How is the housing market?

Touristy area not far from a major city here, classic race for space area. Come to an absolute shuddering halt not just a slowdown. Fantasy lockdown prices still being asked…

They could be wildly overpriced?

Feb is not a great time of year for house buying as wallets are recovering from Xmas. The media have been reporting that prices fell in each the last 4 months.  <span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">There are a lot of variables so it's never quite as straight forward as it would seem</span>

Here in my part of West Yorkshire houses sell very fast as we're in a nice village with a school.

It's massively slowed down, prices are plummeting and the price that they're asking is too low

Fantasy lockdown prices still being asked…

Here too, large but nice village with all facilities half way between Nottingham and Derby.

Seem to be noticeably more To Let boards at the moment.

Younger colleagues at work who are selling are having to drop their asking price, those wanting to buy still can't afford it.

purely anecdotal, but if our village is anything to go by everything appears to of come to a grinding halt. normally anything from Victorian 2 bed terrace to more modern 4 bed detached sells within a week or two due to limited stock, popularity of the village and direct trains to Manchester. however at the moment there's stuff listed that's been there for 2 or 3 months that's had to reduce it price (previously pretty much unheard of).

as above, winter is never a great time to sell and local estate agents appear to be ambitious with their price guidance, so may well correct itself over the next few months, but deff pretty stagnant round here at the moment

Stagnant in Derbyshire unless it's something right nice or a bargain.

Even ones that look good value are sticking.

Some friends have had theirs on the market since last Sept and not one viewing (they are asking too much though!).

Seem to be selling okay here in the south Cotswolds.

Zoopla are still suggesting an upward trend albeit at a much reduced gradient this year. Not planning to move, so don't much care. The house is valued at almost 80% more than we paid for it 8 years ago, so we can stand to lose quite a lot.

'Prices are plummeting' is a very bold statement.
Really?
Where?
How would you define 'plummeting'?
I'll hold off from saying it's factually incorrect.

Quite a few price reductions round here but then again I don’t know what is normal. Still bloody expensive!

Just a look on Rightmove & there are a lot of "price reduced on" so cost of living & increased mortgage rates are taking effect.

NW village here, 4 valuations for probate sale. 15% below last year's peak sale of v similar.

Suspect worse to come as recent buyers come off their fixes.

Some stupidly overpriced property nearby, sellers clearly not listening to agents.

I was told that lenders are being much more conservative with affordability checks etc so if true that will significantly reduce the pool of buyers...and therefore demand

Still seems to be ticking over around me based on the for sale/sold signs I see on my dog walks. No idea if people are dropping prices to sell.

Bungalows as ever seem to command massive money compared to house so I guess cash rich retirees are still available.

Friends moved in the summer without selling their house, which is still up for sale (even after a reduction in price). Yes prices are plummeting and properties aren't always selling, even in a desirable area. They are now worried that it won't sell for yonks.

LOL yeah reduction from 420k to 400k...for an end of terrace house, a much better version of which was 265k in 2017 and then 325k in 2020 (bigger garden and nice conservatory). So that's still hoping for a 23% gain over 2 years and it's a significantly worse house too.

I know Aberdeen is usually in a bit of a bubble but I'm sure the news said that prices had dropped a couple of percent, although Aberdeenshire where I am they've went up a bit.

Crap in the North East - we cunningly put our house on the market 7 days before interest rates were put up in October. We've had plenty of viewings and we did have an offer but that was withdrawn when their lender denied their mortgage application. We reduced it by a bit less than 10% after the second rate rise. Pretty much every other property has also been reduced and anything new coming to market is at a much lower price than it would have been 6 months ago.

There's houses that have been on the market for longer than ours that have been reduced and still aren't selling. The days of property being advertised and sold the same/next day are a distant memory.

How does the asking price compare to what you paid when you bought it?

We've had ours (Staffordshire - stones throw from Cannock Chase) on the market since end of November - not had any interest at all yet.......
Hoping it picks up a bit now the days are getting longer lol

How is the housing market?

It's shit. It's massively overpriced and has been growing worse over a long time. House prices have been rising much faster than wages for years and it's got to the point where both a mortgage and rent are astronomical. We have a friend who's been living with us since 2020 because She simply doesn't earn enough to even rent, let alone get a mortgage. #She could rent somewhere really shitty but why should she have to. As a teaching assistant she is one of those front line workers that folks were out clapping for not long ago, but that wont put a roof over her head.

I don't really see how house prices can come down much because it's going to get existing homeowners who have recently bought into negative equity issues. But I really do feel that something has to be done to limit further rises and to flatten off the curve long term.

How does the asking price compare to what you paid when you bought it?

It's much higher, but we bought from family for cheap and then spent the last 9 years having everything done. Rewired, walls skimmed, new boiler & radiators, new roof, new bathroom, new floors, new windows & doors. So it's not as easy as comparing sold price then with the market now.

The house opposite was similar, paid £75k and completed a week after us, spent 7 years completely renovating it, sold for £155k in 2021. I would expect that to be around £135-140k now.

