House Market Stalling?

Jason74

Where I am, there's no evidence of a slowdown at all. We're looking at the moment, and went to see a nice 3 bed house last week in an OK but not great road. Similar houses were sub 250k up until last spring, and the asking price was £280k. We offered full asking price with a view to making sure we got it, only to find that we'd been outbid by not just one, but two, other buyers.

Very little on the market round here (in terms of houses at least, flats seem a slightly different story), and what does come up goes just as quickly if it's not at silly "speculative" prices.

harpoboy

Very little evidence of a slowdown here.

Next door went on the market in October. Under offer at above asking within days.

Completed a few days before Christmas.

With mortgage to loan multiples well below historic averages, and wages forecast to rise above inflation over the next few years, my sense is that we are in the foothills of a boom here.

Bought my first London flat in 1997. At the time, plenty of naysayers told me it was madness to do so. Thailand economic crisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis) hit later in the year, but even that only led to a very temporary blip.

Property is always a good investment, but particularly so at this stage of the recovery

MrRee_2

Flat came to the market 2 weeks ago, it has now been reduced by 20% ... something odd is happening here in the South.

padington

The only thing that's happened in London is that people are refusing to put their place on to the market. Here the perception Is that a property is a cash cow that will highly probably go up in value. People are renting out what they have if they want to move.

I spoke to my estate agent yesterday, he was hopelessly bored because he only had two properties. He reckoned also that it's got to the point that each property can get over 100 people fighting to buy it.

It certainly no buyers market in London that's for sure.

MrRee_2

If each property has over 100 people fighting to buy it then there will be no asking price .... as that is utterly pointless ... every property would go to sealed bids without any indication of a price.

The richest buys it .....

That doesn't happen in a lot of cases as far as I know?

Loughton_Monkey

Can't see why there is any problem. The December/January lull happens every year. Wait until spring, and then take a temperature reading.

danielanthony

Sold our house in August 2013 within 2 days, wasn't even on Rightmove. Signed up with EA on Wednesday afternoon, 1st viewing Friday morning, offer accepted 45 minutes later.

The house we bought had only been on with the EA for 2 days before we put in an offer.

Completed in December so it still feels like a recent transaction to me.

padington

Not much gets advertised around north london these days, lots are getting sold straight to the waiting list, zoopla not needed.

Easy work for the estate agents. That's how they like it.

If I was selling now I would be insisting on sealed bids and allow everyone to visit the house ( not a practice entirely loved by estate agents because its lots of work ).

brit1234

January should be down as well but after that things will pick up especially with loads of gullible people after help to buy.

Looking forward to the mortgage rate rises coming with end of funding for lending and other stuff.

PasturesNew

House I wasn't interested in at £150k in April, is now back on at £175k. If you choose a tiny 2-seater sofa and are under 5' tall you could almost fit into the living room without having your feet sticking out of the window....