Every estate agent in NW & Greater Manchester I pass is empty

john539

nembot wrote: »

Where is Hamish to tell us there are queues lining up outside the estate agents in Aberdeen?

Och ae the noo !

hamish lives in parallel universe.

Cleaver

tommy75 wrote: »

I travel alot and I find that everywhere I go, if I pass an estate agents, its always totally empty. I ever went past Oystons in Blackpool last week and there was only one lady in there looking extremely bored with the door locked. She tried to drag me in but I made my excuses and walked on. Everywhere, from Rochdale to Dukinfield to Bolton. All totally empty with the odd person on a phone or tapping a computer. Only cash rich buying at the moment. Looks like we are heading for some possibly big drops now over the next 2 years, I can't see it being any other way after all the str have finished jumping back in and the bankers have finished sploshing our taxes on their new homes, who does that leave?
I'm prepaired to wait to see what happens, only thing I'm loosing is being settled in my own home as I hate renting... Life on hold but will it be worth it?..Only time will tell..In the time being, I'm trying to save even more deposit (I'll have a holiday one day)..

Having spent the past few months actively searching for property in and around Manchester (not just driving past estate agencies in my car) I don't really agree with this.

Our experience was that there is a good percentage of houses at 2007 prices that no one is touching. Been on Rightmove for ages and although they are reducding in price, they are beind the curve of actual house price drops and no one is touching them. We asked about a few of them that we might have been interested in but were often told 'the vendor wants £x for it.'. We'd tell the estate agent it wasn't worth that and they'd give a look as if to say 'tell me about it.'

On the other hand, most of the houses we were either very interested in or slightly interested in were seemed to have a lot of interest with many selling for near or for asking prices. Mainly good houses priced realistically, i.e. 30%, 20% or 10% off what similar houses were selling for 2 years ago in that area. We really liked one that was on for £160, offered a couple of cheeky offers and would have been willing to pay up to £155, but someone offered the asking price. Just as a rule of thumb, 4 of the houses we looked at the week before last are now under offer or SSTC on rightmove.

So just one anecdotal against another Tommy, so I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right. We just found that there were almost two markets in Manchester: half the property is stupidly priced and no one is taking a second glance at it, the other half seems to be a healthy, buoyant market with stuff selling quickly when priced realistically. Just be interesting to see if that continues I guess.

Edit: I should add that we've probably looked around 20 or 30 houses over the past few months and I have been in to one estate agent on one occassion in that time. We find everything on Rightmove then book over the phone. Does anyone go to these places anymore?