The last street in our development is being build/sold at the moment. They're slowly selling them but have recently knocked £25k off the 3 townhouse's left. A show house version of ours has just sold for £35k more than we paid for ours and having been in that particular show house, I'm not sure what extra they are getting that warrants £35k! So glad we got our move done when we did last Sept, it seemed that just after that it began to slow quickly.

Two houses opposite us. One went on the market just before the "moron premium" budget and was taken off shortly afterwards.

The one next to it, went on the market last week at an all time high for the street, so interesting to see what happens...

Here in the SW it seems to be in full force still.
In-laws put there house in Sidmouth in the market last week. 7 viewings in 2 days, 4 offers, 2 above the asking price.

We part-exd our house in October last year to secure a new build plot. Said we'd never buy a new build but it ticked all the boxes. Had a couple of valuations and the part-ex offer was about 10-20k below the market cost. Needs must so we lubed up and took it. Anyway house was on the market since Nov. Lots of viewings and it finally sold in Jan, but at 5k less then we got for the part-x. So maybe some justice there 😈

This is in a location in Chesterfield where houses of this type normally sell really quickly i.e. less than a month. Bit mad as a similar house sold in the bubble for about 30k more than they sold our house for.

I think there were a few factors.

* Builder used their agents. Poor photos and no floor plan. Generally poorly marketed
* We can't vacate the house until our new house is built which will be April-June. More likely June
* Crap time of year in the run up to Christmas
* Mortgage interest rates are sky high, compared to 12 months back

But all that being said it does seem to be slowing down a bit and prices appear to be dropping.

Might depend on the property.

Two weeks ago we put a 1-bed flat in Bristol up. 8 bids within a week, ranging from about 15% below to 15% above asking. Accepted a bid that was about 5% over.

Nottingham is still selling well unless prices really are silly, at worst prices are holding steady after growing at a bonkers rate for the last 5 years.  Also all the big developers are still throwing them up as fast as they can so clearly they think the market is fine. There is a huge 1500 home development a stones throw from home and they are still sucking in all the trades they can get their hands on

@northernmatt I'm assuming that crap was aimed at me. I can only go off what I've heard or read. Aberdeenshire isn't exactly a small area so houses in some places might be doing ok others not.

This was from last month

Seems to be ticking along as normal round here - Mid-Chehsire villages - certain houses sell almost instantly, like 3 bed family type homes, the bigger ones that can be stupidly priced as in 5 bed for around £850,000 take a while longer, btu 2 we were looking at - big 4 beds at £675,00 went in under a month.

I sold my uncles house in a week and a half recently for way over the asking price. 3 bed flat needing a complete refit of everything in a poor area. Went for £13000 over the asking price and that wasn’t even the highest offer! We sold it to a family to keep it out of the hands of developers.

Maybe the fact it was cheap and a blank slate helped.

TS.

round here ( edinburgh / lothians) seems very mixed.  Much less activity and less on the market, low and mid range stuff realistic ( for 2023) prices) desirable stuff still at a premium price

Prices are crackers tho - 30 years ago my flat was 2.5 x salary.  same job same flat but improved a lot is 10x salary.  thats unsustainable.  No new entrants to the market must have an effect in the end.

Nothing around under £150 000 which would be 5x salary  2.5 x salary -nothing at all.

It's a mixed picture but house prices are not plummeting (that would suggest they're losing >2% per month)

Halifax is predicting 8% decline this year across the country

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-house-prices-slide-again-december-down-15-mm-halifax-2023-01-06/

We had a long protracted purchase and only completed a couple of weeks ago, had a pre interest rate rise mortgage and a ported fixed and our buyer paid way over our asking price expectation and again had a favourable mortgage agreed so nobody wavered and no interest in stopping the sale for fear of overpaying or big falls to come.
similar properties on the same estate have seen reductions but still only down to the ‘right’ prices.
Those who need to move right now will do so especially if they don’t need a huge LTV or are porting/downsizing.

FTB’s and those sailing close to the wind will not but I think people will just wait for mortgages to drop as there have already been below 4% fixed deals released in the last week, those waiting for huge double digit falls will probably be disappointed, wouldn’t surprise me if stuff starts shifting in the spring but there will not be so much of the sealed bids/open house on friday sold by Sunday going on.
If prices drop they will be by single figures.
(all depending on location as i have no idea of the market outside of my area in london)

EDIT, just looked at my saved search on right move and ticked the ‘show Sold subject to contract and Under offer’ and there’s plenty of properties that were listed in December and January that are now sold or under offer so i would say there is not much reduction in volume for this time of year but it’s probably a bit easier for the buyers to not have to overpay or compete with other buyers.

I can't say the same for where I'm based (South East, approx 50 miles north of London and a 5 minute drive from a commuter town). House across the road (identical to my neighbours) went up for sale this week at a whopping £150k increase on my neighbours which completed in 2021 for £525k. Wouldn't say either house is 'nicer' either.

