying rental freezes …that alone will have spooked many buyers, panicked landlords into rental increases and probably made a few people think twice about investing in the U.K.

The housing market was in decline before 2024. * Housing transactions began falling in the second half of 2022. By early 2023, mortgage approvals had declined by 35%* compared to the previous year, driven by high interest rates and the "cost of living". Perhaps also a correction of the Covid bubble too.

As you say, You were at school, but Tony Blair's Labour years saw house prices triple. Average annual house price growth was 12.1%. The highest ever under any modern Prime Minster including Margaret Thatcher.

Last time we had a Labour government (1997 - 2010) prices went absolutely crazy.

Average house price in 97 was about £65k, by 2010 it was around £170k.

Volumes between 1997 and 2010 were way above the levels seen between 2010 and 2025, for many areas.

We live with such a globalised these days that there's only so much a national government can do to influence things, one way or another.

My house went sstc for full asking two months ago within a week, which is a two bed stone terrace cottage in great nick. We’re buying a probate bungalow that hasn’t been updated since the 70s and have got 10% off as it was on the market for two years with no offers.

Smaller/cheaper properties like ours in good condition are still being snapped up around here because the mortgage isn’t much worse than rent prices.

Anything requiring work is lingering. The reduction we got on our onward property will barely make a dent in what it will cost to update. It will take us ten years to get it fully renovated.

Mortgage rates are still cheap by historical standards (last 30 or 40 years) it looks now like they will get forced up quite high again.

Agree it’s all about price. They’ve had the floor plan - so no surprises on small room. Different if they went to view and spotted an nuclear power that wasnt obvious on Streetview.

I do think it’s hard in times of uncertainty like now with an active war though as many will take houses off the market and hoping for a rebound or stability at least and this then means there is very little stock so sometimes people do get a good price. For instance in my village a house was put on at a sensible price and has since attracted multiple bidders and finally gone for way over even an optimistic price - but that’s because many people stay in the village for 25+ years to raise their DCs and it’s in grammer catchment which with VAT on school fees has created a little local market bubble.

Blair/Brown oversaw the cheap lending frenzy, they enabled it, the banks also saw an opportunity in giving out BTL loans to people so they would be into the bank for three maybe even four lumps of mortgage debt. It all works great (mainly for the banker"s bonus pool and allowing politicians to wallpaper over the lack of wage rises as everyone thinks their house is making them rich) until interest rates get forced up, then you get a crash.

It would definitely be nice to watch Labour own the bursting of the property bubble that New labour started, Tories kept pumping it as well of course but they will all just blame Trump and Iran.

People are going to say Thatcher started the property bubble, but ex-council houses were 15k, not quite the same scale of madness that nearly brought down the global economy in 2008 and got pumped back up again because that is all they know how to do!

This one is different though because I don"t think Iran gives much of a toss about Western debt levels and co-ordinating with the central banks to make everything all better again so people can just keep on borrowing like last time?

We’re now considering taking out home off the market and making improvements to stay here longer, with mortgage rates looking like they may go up later in the year maybe now isn’t a sensible time to upsize …

Might be a sensible option OP. Interest rates look to increase quite substantially. If you can stay put for a few years and add value to your home, it’s worth considering. Good luck with whatever you decide.

Which village, I’ll have one 😀

Sadly for your friend, she is unlikely to get an offer for 385 if that is 10% above previous sales. Very few people are rushing to overpay now like they were back in 2021.

Yes the market is very bad in many areas but that is because prices are far higher than can be supported currently. Things have been tough economically for some time and the war in Iran and concurrent rise in interest rates on top has slowed things further.

Reading your last post, I see that you are considering staying for now. That sounds reasonable. It's worth keeping an eye on the market so that you understand what is happening locally.

I'm no fan of Labour and they aren't helping the rental market at all but I'm afraid your Dad is wrong. GDP has increased just as much historically under Labour as the Tories. As a couple of others have pointed out, the Blair government oversaw the most rapid period of house price rises. Sure, the economy has barely grown but that's been the case since 2022, when the Tories were in power. This is also the case worldwide, with multiple major economies slowing/in recession. In Canada and NZ, house prices have already fallen 20%. In the US, they are also falling in many areas. The general economic situation is v likely to deteriorate worldwide before long, made even worse by the war. This would happen regardless of whether Labour or Con were in charge. They are both the same nowdays anyway!

It's pretty simple;
People still think its 2020/21 and the market is still in the bubble caused by the stamp duty freeze.
Since then, there's been a COL crisis and the war in Ukraine and now Iran.
Nobody seems to pay attention/understand geopolitics 🤷‍♀️
Your friend knows that similar houses on the same street have been priced and sold for less and is, frankly, rather foolish for not doing more research before pricing.
I wouldn't view a house that I knew to be overpriced. Even a basic rightmove search would show people it's overpriced.
It smacks of sellers who either aren't serious about selling or would be very difficult to deal with.
There are houses near me that have been on the market since 2020 with no price reduction.
And, honestly, one person's "immaculate" is another person's vapid nightmare 🤷‍♀️