Are sellers being unrealistic??

[foursquares]

Saw a property on Tues, made an offer of £425k (£15k under asking). Offer rejected, as buyer is looking for offers above £440k. Property listed in May. Apparently, no other offers received property yet.

Given house prices haven't really moved much since 2022 (post covid & stamp duty holiday), the number of properties on the market is at 12 year high, there's been a fall in buyer enquiries, mortgage costs are rising and there's an expectation of further interest rate rises..

Appreciate this is an emotive topic, but are sellers totally deluded??

They do sound deluded if it’s been on since May!

Yeah I think it’s taking a long time for sellers to realise prices have to drop. The estate agents don’t help as they overvalue everything. We had to drop ours a few times to get an offer and another on our road has still gone up for what ours was originally and has had no interest.

Trouble is you need the houses at the top to come down first as to be able to get your onward home you need to know what to get for yours or you can’t move.
It’s all a bit of a mess currently!

I think some are, yes. I'm selling a house and the estate agent said that realistically prices are 2018 levels. I think a lot of sellers are looking at the COVID spike in prices and wanting something close to that.

My next door neighbour has had his house on the market for over 3 years now. He bought it in 2018 for £410k, did nothing to it and it's now on for £600k. He says he won't lower the price and 'give it away'.

Some sellers are anchored to their asking price rather than the market. An asking price is one person's hope from back in May; your £425k is the only real evidence of what the house is worth right now, and five months without another offer says the market agrees with you, not them.

The counterintuitive bit is that a rejected offer isn't the end of anything. Leave it on the table in writing, tell the agent you're proceedable and can move quickly, and ask to be kept posted. Sellers holding out for £440k+ in a quiet market usually need another month or two of silence to adjust, and when they adjust, they call the buyer who left the cleanest offer sitting there. Chasing upwards to meet them just teaches them that waiting works.

The estate agent is worth cultivating too - they know perfectly well the price is optimistic, but they can't say so while the seller is paying them. A buyer who's pleasant, decisive and still around in six weeks is often exactly who the agent quietly nudges the seller towards.

We encountered someone who refused to budge after 12 months on a market.... Priced doer upper (it has basically not been updated since 70s)as done up houses in area (one of which we got for the same price).
Some seller are in lala land of covid prices still.
My fave is a non standard construction one nearby which has been on market for 2 years now, even tried auction, and is still about 30% overpriced. Again, complete doer upper, radiators hanging off the wall etcc, priced as newly refurbed house AND it's non standard construction. The agents know though from our talk. The seller however will not budge.
🤷 Crazy

Yes, but they need the house to sell at those prices for their onward purchases, don’t you know? Some of them, anyway.

But nobody gives a shit about what the sellers ‘need’ except the deluded sellers and their EA’s.

I very much agree with a previous comment that the agents who over value are part of this mess.

My neighbour did this. Her house has been on the market for 3.5 years. Started at £575k and refused various offers but is now down to £475k. I put my house on the market in February for £450k, took £15k under and we moved in June.

Some sellers are just stubborn and will not be told, or see the market for what it is.

Yes, of course some sellers are deluded but they presumably have the luxury of being able to wait a year or more for it to sell.

If it doesnt sell then they will, eventually, be forced to reduce the price if they want to move that badly so they will in time be forced to reconsider anyway.

It just depends on how desperate you are to move things along quickly and not everyone is

I think agents overvaluing is where things get stuck.

some sellers see asking prices as the value when the value is determined by how many offers they get at what level.

Sellers also don’t seem to realise that in a falling market the amount they ‚need’ to sell for goes down because the properties they are looking at will come down too.

We had one seller tell us that now prices had come down she was looking at bigger houses. it didn’t occur to her that prices coming down would apply to her house too. 😂

Her house is still on the market.

Some sellers simply dont need to sell. If they can get the price they want then they’ll move, otherwise they are quite happy to stay put.

If you find a motivated seller - someone who has to move because of new job, school , marriage breakup etc - then the price will be a lot more flexible.

Thanks that's helpful. To be honest it's a bit of a finger in the air valuation for me too. I looked at what other in area are selling or sold for - sold for data was a bit scarce, last comparable(ish) property that sold was for £375k in 2023.

Then I thought it's not worth £440k as no other offers made in 5 months, and offered lower, but not too low.

