Can't sell 1 bed flat in Eastcote, Middlesex 7 January 2020 at 10:37AM edited 30 November -1 at 12:00AM in House Buying, Renting & Selling 184 replies 11.6K views

need_an_answer

So at the moment your brother is living there covering the cost of the mortgage,service charge and his utilities.
He doesn't have any form of tenancy agreement and neither do any of you have any guarantee that he will move out even if the property is sold.

Your dad potentially wants to hold onto the property either as a link to the past,a place for your brother to live or the potential that it may rise in price one day.

You are stuck with a mortgage in your name and even the possibility that if you were to be able to afford to buy with your boyfriend any new property might attract additional stamp duty simply because you own this one also.

your dad and you have a figure that you would sell at in your minds...you need to advertise it at a realistic price to get that figure.

Looking at the purchase price for 2014 even at £275k you should get some return.You have to put all thoughts of £300k plus out of your mind,they were historic selling prices that are just not achievable at the moment and possibly not even within the next year.

What about listing at £295k with offers invited and see if that sparks interest.
At least if you do get any offers,even below what you ideally want you should at least be able to see what the current selling situation with these properties is.
Its always difficult for sellers to pitch their price when nothing else in the complex has really sold yet and equally difficult for buyers to gauge how much to offer....the sold price for the one that has changed hands clearly took a hit on the third sale

New builds don't always retain their first sold value when sold relatively soon after being built.

kazzamunga

Cakeguts wrote: »

That flat is not in the right area for flats now. You have got a lot of competition from new flats in central Harrow with Help to Buy and near to the station and shops. There are new flats on the old Kodak site in Wealdstone and there are a huge number of new flats with Help to Buy in Wembley Park which are also nearer to the tube station and shops.



What has happened is that you now have competition from new flats that you didn't have when that one was built and when your family bought it.



The other thing that you need to know is that north west London as an area is sinking. It is becoming less popular for people with a lot of money to live in. I have been trying to work out why this is and have come to the conclusion that the area as a whole is becoming less attractive due to front gardens being paved over to park cars on. You now get whole roads where none of the houses have any kerb appeal because the front gardens have all been turned into carparks. It you get onto Lime Grove in street view have a look at the difference to the amount of green in 2019 compared to the amount in 2008. You can see the front gardens disappearing and turning into carparks. What seems to be happening is that people don't want to buy in unattractive areas and many areas are becoming unattractive because of this loss of front gardens. That reduction in attractiveness is pulling down prices in large areas of Harrow because as areas become less attractive fewer people want to buy in them and then that means that prices have to come down.



Your flat has will not have risen very much in price because of the reducing popularity of the area that it is in for all properties.



Eastcote used to be a sought after area and expensive but it isn't now. Prices are in line with the rest of Harrow now. What sells in Harrow now is big and cheap with space to pave over the front garden to park cars.


You are going to have to get the price down a lot to sell it. I would suggest that £295k is still too much. The point is this.



If you don't get any viewings it much more expensive than anyone wants to pay. So much too expensive.


If you get viewings and no offers it is still overpriced.


Viewings and offers and you have got the price about right. The offers will then tell you the market value which may be even lower.


Your price is at the stage of no viewings which means that it is very overpriced. You are going to have to reduce the price a lot to sell it. I would guess that it is going to sell for between £260K and £280k in that area as a 1 bed and with it being so far from a station compared to the flats in central Harrow.

Do you know Eastcote? It's no great shakes, but it's a whole lot more desirable than central Harrow, which I know well.

theartfullodger

Of course you can sell it, if the price is low enough:


Cake, eat, have...


Artful: Currently with 3-bed house, sea views, offer of £105k accepted.

Crashy_Time

kazzamunga wrote: »

I think that's too low for now...it's hard, this stuff. I used to wonder why my dad got annoyed about house prices - 'it's just the reality of the situation', I'd think. But when you've owned somewhere for five years and you know, for example, that it was 275 within the first six months of you owning it, then it becomes harder to accept that it's come back down to where it was 4.5 years ago when there hasn't been a recession or anything (although obvo Brexit is in some senses worse than any recession, haha). Let's see what happens with our latest gambit.

Switch roles for a moment and imagine being someone trying to buy and seeing prices go up and up over five years, and knowing it was all about cheap credit, far too low interest rates and government intervention designed to help bankers and property developers over ordinary hard working people? I hope you sell, but 300k+ seems too high to me for this property. The good news is that you say the area is good, the lease is a positive, and there are still buyers/BTL buyers out there, they just need to feel they are getting a "deal" in this economic climate, "280" feels like a better deal than "300k+" IMO. Good luck with it all though.

