Anyone else experienceing a slow market in Scotland (selling)

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ProDave wrote: »

It has now been a little over 2 years on the market.

in the north Highlands, some way north of Inverness, in the countryside .

This sounds like nothing other than having a tiny number of possible house buyers for the top end of the market in a remote area.

You're basically limited to the handful of locals in the middle of nowhere with high-ish income and a slightly bigger pool of potential retirees and/or second home owners - so it can and does often take many years to sell.

If it's cosmetically attractive on the inside/outside, and I mean picture postcard pretty with a ton of highlands character, it might be worth asking your EA to put together a marketing pack and spend some money promoting it elsewhere in the UK as a 2nd home in the highlands...

But if it's just an ordinary house... better off waiting - it'll sell eventually.

westernpromise

It's probably too big and too remote to work as a second home and too expensive for the locals as a first home.

Most second homers want to be within a couple of hours and the money in this country is the south east, so unless there's a rich Edinburgh lawyer who wants two hooses in Scotland rather than one you may have to wait for someone to get rich in Manchester...

westernpromise

ProDave wrote: »

The "problem" appears to be the English in general, no longer want to come and live in Scotland. I would really love to hear from the English why that is?

Because there's a perception that we pay for you yet you hate us.

That's not my view, by the way, but it's quite common. The distance aside, location in Scotland is not a positive. Someone in London could get to the south of Spain as quickly as they could get to Inverness; where would you rather spend a weekend? 550 miles north of London or 550 miles south of it?

westernpromise

Sapphire wrote: »

Well, Scotland is a beautiful place, and I always liked and admired the Scottish people for their unique character and spirit. However, I do think that some people in England may have been put off by the rabid SNP woman, who gives the impression that all Scots hate the English – and for no good reason that I can see. I mean, we've had a joint shared history for hundreds of years, in which both nations played key roles.

Yep. If you put together a list of British scientists, engineers and inventors, and a list of Scottish ones, they'd be virtually the same list.

Conrad

OP if your house was up for £1000 it would sell right away.


In other words it sits on a value scale, whereby their is exists a point below which the property will sell right away.


If you find that sweet spot you absolutely will sell it.

Now this is where owners cry 'I aint giving it away', well fine then, that means holding out for as long as it takes.

Every property will sell if correctly priced for given market conditions.


I would suggest if another Indy referendum is called, you could have a longer wait. English folk associate Scotland now with higher tax, higher regulation and policy that is at odds with enterprise creation.

It's all very well having lots of wee 'progressive' policies that give Parliamentarians a smug sense of righteous purity, but in the end what people really want is thriving enterprise and a dignified level of income, not a lower paid job that confers 6 months paternity pay and a 'diverse' board of Directors that offset their carbon footprint.

Herzlos

ProDave wrote: »

Re 5 bedrooms being "to big" the other part of the story that I have not mentioned is it's 5 bedrooms with 3 en-suite bathrooms because it's currently run as a bed and breakfast. So not only is it a large familly home, it's a business as well if you chose to carry on the B&B business. Our reason for downsizing is we want to retire so want to stop running a B&B (and stop my other job) so we thought moving down to a 3 bedroom house made sense for us.

I got the impression from travelling up the other coast that a lot of English couples "retired" to Northern Scotland to run a B&B for some income. If that's still the case, then it might be worth trying to advertise it as a business for sale, rather than a residential property.
That way, you can probably attach some value to the business and branding etc as well, and it may become a more attractive proposition for someone looking to retire up North.

Crashy_Time

westernpromise wrote: »

Because there's a perception that we pay for you yet you hate us.

That's not my view, by the way, but it's quite common. The distance aside, location in Scotland is not a positive. Someone in London could get to the south of Spain as quickly as they could get to Inverness; where would you rather spend a weekend? 550 miles north of London or 550 miles south of it?

Daft question, the two are not comparable. If you want unspoilt wilderness Inverness is your jumping off point, and if you want Spanish coast and beaches with nightlife etc. go to Spain. The main thing is just to get away from London!

Thrugelmir

ProDave wrote: »

Ours is the cheapest 5 bedroom house on the market in the immediate locality. A 4 bedroom house not far away has come to market recently for more than ours. The surveyors still think that is what they are worth.

Number of bedrooms isn't a critical factor for many people. When looking at houses I'm more interested in the total floor area, downstairs layout and the garden. For visitors pull out sofa bed is perfectly adequate.

zagubov

Tromking wrote: »

Maybe you've stumbled upon the issue here.
If Scots (like you?) are seeing English house buyers as coming from "another country" that may explain the perceived drop off in English buyers.

It simply is, for house buying. That's a big deal on the housing threads on this very forum. Depending on customers from the south end of England when you're selling in the north end of Scotland's a bit of a gamble, IMHO.

The OP may have unfortunately misjudged the price.
It might be better if he posted on this subforum and asked for ideas.

ProDave

I started this thread hoping to hear more about how others have dealt with this situation, how long it actually took to sell in the end, how much the actually got in relation to what the home report said it was worth.

I know all the "problems" the SNP have created for Scotland and how they have made it appear the Scottish hate the English and that to a large extent has stopped them wanting to come here. It's simply not true, on the ground there is no animosity and you will feel welcome, you just have to ignore the SNP, The day Ruth Davidson takes over and the SNP are confined to history will be a day I will be celebrating.

As I have said I don't have much scope to drop the price as the cost of building the new smaller house could easily exceed what we can get for the old larger house, and that's even with me doing most of the work on it myself now.I will have probably saved over £20K by doing so much myself, If I had just paid a builder to build a complete house ready to move into, I am certain it's cost would be more than the sale price of the old one. Had I know just how depressed the market is still, and how much actual build costs have risen, I might not have started this journey, but it's too late to stop now, there is no way out other than to finish.

I have lived through three "house price crashes" In every previous case after 3 or 4 years things slowly started to pick up again. This one is different. Scotland went into a housing recession in 2008 like the rest of the UK, but it seems we have never really crawled out of that this time, at least not here in the far north. I suspect that is also true of a lot of England outside the SE.

If it turns out I really can't sell the old one for enough to cover the cost of the new one, then it will be going to rental for a few years in the hope of an upturn in the market. That's not what we really want, but may turn out to be the best option, it will delay our retirement a bit, but that's better than retiring with a pot that is not big enough

Just to be clear, I firmly see Scotland as just another part of the UK and don't regard English, Welsh or NI as "another country" just a different part of the UK