Crazy London prices

Metranil_Vavin

A friend of mine has just put her 2 bed flat on the market.

It's nice enough, but nothing amazing..converted flat in a Victorian flat fronted building, noise from above and below is pretty bad, and her flat door opens straight onto the living room which isn't ideal.

It's on a shade under £300k in an unfashionable part of SE London.

31 viewings booked for Saturday! :shocked:

They're doing an open house to ramp up the competition, and I imagine she will have at least a couple of offers by the close of play on saturday.

Bonkers.

agrinnall

You see the next board down? Debate house prices and the economy? Any guesses as to where this thread might be better placed?

cattie

Yes, I've just noticed that prices have jumped up by at least £50k on just average priced properties compared to what they were last year. I just can't believe it. This is on the borders of SE London/Kent

Yesterday I noticed a 2 bed flat had come onto the market at £215k. Now one was for sale in the same block last year, I think it might possibly be ex local authority but couldn't swear to it. It's a single low rise block, not on an estate. Anyway, last years flat started off at £175k, obviously got no interest as was then reduced to £165k & it then sold after a couple of weeks.

I just fail to see how the value could have jumped £50k in a year, even if this 2nd flat might be in better decorative condition?? :question:

Also yesterday noticed an ex local authority house on an estate I just couldn't bear to live on, no matter how poor I was, had come on at £275k, where previously those houses would sell for around the £200k mark if they were lucky.

Seems to me that now to buy just an average house in a reasonably decent area with good neighbours you'd need to be looking at close to the £500k mark with the way things are:eek:

sooz

The are nice, but small, conversion 2 bed flats near me for £1million + in zone 2. And that's without a parking space.

AndyGuil

cattie wrote: »

Yes, I've just noticed that prices have jumped up by at least £50k on just average priced properties compared to what they were last year. I just can't believe it. This is on the borders of SE London/Kent

Yesterday I noticed a 2 bed flat had come onto the market at £215k. Now one was for sale in the same block last year, I think it might possibly be ex local authority but couldn't swear to it. It's a single low rise block, not on an estate. Anyway, last years flat started off at £175k, obviously got no interest as was then reduced to £165k & it then sold after a couple of weeks.

I just fail to see how the value could have jumped £50k in a year, even if this 2nd flat might be in better decorative condition?? :question:

Also yesterday noticed an ex local authority house on an estate I just couldn't bear to live on, no matter how poor I was, had come on at £275k, where previously those houses would sell for around the £200k mark if they were lucky.

Seems to me that now to buy just an average house in a reasonably decent area with good neighbours you'd need to be looking at close to the £500k mark with the way things are:eek:

They tend to jump away from £250k because of the stamp duty threshold. They want enough of a gap between the price and £250k to show they aren't interested in bids below £250k. Once they start selling over this they tend to move quickly up.

nickyg2000

Hello,

Its the same in Oxford, especially the north. When we looked last year we looked at 3 flats between £185k and £205k. Flats in the same blocks are now on for £280k. An identical one in the block to the £185k flat just sold for £240k 10k above asking.

Whats happened? Must just be sentiment? When I was looking everyone was saying the eurozone was going to blow up!

115K

I looked on Rightmove and the houses near me have increased in price since I last looked in December and people seem to be making offers quite a bit above the asking prices.

CWSmith

Recently sold my mum's house for £330,000. That is a middle of terrace house, in dire need of modernisation, downstairs bathroom, small garden, fight-for-a-parking-space out the front, a bus ride from the nearest railway station, a bus ride to the nearest decent shops ................. but the house was in Surbiton, on the Surrey-South London border.

I was gobsmacked at EA's valuation, but I had 3 almost instant offers and accepted the third one, 8 days after it went on sale.

dacouch

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/londons-100bn-property-boom-as-last-homes-under-100k-are-snapped-up-9082716.html

London's homes generated more wealth than the entire New Zealand economy last year as their total value soared by in excess of £100 billion, according to new research.

Huge demand for flats and houses added £106 billion to the total worth of the capital’s increasingly precious bricks and mortar — now estimated at a record £1.24 trillion.

The vast scale of property wealth in London means the 10 wealthiest boroughs alone are valued at £609 billion, more than all the houses in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined.

The study by estate agents Savills came as it emerged that the last handful of homes in London on the market for less than £100,000 have been snapped up in recent weeks.

Despite the rapidly increasing prices, there are no signs that the city’s property bubble has burst, with buyers still massively outnumbering sellers.

Paul Smith, chief executive of agents haart, said: “London property demand is growing about eight times faster than supply, so we’ll continue to see significant price rises as long as this continues.”

The Savills study found that London homes have almost doubled in value in a decade from £662 billion in 2003 to the £1.24 trillion figure last year, when their worth went up nine per cent.

The £106 billion uplift is roughly equivalent to the output of a medium-sized economy such as New Zealand, which has a GDP of about £103 billion, Romania or Vietnam. Savills’ director of residential research, Lucian Cook, said the impact of the vast money- making machine that is the London property market will be felt further afield from the capital this year.

He said: “The equity-rich markets of London have driven the UK housing recovery. We now expect those markets that will benefit from a dump of capital earned in London to catch the next wave of recovery — places such as Elmbridge in Surrey, Brighton & Hove, Bath & north-east Somerset.”

Within London the biggest rises in value last year were seen outside the wealthiest “bulls-eye” of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea — in boroughs highly sought-after by professionals priced out of more central areas. The biggest percentage increases were in Hackney (16.5), Waltham Forest (15.2) and Lambeth (14.5).

Kensington and Chelsea went up in value a relatively modest 8.8 per cent and Westminster by 9.5 per cent — but the combined £203.5 billion value of homes in the two boroughs is 15 per cent more than all those in Wales.

The findings came the day after it was predicted that values in Mayfair could climb to £10,000 per sq ft over the next five to 10 years, meaning a bathroom there could be worth twice as much as the average UK home

The scale of wealth tied up in London property, now seen as one of the world’s safest investments, will pile on the pressure for a mansion tax on the costliest properties. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have said they favour a form of new property levy that would fall largely on London. However, first time buyers continue to pour into the capital, with numbers rising 30 per cent to a six-year high in December, according to figures from LSL Property Services.

The average London first-time buyer was 32 with an annual salary of £41,616 and put down a deposit of £66,150 on a property with an average purchase price of £276,881.

Fraise

London prices really have gone through the roof, and it seems set to rise even further. Maybe it's due to a combination of things, but foreigners have certainly bumped up prices in a London as they see it as a safe haven to invest their money.

Of course, people have to live somewhere, and the closer to the capital the better for many. Which means we now have the ripple effect and property in the suburbs of London are becoming incredibly expensive too. To be honest, anywhere inside the M25 and you will pay a huge premium to live there. Zone 1 of London will always be the dearest, but Zone 6 of London can find seriously expensive and exquisite properties too. A lot of savvy people are snapping up Zone 6 properties before they are out-priced of them too.

If I had the money and choice of living in London I would look in the outskirts of Greater London...those that border leafy Surrey in the south or Hertfordshire in the north suburbs. You have the best of both worlds then.....Central London just 20 minutes away by train/tube and the beautiful countryside minutes away in the other direction. A win win place to live! No wonder they're rising like crazy in price. I would love to afford those areas.

I_have_spoken

The next govt. is sure to impose a 2% 'mansion tax' on property valued over £1m. It'll be a vote-winner too, playing the jealousy card