South East House Prices

NRJonesy

We are in the process of selling our house. We were offered 10% less than our asking price which we gladly accepted last week. Now we are looking at property in our area to buy. I rang our local EA to offer £310,000 on a property which was originally marketed in March this year at £370,000 but now has a revised price of "offers between £340,000 and £370,000" to be told that our offer would not be accepted by the vendor as it was far too low. The EA told us that property prices in our area have not dropped beyond 8-10% due to there being a shortage of housing stock. We live in a village 14 miles from Ashford in Kent and wish to buy in a village location, but the shortage of housing stock means that we cant find anything affordable to buy at the moment, so we are thinking it may be more sensible to rent for a while rather than buy and are looking at investing our capital from the sale of our house and using the interest (less tax) to pay the rental fees, but we are worried that this may be a risky option as we have seen that the financial market is up and down like a yo yo and this may feed on to the housing market. Does anyone have any data to prove that the market can not turn around in the next 7 months or so in our area of the SE. I know I'm asking for crystal ball stuff, but stats etc for our area will help us make a decision on what our best move would be. "To buy or not to buy, that is the question!" (Sorry couldn't resist the pun)

SouthCoast

If you install Property-Bee you wil get evidence like this from the South East

:
History

dateevent23 September 2008

• Price changed: from '£365,000' to '£329,950'

18 May 2008

• Initial entry found.

GDB2222

I remember during the last house price recession that it was difficult to move, even though we had a solid buyer for our house. There was a lot of optimistically priced stuff out there.

FWIW, I expect the house price recession to go much deeper and last much longer. Renting is a good idea financially, but it's quite traumatic moving, and you presumably have a house full of furniture?

Running_Horse

NRJonesy wrote: »

Does anyone have any data to prove that the market can not turn around in the next 7 months or so in our area of the SE.

No they don't. We nearly rented when our purchase was looking shaky last year, but it all came good in the end. It would have been very hard to find something similar in our price range, as perversely, asking prices have gone up in our very similar part of rural Kent. Renting for a while might make sense of you are looking for that one-off property to come up in an unusual location.

cats!

"our offer would not be accepted by the vendor as it was far too low"

And if the agent told you the moon was made of cheese would you believe it? Of course they're going to tell you that! Did you confirm your offer through the vendor's door with a mobile number to contact you in case they want to discuss your offer???

I live a semi-rural village in Kent and I can tell you - houses ain't shifting, particularly if they are part of a chain!

Reconfirm your offer directly with the vendor - you might be pleasantly surprised by their response!

NRJonesy

Thank you for all the advice, it was very helpful, I shall certainly be looking at Property Bee.

In the event we have decided that we would probably be better off renting for a few months as it appears that whilst some vendors are being realistic, owners of quality properties in nice areas that have been on the market for a while are still clinging to the price they entered the market on last year. The new stock presently on the market is not inspiring us in the least, so rather than be pushed into buying something that we don't really want, we would rather wait and go in as buyers with no chain which may give us a bit more bargaining power and vendors may be a little more receptive to offers in the dark months after the festive period. Its a big gamble though because the market may recover and we could lose out! Stlll, fortune favours the brave and all that.

SouthCoast

Its a big gamble though because the market may recover and we could lose out!

I like gambling when the odds are 100-1 in my favour.

Davesnave

NRJonesy wrote: »

Its a big gamble though because the market may recover and we could lose out! Stlll, fortune favours the brave and all that.

Life's a gamble. You could be run over by a bus next week. However, I think it is safe to say that the odds of being run down by a bus are somewhat higher than the market making a recovery any time soon.