Crashy_Time

Cakeguts wrote: »

That flat is not in the right area for flats now. You have got a lot of competition from new flats in central Harrow with Help to Buy and near to the station and shops. There are new flats on the old Kodak site in Wealdstone and there are a huge number of new flats with Help to Buy in Wembley Park which are also nearer to the tube station and shops.



What has happened is that you now have competition from new flats that you didn't have when that one was built and when your family bought it.



The other thing that you need to know is that north west London as an area is sinking. It is becoming less popular for people with a lot of money to live in. I have been trying to work out why this is and have come to the conclusion that the area as a whole is becoming less attractive due to front gardens being paved over to park cars on. You now get whole roads where none of the houses have any kerb appeal because the front gardens have all been turned into carparks. It you get onto Lime Grove in street view have a look at the difference to the amount of green in 2019 compared to the amount in 2008. You can see the front gardens disappearing and turning into carparks. What seems to be happening is that people don't want to buy in unattractive areas and many areas are becoming unattractive because of this loss of front gardens. That reduction in attractiveness is pulling down prices in large areas of Harrow because as areas become less attractive fewer people want to buy in them and then that means that prices have to come down.



Your flat has will not have risen very much in price because of the reducing popularity of the area that it is in for all properties.



Eastcote used to be a sought after area and expensive but it isn't now. Prices are in line with the rest of Harrow now. What sells in Harrow now is big and cheap with space to pave over the front garden to park cars.


You are going to have to get the price down a lot to sell it. I would suggest that £295k is still too much. The point is this.



If you don't get any viewings it much more expensive than anyone wants to pay. So much too expensive.


If you get viewings and no offers it is still overpriced.


Viewings and offers and you have got the price about right. The offers will then tell you the market value which may be even lower.


Your price is at the stage of no viewings which means that it is very overpriced. You are going to have to reduce the price a lot to sell it. I would guess that it is going to sell for between £260K and £280k in that area as a 1 bed and with it being so far from a station compared to the flats in central Harrow.

Seriously doubt it has much to do with paved front gardens, in the heyday of the credit bubble people would have lined up to buy property in certain postcodes even if there was a fleet of JCB`s parked in the garden because they thought they were buying a perpetual money making machine, the problem now is PRICE, the PMM has broken down, people don`t want to pay/borrow silly amounts any more for average property, even if it is in London, because they know that down the line they will make a loss.

kazzamunga

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Switch roles for a moment and imagine being someone trying to buy and seeing prices go up and up over five years, and knowing it was all about cheap credit, far too low interest rates and government intervention designed to help bankers and property developers over ordinary hard working people? I hope you sell, but 300k+ seems too high to me for this property. The good news is that you say the area is good, the lease is a positive, and there are still buyers/BTL buyers out there, they just need to feel they are getting a "deal" in this economic climate, "280" feels like a better deal than "300k+" IMO. Good luck with it all though.

No absolutely - I was in that position myself, before this flat. So it would have been working out ok for me if I'd stayed renting, but instead I'm now tied into a sinking ship and I have divide it between three. So I hope I don't sound too greedy, I just don't want to lose out in all senses.

Crashy_Time

kazzamunga wrote: »

No absolutely - I was in that position myself, before this flat. So it would have been working out ok for me if I'd stayed renting, but instead I'm now tied into a sinking ship and I have divide it between three. So I hope I don't sound too greedy, I just don't want to lose out in all senses.

Catch a buyer now then, before the Brexit drama gets properly underway (It might go super smoothly and we could end up in a boom with the third stage of the property bubble getting underway, but it might not and we get a serious recession/more political drama/break up of the UK etc. etc.) IMO that will involve tweaking the price down a bit though.

kazzamunga

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Catch a buyer now then, before the Brexit drama gets properly underway (It might go super smoothly and we could end up in a boom with the third stage of the property bubble getting underway, but it might not and we get a serious recession/more political drama/break up of the UK etc. etc.) IMO that will involve tweaking the price down a bit though.

Ok but as I said above, we're going down to 295 now - so that might get offers below that, but viewings would be a start.

Crashy_Time

kazzamunga wrote: »

Ok but as I said above, we're going down to 295 now - so that might get offers below that, but viewings would be a start.

Exactly, when viewings pick up you are back in business,totally different mindset and outlook on your position.

GDB2222

HCIMbtw wrote: »

305 is honestly a silly price to list at imo!

think about the way filtering works on property search engines, anybody capping off at £300k maximum is missing out even viewing your property!on sites..!

fixed price it at 300, or OIRO 300... either way get it to 300 and into a search band on the site, you are missing out on views based on simple filtering..!

I was going to make the same point, so thanks for putting it into words.

Price it at £300k, or £325k, or £350k, as those are the filter points in Rightmove.