I recently withdrew an offer from a property as it needed a new roof, which I discovered after survey.

Seller refused to reduce price any further saying he's already reduced it by £85k since 2025.

Originally listed for £520k, in 10 months it's been listed (twice) he received 3 offers (£435k - me, £405k and £400k).

Just say ‘we’ll keep the offer on the table incase they change their minds before we find something else - just let us know’

We did this. And about 3 months after our offer we messaged the estate agent and said ‘just to let you know that offer is still on the table’ - they accepted that week. Give them some time to realise a better offer isn’t coming.

Sellers sometimes take the view that they'll move if they can get £x and not otherwise. Annoying but not much you can do.

People have always done this but in the past the market would catch up to their inflated price and they would simply say “it took a year to find a buyer”. So they would feel vindicated. But now the market is slipping down rather than going up so the likelihood is that in 12 months they would struggle to get £425k.

Maybe they have an onward move in mind and they need £450k to make that happen. If they can’t make that move they will stay put. Who knows. Maybe in 12 months they take an offer of £400k and are able to buy the £1mil house for £900k. Which is cheaper stamp duty and £50k less mortgage.

Prices haven't fallen to 2018 levels round here, feel like very area dependent. I think london has been hit hard, but areas in Midlands and north haven't really dropped

Some people will only sell if they achieve a certain price. Maybe they need a certain amount in order to afford their new home, or make it worth it to move if downsizing.

At the end of the day, unless they are forced to sell, most people will simply stay put and wait.

Interesting. Are you looking at sold prices year on year?

I would have thought increased mortgage rates affecting affordability would to hit everywhere?

In my specific area, house prices have remained basically the same this year in fact a house sold 12 months ago seems to have been sold on with no changes for same amount they paid, house on the same street sold for £12k more than it sold for 2 years ago. I've just sold and got offer for basically what I'd have expected to get 12 months ago. Obviously there will be some areas that have dropped, some areas with enough demand seem to be relatively unscathed at the moment. All those houses I mentioned went sstc within 8 weeks.

Many sellers and E.As forget that a house is only ever worth what someone is willing to pay for it. We have just bought a house it was marketed at O/O £100k it didn't sell at closing date as not one single bid was submitted. We offered 85k 11 weeks later and it was excepted. Sellers feel as though they should be making 20% a year.

Yeah but wages have also risen substantially since 2018, so prices can fall in real terms, but still go up in nominal terms.

I’m in the north and a house down the road from me sold a couple of weeks ago for more than I paid in 2020. It’s a smaller house too, and it sold within about a week of going on the market. However, if you adjust the price for inflation, then it probably hasn’t risen that much, if at all.

This is so one of our relatives. Bought on a sunny day in 2022 with cash sitting in the bank. Had a vision, transform a nice but flawed house into an upmarket, really upmarket holiday let to then be his later home. Dreamt big, replaced a few blown windows, DIY ed a patio on the cheap now wants 15% more than he paid. But he's over paid in the first place, post COVID dreams and the house has an even bigger back log of maintenance issues now.
He genuinely thinks he's on the right path because he's had four viewings in 6 months, no offers but all these people come!

I like this one, guy trying to break even.
Bought for £395k in 2024, £10k Stamp duty, redecorated in places but extensively outside, new kitchen, radiators, some flooring, shite drive, garden makeover, on for £450k.
Last reduction in April.
Before:
https://themovemarket.com/tools/propertyprices/2-west-drive-thornton-cleveleys-fy5-2bj
After
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/173867744#/?channel=RES_BUY

I am invested in this topic as thinking in the near future of downshifting/releasing capital/finding somewhere better suited for our lives now... but we have neighbours stubbornly sticking to a c. 800k selling price and now on 3rd agent after 1 year. They are being overly optimistic as all the algorithms point to a ceiling of 650k on the road... their attached neighbour sold in 2022 for 595k BUT the sellers and ourselves have a loft extension, en suites and new bathrooms so that price doesn't reflect the true value and with material/labour costs so high, that should add 100k (c.695k) . The problem is they need to move (probably interest only mortgage). We'd be interested in a 750k valuation but fully aware of an over supply of 700-800k properties. All the heat is the >450k property close to a good primary school. I know the agent I'd pick because it's going to need some contextual marketing.

Now that’s deluded!