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?

That's right. You can still be making real gains over a long period but, as you identified, those real gains may now be shrinking.

Give houseprices.io a go. It's just using a different mechanism for displaying public LR data. If you like a bit of pain and suffering in the multi-millionaire sector then I recommend searching for SW3 and going through a few pages. It's a horror story, but if you have quadrillion million then what's a loss of a few million here and there!

I'm not convinced that there will be many people, who have bought relatively recently, making real gains going forwards. There may well be some nominal gains, depending on the area, popularity of the type of housing and how much money printing goes on but real gains seem unlikely. The latter factor seems particularly important!

Thanks, I was aware of houseprices.io but forgot about it. The last price it shows for our town is for 20th of March sale, while Rightmove shows sold prices only till the end of February.

It also shows price map where I could finally choose, if I want to see sold prices for 2026 only

Indeed! I think the previous owner (who sold in 2022) got lucky, although she had spent considerably on modernising including a neutral shaker kitchen and two bathrooms The next highest price achieved by one of these six 1980s builds is 390k in 2023 and that one still had it's original 80s kitchen and bathrooms.

The only upside - if you can call it that - is that the sellers of the 'huge price drop' house are professional landlords who bought it in 2022 as another holiday let to add to their portfolio, so not an owner occupier. Not sure why they wanted/needed to sell as they have others in the area they've kept hold of.

I don't feel so bad for them now @LibertyLily! Thanks for updating.

Well yes, the effectiveness of "rate rises" during an energy supply/price shock is not an obvious solution to anything and will be hotly debated no doubt if they start hiking,, but I think the hoped for result is demand destruction at some point which stops inflation becoming embedded in the system (some would argue it is already embedded and has been for some time) at some point demand for oil drops and the price gets forced down, even if the war is still on?

The other reason is that if other countries are hiking rates and the bond market is now forcing yields up there would be a run on the pound if we didn"t join in?

And more on topic, the penny is dropping with a lot of people that these economic "shocks" are easier to navigate if you don"t have a large mortgage debt, imagine where we would be now if people had been able to buy cheap basic property and save/invest over the last 20 years instead of scrambling to take part in the greatest property Ponzi of all time? If we were a nation of savers people would be welcoming rate rises with open arms?

Plumplot is good, you can see how far demand has fallen, and PropertyLog is great for checking price drops in your area.

Plumpot is pay to play, yes? There are enough free resources to really get my interest. And I ditched property log as it didn' really add much over the more extensive Area360 RM add-in - it just burned up real estate on my web page.

The basic charts are free, the decline in sales volumes over most areas is quite striking.

Surprising how wrong some rich people can be? The story on prime London I heard was that problems in the private credit/hedge fund world were leading people to take hits to their wealth and to sell up property etc.

I think your dad was talking out of his arse

Used to be the case, he was right, now everything is a super bubble and that has to pop before ordinary people can breathe again.

That’s nothing, my house has been on the market for 2 YEARS, I’ve had 3 viewings in that time, reduced the price by 15% twice and still no interest. It’s an unusual property with a limited potential audience and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s unsellable! Luckily, I don’t really want or need to move , I’m quite happy here and am only thinking of moving to downsize but I don’t have to ! I like the house, the area and the neighbours. I could reduce the price even further but I can’t be bothered. I do feel sorry for those who MUST move though! ( and it has meant my house has been immaculately tidy for 2 years😁)

I’ve had about 40 viewings since last September and with teens and a dog I’m losing the will to live. I now cry when the agent tells me there’s a viewing. As I know nothing will come of it yet I’ll tidy my house again for hours.

We are thinking of resting it from July for a good few months then relaunching at some point. Have accepted it may take a year or two to sell. Not sure how properties are viewed if they’ve been on the market for so long? Is it worth having a break?

I know it is for my mental health!

Oh and we’ve dropped the price by 10%

If you have only had 3 viewings in 2 years, it must be very overpriced, especially in a falling market.
However, if you are perfectly happy to stay where you are, the lack of interest is obviously less of a problem.

That sounds v stressful to have so many viewings over so many months and still not sell. How much do you need/want to move and how quickly? Have you had any helpful feedback? Are other similar properties selling in your area?
I think it depends on these questions as to whether you make another decent reduction and try to get it sold quickly or come off for a while and reassess.

If you feel a break would be beneficial for your mental health then I would do that.

40 viewings and no sale is surprising. What has the feedback been? Is there anything you could do to act on the feedback if you take the house off the market?

Could be, it’s difficult to say as there’s nothing else similar locally. It’s a bog-standard 3 bedroom detached but has a self contained annex attached. It’s only a little bit more expensive (around £20k) than other 3 bedroom detached houses in the area, which I thought was reasonable! Still, as you say, I’m quite happy to stay here and I’ve decided to remove it from the market and have a break😊

Thanks. Other properties at this price (1.35) aren’t really selling round here.

We’ve had a few people who wanted to put an offer in and they couldn’t sell their houses. Still waiting on them to sell theirs (London) so we’ll see.

Main feedback is that nobody wants to do any work. For context it’s a 4 bedroom Victoria house with a large garden and large studio. We did a ton of work about 5 years after we bought it. So new kitchen, extension, bathrooms. This was ten years ago. We’ve repainted it all when we put it in the market last year. Garden - spent £40k landscaping.

So not like it’s a wreck! Main bathroom needs new tiles on the floor which we are considering. We’ve had a lot of feedback on the windows (old sash) we’ve replaced the ones in the kitchen, utility and one of the bedrooms and the rest I guess are a little tired and need replacing but they’ve never bothered us enough. Following the feedback and lack of sale we dropped the price by 10% to more than cover this.

It’s also the best house on let’s say a mixed housing street. I like this fact but some people are snobby about facing ex council houses. The road is residential but a bit of a cut through so can get busy at peak times. It has a 20 speed limit though. The price does reflect all this. If you picked our house up and moved in two streets closer to town you’d pay at least £500k
more.

We don’t need to sell desperately - we are downsizing so could buy the next house without selling this one. We will move in to the new house and then I guess style this one and hope it shifts. But thinking of resting it and maybe redoing bathroom over summer.

People seem to want show homes at the moment. I can’t imagine buying a house and not wanting to put your own stamp on it!

Thanks - yes main feedback has been around the old sash windows- we are not prepared to replace these so have taken £££ off to reflect that.

We will retile the bathroom. I’ve completely redecorated our en-suite. It’s hard to what else to do. Will look at presenting it all a a bit better once the teens are out!

What is your objection to replacing the old sash windows if people would prefer you did that than see it reflected in the price?

Tbh @Delatron you seem to be blaming potential buyers for certain things but that doesn’t help sell your house.

Better to listen to what they are saying, even if you disagree with them. If they don’t want to do a lot of work then it’s better to present then with a house that doesn’t have too many obvious jobs to do, and replacing sash windows is a big, expensive job.

Yes I agree. The reason we don’t want to replace the sash windows is we don’t know for sure if that will get a sale. So we have taken £150k off the house instead and presented it as a house that ‘needs a bit of work’ I don’t think sash windows cost £150k.

Out of the 40 viewings I would say about 8 have mentioned the windows. The couple that liked it and wanted to put an offer in (but couldn’t sell their house) didn’t seem bothered by this and this was at the original price.

We are more than happy to spend money on it but not sure if it will really make a difference and then we’ve spent another £50k!