Anyone interested in a 2-bed in South-East London?

[WarmSwan]

Evening all, I am trying to sell my two-bed flat in Shooters Hill, London (Woolwich). It was previously under offer twice, but buyer 1 had mortgage issues, and buyer 2 got cold feet. Now I am struggling to get people to look at it. Any advice/hugs much appreciated. Thank you! Zoopla Listing

Yes, but asking prices are abnormal, until they come down by a lot no one is buying.

Normal isn’t working anymore:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/aug/08/flats-in-england-not-selling-slashed-prices-buyer

I live very locally and wonder if it’s too suburban for a lot of people. Maybe just the people I know but Shooters Hill tends to attract families for whom your place would be a bit small. You’d need to take a bus down to Woolwich which would be a bit of a pain and a bit of a walk to Herbert Road shops. Also the 6th form college being next door might put some off.

it’s a lovely flat though and I think part of the issue is just flats in London on the whole are not selling as well as they were previously due to service charge costs.

I think I already posted that one, but looking at those sky boxes there, it is almost Dystopian, imagine being attached to that via a large mortgage debt, it just doesn" bear thinking about.

They are not selling mainly due to asking prices being too high.

Any movement? The wine glass is very apt, that is how people were taking their mortgage debt until recently.

It is marked as sold "subject to contract"

Its nicely presented but was probably overpriced by about 30k imo.
My reasons being :

. Its not really a 2 bed, its a 1 bed with a small nursery/office
. It has no gas so heating and hot water will be expensive
. The service charge is too high
. The location is OK but not great
. Interest rates are about to start rising again
. Grenwich council has a 35 million shortfall and is looking to increase council tax accordingly :(

Would be interested to hear from the OP what kind of offer they got ? Hope it goes through ok.

CT is a concern, how high do you see base rate going this time?

I agree.

Finger in the air stuff - but I guess at least 4.5 by late spring. Could it continue higher, absolutely.

They should never have left the 5% level IMO, all it has done is just encourage more people into mortgage debt that will ruin them when the bond market eventually takes a bite of the UK.

Yes, but Im sure that even though its not in the remit, they will also be considering the effect on our national debt.

The IMF made it very clear yesterday how bad the situation is, the quotes were major warnings pointing at the UK particularly

"It is impossible to stress strongly enough how critical it is to get the courage to take the steps that are necessary. "

"There are these two things that must be done: bring debt levels down, put fiscal consolidation as a priority, and make sure that the central banks deliver on their mandate for price stability,"

What do you mean by ‘ruin them’?

It’s fine. Just a bit too far out with poor transport links.
Friend’s daughter has just completed on a 1 bed in London so there are some people still buying. She got zone 1 for £325k.
I think 90% are unsold after 6 months now so you may have to steadily reduce until you get a bite. Can you afford to let it go for what it might have to be reduced to?

We are paying off the interest on one credit card by borrowing on another.
In August the UK borrowed £18 billion, and spent £10 billion on interest payments.

If someone came on MN with that as a household finances scenario, they would be told to stop spending and pay down the debt immediately. No Christmas presents, no holiday, work overtime, sell the car, get everything on Vinted and eBay, move to a cheaper property.

We need to invite the IMF in, before we are forced to.

Did AB look like he was listening? Bloomberg today in stress mode about U.S inflation, mortgage costs and falling mortgage applications and saying the FED might need to "do more rate hikes than expected". UK can"t escape this, we will have to hike as well?

Make them bankrupt, make them lose their house, give them negative equity or just make their finances very uncomfortable as they have to cut back on loads of things to pay the mortgage. It depends how much you borrowed, how high rates go, if you keep your job or not, how much you earn etc. etc. definitely not a blanket definition.

I think AB knows exactly what the reality of the situation is - but realistically they have been handed a poison challis (economically speaking.) No easy way out of this situation- the can was kicked hard down the road for years with all sorts of shenanigans. Now that the tool box is empty, we need to deal with the consequences. I think its not impossible that the IMF might need to step in at some point and force tax rises and spending cuts - I sincerely hope not because that will be messy like we haven't seen in decades.

The national public debt is about to reach 3 Trillion pounds. Thats a debt that is effectively owed by all of us as a nation. It excludes all private, mortgage and business borrowing.

Written down it looks like this £ 3,000,000,000,000

So that number is just phenomenal. Its hard to understand right. I try to envisage it this way :

So one billion is a thousand millions

That number above is three thousand times a billion !!

I cant get my head around how in theory every household in the UK (there are 29 million) has a share of something like £103,000. Thats on top of any mortgage debt or other borrowing. How on earth do the plates keep spinning?

Last time was the 1970"s, then we got Thatcher not long after on the mandate of sorting it all out, that had some successes but left a legacy of bad feeling that lingers to this day in many areas? Not sure the average phone/celebrity addicted person now could handle a re-run of the 1970"s/early 80"s? It will be worse now in fact because people are so much more in debt for multiple aspects of their lives?