London H&F and E&C sub 500k market hot hot hot!

Disjoint

I've been looking for a friend at flats in Hammersmith and Elephant and Castle in the 400k budget. Avoiding the ex-council and lower ground floor or above commercial etc...

What a surprise! Offers are coming in close to asking. I thought Brexit uncertainty would make sellers desperate to sell. Put in a couple of offers at 10-15% below on a few flats, nothing stuck. Given the complete lack of supply what comes on actually trades in that range - this is the first time buyer no chain attached type of properties. Really surprised.

A tale of two markets certainly... Anything above 500k gets priced down every single day in my rightmove alerts.

A simple observation - would be happy to be proved wrong

RelievedSheff

Cant possibly be right.

House prices are falling through the floor dont you know

epinjy

My anecdotal evidence for Northamptonshire is similar. Cheaper FTB kind of houses go really fast and for asking price +-, whereas more expensive houses linger around on the market for a while.

All the political focus has been around helping people to buy their first house and first time buyer levels seems to be very healthy at the moment, i.e. houses aren't actually as unaffordable to first time buyers as politcians, the media, etc would have you believe, or there wouldn't be this level of first time buyers. (https://www.hometrack.com/media/573780/zoopla-research-the-rise-of-first-time-buyers-final-sept.pdf)

More expensive houses are the kind of houses people would be selling their house to move up to. Overall transaction levels are still low compared to historically so there isn't as large a pool of people moving up to create the kind of demand for more expensive houses.

I wouldn't be surprised if the political focus switches to increasing transaction levels, e.g. stamp duty reductions seem to be expected soon.