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?

Did you not have a deposit though & 5 yrs of paying the mortgage?

Personally I think the days of large equity gains are over for some time particularly over a short period.

I mean if you paid 500k for a property in 21 it would need to be worth 630k today to keep pace with inflation.

I think the fact people are wanting turn key properties in pristine condition frustrating but I accept that’s the market.

Ours is a detached Victorian. Bought it 15 years ago and did a lot of work to it 10 years ago - so full kitchen extension, new bathrooms, landscaped the garden 5 years ago, built a big garden studio.

Yet we still have people saying ‘it needs a lot of work’. I guess as the kitchen is now ten years old and bathrooms too. Windows are old sash windows which I don’t have an issue with but many buyers do. But we are not prepared obviously to replace all the windows and redo bathrooms.

I assumed people would want to put their own stamp on a house. It’s rare
to find a house with the perfect kitchen in just your taste. But I appear to be wrong on that..!

I also think a lot is still to play out. Interest rates went up in 24 was it? So many are still on fixes. Paying down your mortgage at 2% is much easier than 6%.

Oh and yes the people that do like our house are not proceedable - they can’t sell their houses in London. So not just a price issue. It’s a lack of proceedable buyers issue.

A viewer yesterday finally had an offer on their flat in London after 90!! viewings. It’s so stressful.

We have two viewings a week and the impact is huge.

@delatron I would not mind if my next house needed a new bathroom or kitchen as long as there was no building work but I would want them to be liveable now. That’s because I intend to stay in my next house for a long time so can justify the spend in the future. The sash windows would put me off tbh. I had them replaced in my first home and it was £££ plus I would be worried about heating bills.

Yeah @circusrunaways I think the windows are a tricky one. We’ve replaced some of them. But to be honest I’m weird and sleep with my bedroom windows open all year round so never needed to spend the money. The house is warm in the winter as the extension is well insulated.

But I completely get people’s concerns. We’ve even had to show evidence of our heating bills. Which is fair enough.

But it didn’t even cross my mind when we moved in (mainly as I fell in love with it and all practicality went out of the window!!).

We have just dropped the price by £150k 😱 to reflect the need to replace some windows and do a little updating so hope that shifts it.

Last June I was misadvised/overpromised by the agent and wasted ten days (lots of web hits but zero enquiries) at an inflated price of £525k before reducing to £499,500, which got people through the door.

Even then, the feedback was that it was a bit pricey. I accepted an offer of £491k in early Sept (I actually had two offers from different families of £485k in 48 hours and one of the families went up to £491k).

We completed in January.

I got the impression from the agent that the wife of the family who bought it fell in love with the house and set her heart on it. My old neighbour, who’s since become friendly with them, tells me that this was indeed the case!

So.,.,My experience tells me that some estate agents overprice and that the right viewer needs to come along. The latter is luck, the former is judgement.

Wow that's a big drop.

I was advised by a (very good) EA to drop by at least 5% of the asking price or don't bother. That is something I will remember going forward.

Hope you get some good enquiries/interest now you have dropped by a large amount, surely you will do!

It really is a price issue. Potential buyers have reduced for a reason. That reason is because they cannot afford current prices or perhaps do not want to pay them for reasons that have already been given. They are also being far more careful to price in any updates and the cost of the heating bills, etc. Most people's budgets are already very stretched and the sentiment seems to have turned rather negative. Of course, there will be some sellers who are lucky and find a unicorn buyer but most won't. I hope the reduction you have made helps you to sell.

@southchinaseayour agent has let you down badly. Negotiating is what they are there to do!

Well, the second one is a deceased estate so 'free' money to the couple of fifty-something beneficiaries. It's on for 325k which seems about right for a small three bed period cottage in this location. The late owner bought it in 2013 for 220k and made a few 'improvements' which are now showing their age.

The third one I haven't a clue about and the fourth is a woman in her early eighties who's downsizing to a cheaper area where her adult kids live.

Admittedly I'm biased as I'm still bitter we lost out on the first one, but the vendor (another elderly lady who has since died), never lived in the property. It's just one little cottage in a huge property portfolio she'd amassed/inherited over the years. Apparently the five beneficiaries are squabbling over everything and had some very poor advice re the renovations which have devalued the property. It was sstc in January 2026 but the buyers pulled out a couple of weeks ago due to discovering the works were not only inappropriate, but also in contravention of the Conservation Area rules.

You can"t really add value to your home in a rising interest rate environment, that scenario means your home is losing value.

It is only a big drop if the house is near market clearing price, asking prices are not reality.

The price of houses doesn"t control interest rates though, if the bond market needs higher interest rates then house prices need to fall to match up.

Thank you! Yes the estate agents advised to drop by a decent amount and since it’s been on the market so long (and it’s so stressful with all the viewings).

I think we’re also so used to property prices continuously rising, it’s going to take a while until sellers start listing for prices realistic in this market, rather than what they would’ve been worth even 12 months ago

It will take a couple of interest rates rises IMO, the market will just stop for all but the most realistically priced in that situation. The narrative until now was that after a burst of inflation (caused by Covid money printing) interest rates were going back to "normal", younger people especially seem to have fallen for that, but we have moved even beyond central banks no longer co-ordinating with each other to keep a debt bubble inflated, a ME war isn"t something that the debt bubble nations can really control in any meaningful way once it ignites.

The London buyers who are ‘not proceedable’ is only because they haven’t adjusted their price.

I think this moment in market shifts is difficult where some are happy to do a price drop but then they are at risk of buying from someone who hasn’t done a price drop. Until 90% of sellers bit the bullet we are stuck in this inertia - but until the Iran war ends and the economic landscape is assessed due to the cumulative and compounding impacts of Brexit, Covid, COL, interest rates, employment rates / wage rates, fuel costs, business confidence etc the uncertainty might be worse than the reality down the line.

It's a big drop from the asking price, is very obviously what I meant and that is a fact.

Yes, but in a general sense 150k off La La prices isn"t necessarily "big", it might not even be that relevant or nearly enough to sell a property (not saying that is the OP though) Again in a general sense people tend to say "my property has gone up 150k in the last few years" as if that is normal, but when the price cut needed to sell is 150k people tend to class that as "big" or somehow "not normal".