Will anyone buy semi's these days?

Pauper_Princess

jenniernil - I'd love to live in Scotland. Obviously I'm biased as the OH's family all live there and they're wonderful people, but everyone I've met there seems really nice. All the family live in and around Glasgow

Poppycat - you'll have no probs selling a terrace, that's all that seems to sell these days. Are you in WY area? £110K seems about average in most areas, although the town I work in (Ossett) seems to be getting a bit above itself and raising prices to £120K + .

Think I'm gonna get the EA in to get an idea of how the market is and how successful we might be if we put it up a bit cheaper than the other semi's

I HATE the housing market so much :mad:

Sumostar

If the market is stagnant then you need to make yours stand out. There are people that are happy to do the improvements themselves (aslong as the house is a bit of a bargain) but there are lots of people who will not. That's possibly why new builds have a premium - no messing about (theoretically).

andyyorks

I live in Wakefield and looking for a house at the minute and the market is certainly stagnent. I agree with the others that to sell your house quickly it has to stand out, estate agents I've spoken to have said the same. We've chosen to sell our house and are now renting in order to take advantage of it.

My personal view of 60's semi-detached is that the rooms are quite small and they often don't have downstairs toilets/en suites which newer houses tend to have. There is a 4 bed semi in Horbury, Wakefield up at £279,000 with Richard Kendalls illustrates my point. You can get a 4 bed detached for £250,000 in the same area.

Good luck with selling it, have a word with the valuers/EA when you decide to put it up and ask their advice.

mi-key

I think 3 bed semis are sticking in lots of areas - traditionally these are peoples second or third homes, after buying a small flat or poky terrace, they have a kid or two, need some extra space and move out to the semis in the leafy suburbs.

Maybe the problem is that extra £25K ? first time buyers are stretching more and more, particularly with mortgage rates rising all the time - I also think a lot of these FTB's dont have a deposit, and cant come up with £1500 stamp duty, so go for the 'just under £125K' on a 100% mortgage as it doesnt cost them nearly as much to move. ( Probably put all the fees and survey costs on the credit card, so in their eyes they are buying a house for free ).

Whits

My OH and I had a look at property in Wakey but for the price, decided to stay in Huddersfield.

My OH is a kitchen designer and consequently, every house we looked at with a new kitchen wasn't to her taste and we would've felt that we were wasting money by buying it ready done.

I think you may be panicking too much as a lot depends on what are of Wakey you're in, we were looking at stuff near the prison or rugby ground as that was all that we could afford. The houses were big but there's something disconcerting about escaped prisoners running through your garden:eek:

Pauper_Princess

Yes, thanks for that Angela D.

I'll take my £60K house and move off this board then, you obviously know the housing market inside out.

I'm well aware that we're a second time buyer house, having been the second time buyer ourselves a few years ago (when icidentalyl we paid £66K for this house, in 2001) Can't believe they didn't tell us they'd overvalued it by £6K... damn estate agents

And I'm well aware that the second-time buyer no longer seems to exist. That's why I started this thread to try and get other peoples opinions.

Edit: Ooh, just realised I am officially An Idiot for having paid more than £60K for this house

andyyorks

PP, Don't get wound up with comments like Angela D's, there are rules on these forums for which obviously are too difficult for some to follow!

yak00

Realistically I think you should get £130k - 150k.
Live in a town similar to wakefield in terms of earning and 3 bed semi's ARE going for £145 - £180k and mainly to first time buyers.

yes semi's are not worth more than 60k and terraced no more than 30k.. ;-)

Dan29

Angela_D wrote:

Ask yourself this who wants a three bed semi - a young couple with no more than 2 kids, now ask yourself how many of them you know living in wakefield earn £40k a year, assuming they have £30k in equity/deposit.
Most first time buyers have no deposit, have no equity because the interest only payments are eating up every spare penny of their salary. When baby number 2 comes along they'd love to move to your semi but how can they ?
Your house is worth about £60k maxim (three times the average wakefield salary) and if you can find some idiot to pay you any more for it consider yourself very, very lucky.

How ridiculous, and unhelpful. Why do you assume that only first time buyers would be looking at this house? Surely it's likely to be people moving from a flat or terraced house, who may well have seen their property rise in value by a similar percentage to Pauper Princess's.

Pauper_Princess

andyyorks - I know, I told myself that as soon as I'd written it

Manning Stainton have just sold a semi round the corner from us, it went up at £150K but I don't know what it went for. And I've just had a lovely chat with a chap from Simon Blyth EA too so I feel a lot happier now

Horbury prices don't seem to have any bearing on reality whatsoever, it's a long time since I saw even a bog-standard there for less than £180K. Madness.

And yes, the downstairs WC is one thing that's bothering me a bit, I know newer houses tend to have this. Thinking of seeing how much it'd be to convert the cupboard under the stairs

Whits - what are the semi prices like in Huddersfield? When we were looking to move from Dewsbury 5 years ago we looked at Hudds and Wakey and they were about the same in the areas we looked in. (Had to shelve the dream of moving to Honley as we both worked in Dews at the time and would've spent a fortune in petrol)

Near the prison and rugby ground aren't very nice are they!! We're in Kirkhamgate which is on the way out to Batley, just past Wrenthorpe. It's okay but not very exciting