Busy weekend for estate agents

Jonbvn

I have just changed my saved RM searches to include the SSTC properties. I am quite surprised to see numerous sales. Around 10% of all listed properties.

Something is definitely afoot here. Could it be a EA ploy?

Doozergirl

A national EA ploy to sell houses on the 9th February? I doubt it.

Something is moving, I think, like hethmar it's a meeting poing of vendors accepting that they are going to have to drop prices and buyers wanting to take advantage of the mortgage rates. I'm not anticipating a rise in prices at all, just perhaps that the situation has moved from a complete stand off to those that need
to move, starting to make efforts to do so. Not everyone can put their lives on hold to stay where they are.

QTPie

Jonbvn wrote: »

Something is definitely afoot here. Could it be a EA ploy?

I don't think so - I can't see how it could be in the property sellers interests to say that a property is SSTC when it isn't (and an EA couldn't do it without the seller's agreement).

I would say it is a mixture of a few things:
- buyers have been putting off looking seriously for the past 5/6 months, are fed-up with waiting and have got to the point of "oh stuff it, let's get on with our lives".
- low interest rates. If I could buy what I want now (at a reasonable/affordable price) it WOULD be attractive. Even though the prices are likely to fall further, there is a good chance that mortgage interests could rise. There are some really quite reasonable 5/7/10 year fixed rate mortgages around: so could fix payments at a reasonable amount to weather out the rest of the recession (assuming a good deposit and a secure job).
- many sellers also want to "cut their losses" and get on with their lives and have brought their prices down accordingly.
- possibly a bit of panic buying because people have seen the press coverage of "rising house prices in January". I don't care what people say - people ARE sheep.

If it is the first three, then expect quite a few of the sales to go through (people just want to get on with their lives, cut the financial looses of waiting to buy/sell later on and take advantage of the low interest rates).

If it is the last reason, then expect a lot of the SSTC to fall through: as further house price falls are reported, the buyers get cold feet and think "no we should withdraw this offer and wait longer!".

Hope it is the former.
QT

GDB2222

hog_hill wrote: »

There was a report in the Northern Ireland news this morning from a leading estate agent over here saying that we had reached the bottom of the market..

Well, EAs always think it's a great time to buy (and sell).

Jonbvn

Doozergirl wrote: »

A national EA ploy to sell houses on the 9th February? I doubt it.

Is it feasible that the EA's were just holding back changing the status to SSTC on numerous properties on RM? Perhaps I am just too cynical.

We will have to see if the statistics support this anecdotal evidence.

QTPie

Jonbvn wrote: »

Is it feasible that the EA's were just holding back changing the status to SSTC on numerous properties on RM? Perhaps I am just too cynical.

We will have to see if the statistics support this anecdotal evidence.

I don't think so... it sometimes takes them a while (a week or two) to change properties to SSTC, but I doubt that they all did it on purpose, at the same time...

I would expect to see quite a few of these SSTC to fall through, but I hope that I am wrong: would be really good to see things moving again and people getting on with their lives

QT

hethmar

This is probably a blip - I cant see prices rising for years - but it would be nice if the market stabilised. But with all the bad news still coming .....

confused31_2

I think the mortgages have got something to do with it aswell, i see the banks are not demanding the 40% deposits for the best rates now. you can even get below 6% on a fixed rate with just a 15% deposit.

becky2011

I have just looked at within one mile of where I currently live on Rightmove and was shocked to see 9 out of the 32 houses in the area were SSTC yesterday.

Darth_Marty

Why would Estate Agents hold back the status of properties? It doesnt aid them or the vendors so dont look for a big conspiracy when theres none there.

Just a busy few weeks I guess, after christmas people do usually go looking and this year I guess they are seeing lots of well priced properties. Someone already mentioned that vendors probably dont want another year on hold so have lowered their prices and realise its all relative and they can get it back on their next house.

I would imagine Februarys figures will see a drop in activity and will stay that way until apr/may when its normally very busy.