What is is with old ladies and their houses?

harrup

House prices are falling???????

Oh really ? Not when the owner is an elderly lady.


I just phoned 3 different EA's about 3 houses we looked at a few years ago.

Property 1: Sold in 2000 for £ 390.000, sold subsequently in 2006 for
£600 000 ( exactly the same house, just 6 years older). Now offered for £ 650 000! Belongs to an eldery lady who wants to sell it because husband died and house is too big.

Property 2: This house was on the market in 2006 for £ 500 000. Don't know whether it sold or not but since no previous sale is listed on zoopla, perhaps the buyer withdrew it. Now listed....wait for this !.....£ 599.950. Again, it belongs to an elderly lady whose son did it up and extended it. Believe me when I tell it it is a bog ordinary looking house standing on a 0.4 acre plot, the front overlooks the road, the back overlooks a housing estate. The EA just sighed and said the owner doesn't want to hear about dropping the price.

Property 3; and this is my absolute favourite of the lot! This property was sold in 2004 for £ 450 000. Lovely property but needed LOTS doing to it ( new roof, new...everything) and thus outside of our price bracket at the time.The new owners refurbished it completely and it really is a beautiful house now. EXCEPT they divided up the large garden ( 1 acre) and are now offerering the property for .....tada......£ 800 000 BUT with a 1/3 of the previous land. They are selling 2 building plots beside it seperately. The current owner, need I say more, a recently widowed woman. Who want twice the money but for 1/3 the land.

HOW is THAT representative of "falling house prices"??/ I thought these houses were hugely overpriced 5 years ago in a rising market. Now it's a falling one and they cost more than ever before.

Is this an "old ladies" thing? NONE of these properties are mansions, there are just 4 bedroom houses with a decent sized garden.

Am I missing something?

chewmylegoff

harrup wrote: »

Am I missing something?

not really. there is no law to say they have to market their house at what you (or the market) considers to be 'market value'. if they want to try to sell for a lunatic amount, good luck to them.

milliejo

I suspect that there are some children expecting a share involved in the price setting

whathavewedone

It's an old ladies thing. My mum put her 2 bedroom cottage on for 275k and after 6 months of no viewings simply took it off the market. She paid 80k for it in 1995 - has done some work to it but nothing that amounts to more than about 10k apart from the usual maintenance, painting the outside, new boiler etc.

She could get a lovely flat for under 200k and has no mortgage but my attempts to broach the subject of dropping the price resulted in such huffiness (her house is beautiful, it's much bigger than the other cottages, the garden is beautiful, it is worth the money, no it's a bargain at under 300k...) that I had to just stop talking about it.

Our last house was bought from an elderly couple, though we were shown round by the wife. It was a 70s nightmare, artex and fake beams, nasty gas fires, woodchip, kitchen like a swiss sauna etc. She went on and on about what a beautiful house it was, everyone said so blah blah blah. She wasn't happy when after she accepted our offer we wanted to come round with a builder to get an idea of cost etc. She refused until we threatened to pull out. Then she followed us round with the builders saying "why do you want to change the bathroom? It's lovely" It was excrutiating.

lostinrates

LOL, my nmother thinks her house is worth more than I think it is too. I think a lot of my parents generation have been lucky enough to make sales in rising markets and expect it to always be that way, maybe?

bo_drinker

Well dear the lovely estate agent, lovely man he was said it is worth X so that's how much I want for it. He should know dear it's his job dear. Pity you didn't get a job like that, nice suit and a lovely car silver it was, lovely man. Anyway he said it's worth X so he knows. Lovely man, nice aftershave too. You should shave more often you look like a tramp. Lovely man he was. Nice shoes as well, you can tell a lot about a man by his shoes. I remember his father, they couldn't afford shoes when we were kids. I bet he's proud of his boy though, lovely man.

harrup

LOL!!

Oh well, at least I'm not alone. Actually, I shouldn't have been so surprised about it - my own MIL is as tenacious as a terrier when it comes to her house.

I don't really get it, actually. I appreciate that they don't want to recieve LESS than they paid for. I also understand that they want a "fair" price for it.

What I don't understand is that they....okay my MIL and her contemporaries..... haughtily state that they wouldn't pay "that" for any house on the market - almost regardless of the price it is offered - but they think their own property is the bees knees and worth an absolute fortune. Never mind that the carpet pattern makes your eyeballs spin and the kitchen was done just after world war 2. Weird.

True, we all want to sell high and buy low but.......geeeze.

Perhaps I should simply put in a really low offer to give them a reality check? Actually, I think the EA would be thrilled if I did!

Spirit_2

My mother put her purpose built flat up for sale in Nov 07. In Jan 08 she had an offer of 15% less which she at first declined, then discussd with us and we spoke about an impending downturn and we asked the EA to say there was a small increase needed to make the offer sound good and fair to my Mum. The Buyer increased their offer by 3%, so a sale was agreed at 12% less than asking price and went through in a few weeks. Mum was realistic.

The other six flats that were for sale in in the same place (a retirement development) at the same time are mostly still for sale. The sticking point seems to be that most sales arise following death or to meet nursing home fees and people are keen to maximise their inheritance and holding out.

lostinrates

harrup wrote: »

What I don't understand is that they....okay my MIL and her contemporaries..... haughtily state that they wouldn't pay "that" for any house on the market - almost regardless of the price it is offered - but they think their own property is the bees knees and worth an absolute fortune.

Do you KNOW my mother? Because that is HER you are describing!:D

treliac

In the end, the buyer will only get a mortgage that relates to the valuation price. So, if the survey says it's overpriced, there will be no mortgage and no sale.

a_rather_tall_man

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact an elderly lady may not have any idea about job markets with regard to salaries, someone in their 80's might not have worked for over 20 years.

A friend of my mothers who was looking to sell a while back asked my mum if I'd be interested, it was a 3-bed bungalow for around 200k I seem to remember. I told my mum it was vastly over-priced and I simply couldn't afford it despite earning a fairly tidy wage. In the end I had to type some figures into a mortgage calculator and show her the deposit amount required and the monthly payments to try and get through to her just how much it would cost. I think my mum eventually grasped how expensive it was but I don't think she ever convinced her friend it was over-priced. It seemed she had the attitude that the younger generation were almost duty bound to pay the asking price so she could have a plentiful retirement. I don't know if she ever did sell before the slump started.