Lunatic London Property market starting to turn?

elliotwave

Search Zoopla for flats in SW8 and filter it by “most reduced”. You’ll find at least 25 pages of reductions – over 1,000 flats – in SW8 alone

Locals won’t buy them – Stamp duty, as well as prices, is deterring foreign buyers, while new legislation and rock-bottom yields have deterred the buy-to-let investor. These flats aren’t selling.

kilby_007

About time! I hope the greedy ramping estate agents get a reality check now they're getting very few completions! Market correction? Bring it on!

Sapphire

elliotwave wrote: »

Search Zoopla for flats in SW8 and filter it by “most reduced”. You’ll find at least 25 pages of reductions – over 1,000 flats – in SW8 alone

Locals won’t buy them – Stamp duty, as well as prices, is deterring foreign buyers, while new legislation and rock-bottom yields have deterred the buy-to-let investor. These flats aren’t selling.

Slums of the future starting up already?:eek:

michaels

I guess with interest rates so low even rock bottom yields currently cover the cost of capital. Hopefully reduced immigration will take some of the pressure off demand and allow prices to drift down rather than rents to drift up....

economic

hope they crash so i can buy another.

davomcdave

michaels wrote: »

I guess with interest rates so low even rock bottom yields currently cover the cost of capital. Hopefully reduced immigration will take some of the pressure off demand and allow prices to drift down rather than rents to drift up....

I thought the people living in Nappy Valley were exactly the sort that Britain wanted more of. Isn't Brexit about attracting your high quality, intelligent migrants with pert chests and strong brows rather than those grubby fruit pickers and bottom wipers.

Brexit means the price of caravans in East Anglia falling not high class housing in premium parts of centralish London.

westernpromise

I don't really understand the animus towards estate agents. They provide a necessary service and profit from the number of transactions, not their value. An estate agent would rather sell 1,000 properties at £500k than 800 at £600k, which is why they always pressure sellers to lower the price from £600k to £500k.

If you can't afford either £600k or £500k, then getting angry with the estate agent who makes you confront this is simply shooting the messenger. You might as well get angry with your oncologist for telling you you've got cancer.

wotsthat

elliotwave wrote: »

Search Zoopla for flats in SW8 and filter it by “most reduced”. You’ll find at least 25 pages of reductions – over 1,000 flats – in SW8 alone

The problem with this analysis is you don't know the usual numbers of reductions so don't know if 1000 reduced flats is high, low or normal. i.e. it doesn't get beyond factoid status. The guys on HPC were running this sort of analysis to prove prices were falling when sold data clearly showed them rising.

I don't know how you London loons sell houses but I wouldn't be surprised if this is entirely normal. You put your flat up for silly money, see if anyone bites and reduce if you haven't sold within a few weeks.

westernpromise

wotsthat wrote: »

You put your flat up for silly money, see if anyone bites and reduce if you haven't sold within a few weeks.

This does indeed seem to be the usual approach, but one wonders whether it's sensible. If you put a place on at £1.5 million and nobody bites it's obviously so overpriced that nobody wants even to make you an offer because you appear unserious. If, however, you put it on at £1 million and it's worth a lot more, the first one to view will offer the asking price and so will the second and third. All three can then be told the property is under offer at asking price and what's the best they can do?

You thereby get up to the true market value of (say) £1.2 million from below rather than down to it from above. This would obviously not work in areas where there is minimal buying interest, because you'll then get £1 million or less from the one and only bidder. But in markets where there's a shortage of properties, it is surely a viable strategy.

Conrad

kilby_007 wrote: »

About time! I hope the greedy ramping estate agents get a reality check now they're getting very few completions! Market correction? Bring it on!

Agents hate ramped up prices, they prefer priced to sell so they maximise the chance of selling and getting paid. I've worked with a few down the years, there's nothing worse for them than a sticky property - every minute it's not sold it's costing them.



All too often us Humans love to project our own greed onto a third party - vendors set prices and you can bet many of them want every last penny they can.

Filo25

Plenty of price reductions around where I am as well, and its certainly a cooling market, but not one which has yet turned decisively negative either, prices seem to be flatlining around where I am.

Was chatting to a good local EA about a month ago, and they were certainly seeing reduced interest when properties were listed (maybe 3 or 4 viewings rather than 12 previously), and the first offer usually being below asking rather than previously when it would often have been above, they put that down largely to post Brexit vote nerves amongst buyers.

But at least at that stage anyway prices were still being supported by a lack of supply, so no significant falls as of yet, its not exactly a BTL hotspot though so you may see different behaviour in those areas.

Only one small outer London locality anyway

My gut feeling is that outside of Prime/Superprime London we're probably poised for a period of relative stagnation or a modest correction, its still hard to see an obvious driver for the kind of crash some seem desperate for.

Although the market clearly faces more headwinds in a variety of forms than it has for a while, it is still supported by a lack of supply and low interest rates