How has this house gone up so much?

ProDave

Can you post a link to the last sale of the house?

Could it be it has a particularly large garden and successive owners have been betting it might have development value, and the latest purchaser is even more certain of that?

Mark_Glasses

@johnhenstock when I was looking to buy I saw a similar flat in the same area for £320k. The only difference was it had a new kitchen and bathroom which I didn't think was worth paying an extra £45k for. Neither did anyone else because it was on the market for about a year and never sold. 

@motorman99 I get that prices will always go up generally speaking. To put this into perspective I know someone who bought in a rough zone 2 area in 2007 which is now a highly desirable area and his property has doubled in value. It makes no sense that a house nowhere near London could go up by a much greater extent.

@ProDave Will send you a link

RelievedSheff

Some areas of the East Midlands have seen huge increases in house prices in recent years. It very much depends where the property is. Location, location, location.

We are in a mid sized commuter town in the East Midlands and some areas of the town has seen 50-60% increases in sold house prices in the last couple of years. Other areas a mile or so away still struggle to achieve the prices the properties were sold for when new in 2007 and 2008. There seems to be very little rhyme or reason for it in some instances.

As to your particular property. Flats always seem to lag behind when prices increase and suffer bigger falls when prices start to decrease. They have a more limited market than family homes.

johnhenstock

Mark_Glasses said:

@johnhenstock when I was looking to buy I saw a similar flat in the same area for £320k. The only difference was it had a new kitchen and bathroom which I didn't think was worth paying an extra £45k for. Neither did anyone else because it was on the market for about a year and never sold. 

completely irrelevant. no one wants a flat, everyone would kill for a nice 3-4 bed family home, especially one in good condition.

nyermen

Could be a random outlier purchase (lottery winner who REALLY wanted that property etc) or something specific that others didn't have - familIes with children need a garden with space for those children, thats worth a lot to some.  Or maybe they owned next door and wanted to grow.

Take someone I know's house, decent 4 bedroom house with a good garden and garage at the end - it's on the end of two connecting streets.  The house is accessed on the first road, and the garden runs one side down the other road.  
Worth X to someone wanting a 4 bed house.  
Worth 2 times X to a developer who realises they can knock down the wall, and turn the garden into two more houses (as the new houses will be on that second street).

MultiFuelBurner

Mark_Glasses said:

@lookstraightahead I would have thought a cash buyer would pay less

@CSI_Yorkshire this town doesn't even have a train station

@johnhenstock it's almost doubled in price

@MultiFuelBurner it's the only step on the housing ladder round here, houses cost £600k+

@annabanana82 it's clearly expensive for the midlands but for £975k you can buy houses in London.

Probably a sensible suggestion to make the first step outside that area then ideally to a house not a flat.

Mark_Glasses

@RelievedSheff the only appeal I can see is that the house is big and the town looks more upmarket than average. Admittedly countryside living doesn't appeal to me. However I gather people like it for the peace and quiet, enough space between you and your neighbours and lots of greenery. This house is along the high street in the town centre, end of terrace with no drive or front garden and back garden is small. The town centre looks to have little more than a boots, co-op and a couple of pubs and the towns so small you could probably walk from one end to the other in 10 minutes.

@johnhenstock if flats are so undesirable then why is London property considered a good investment when a significant proportion are flats? to the point overseas investors buy flats without even seeing them. The person I speak of in this thread has also kept his London flat so he's almost certainly a millionaire now.

@nyermen the next door house sold around the same time so it could be the same person. But then the next door house sold for a lot less.

@MultiFuelBurner I've already made the first step now

CSI_Yorkshire

Mark_Glasses said:

 if flats are so undesirable then why is London property considered a good investment when a significant proportion are flats? to the point overseas investors buy flats without even seeing them. The person I speak of in this thread has also kept his London flat so he's almost certainly a millionaire now.

Because it's London.  The same flat in Slough would be much less desirable.  Location often rules.

You asked why that house might be worth so much - we've given you many suggestions and all you have said is "no, you're wrong, I don't think it should be so expensive". 

It's starting to sound like you're hoping for us to say "it's all a mistake, that person hasn't done better than you at all".  Leaving aside that it shouldn't matter at all to you what someone else's property might or might not be sold for and there is no 'done better', what reason would you actually accept?

Mark_Glasses

@CSI_Yorkshire I don't live in Slough, I live in London. It matters to me because we both come from the same place, went to the same school, even worked together when we were 16. If anything I had more of a desire to get rich than he did but he's the one who's got rich. I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong and how to put things right.

RelievedSheff

Mark_Glasses said:

@CSI_Yorkshire I don't live in Slough, I live in London. It matters to me because we both come from the same place, went to the same school, even worked together when we were 16. If anything I had more of a desire to get rich than he did but he's the one who's got rich. I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong and how to put things right.

By stopping trying to compare your life with someone else's?

You made some choices, your friend made other choices. Such is life.

Sounds like a case of sour grapes!!