Also had a meeting with my mortgage advisor last week (fix ends March 31st) and was advised to hold off as interest rates are reducing by the day on mortgages after October's panic... So I think things have slowed naturally after a boom of 2020 and Christmas just passing but certainly not a slam through the floor...

Our road has a 'waiting list' apparently, but our neighbours listed 3 months ago and not a single viewing.
Post-covid the houses where flying here. Selling within a week at silly money. Now they are reducing regularly and sitting for months and then many are pulled. In the last 6 years there would regularly be 10-15 houses on the market for the village at any one time, now it's 0-4. This is a nice and sought after part of rural Oxfordshire.

I've got family on the market in Gloucester too and it's a similar story. On the market for 2 months and only 2 viewings.
Price now reduced..

We want to move later this year, but the above doesn't give me much confidence.

One is a sought after village in Cornwall the other 5 minutes to Gatwick on the nearby train.

Two different unlucky trends?

Cornwall: after the explosion of COVID holiday home purchases + interest rate rises, a decline in interest for holiday homes?

Surrey: after explosion of COVID remote/hybrid working, a worry that employers are gonna crack the whip and demand full attendance? That turns that house into a 1 hour daily commute into London on crowded trains...not the worse commute in the world, but worse than no commute

Not sure really, it's probably very regional.

Around Reading they still can't seem to build quickly enough. There's hundreds/thousands of new flats in town, and a planning battle over whole new villages going up. Logically that's depressing prices via supply and demand, but doesn't seem to be.

Conversely we want to move back to The Yorkshire Moors or Teesside at some point (but not for years as we've just renewed the mortgage here), over lockdown prices seemed to jump and things sold quickly as we were used to casually watch things sit on the market for 6-18months until it sold. Instead they were ~30% higher and selling in weeks. Now it's back to normal. The thing is a bog standard terrace there is £50k, and there's lots of choice. But anything Semi/Detached or even terraced but not a "terraced house" is anywhere between £150 and £500k with seemingly not a lot to split them.

Difficult to say. We got 1 viewing for MIL's house, but they did buy. Buying process has taken six months. House needs doing up, but it's solid. Priced to sell, but still took ages. Estate Agent did say market has slumped.

Nothing around under £150 000 which would be 5x salary 2.5 x salary -nothing at all.

Similar here - pre Covid the cheapest houses in the village were £130k, now they are over £160k. Nearby Town has cheaper stuff, but I wouldn't choose to live on those streets

Where I live (Harrogate) properties appear to be taking a little longer to sell (anecdotally from what I have noticed about how long the 'For sale' signs change to 'Sold') but houses are still selling relatively quickly and prices haven't dropped at all. A house near us (4 bed detached, pretty standard mid-80s brick built house, nothing special, circa. 1,800 sq. ft.) has just gone on the market today for £750,000.

After slating the state of the market locally (NE England) we accepted an offer on our house of only £1k under asking. Managed to also negotiate a healthy discount on the house we are looking to buy as they had not reduced it since putting it on the market in early October.

Now on to the interminable wait for solicitors to do their thing.

A house near us (4 bed detached, pretty standard mid-80s brick built house, nothing special, circa. 1,800 sq. ft.) has just gone on the market today for £750,000.

I'm intrigued by this every time I read it. Is it a humble brag because a 180 m^2 house is deemed nothing special in your view or is it that £3/4m is deemed very expensive( which i can't imagine it is, unless Harrogate is a lot slummier than i recall).

Can you clarify?

Can you clarify?

I mean that £750,000 is a silly amount of money for a house that is a pretty average-looking family home and it suggests that, in Harrogate at least, the housing market is still buoyant. It isn't a humble-brag as it isn't my house.

Skipton, North Yorks here. Around our house I'd say at least 90 percent of the houses that have gone on the market since Truss had her moment to shine have not sold.

They all did before that, usually within a week or two.

Some YouTube with graphs and figures here.

The title is rather click-bait but the content is fairly balanced - the TLDR is that the market seems to be cooling (stable rather than negative at the moment) with the possibility of a small decline on the way (but not guaranteed).

It's more of a buyers market just now, interest rate hikes, less mortgage products out there, more risk, etc, etc, later this year rates will more than likely come down, so expect a downturn just now, but it'll catch back up later end of the year i'd expect.

There's a huge difference between a downturn and a collapse, i can't see a collapse any time soon in the housing market, it's the foundation of our capitalism in the west.

I mean that £750,000 is a silly amount of money for a house that is a pretty average-looking family home

Righto I thought 180msq was a pretty big house. Fair enough

Righto I thought 180msq was a pretty big house. Fair enough

Big, but hardly massive. 7x7m over 3 floors which seems to be the default layout on newbuild estates here, and a decent garage would do it. 4 bed house, couple of en-suites, a bathroom, open plan kitchen/diner and an office or snug would fill that and you'd not walk in and go "this is massive".

A 2up 2down Victorian terrace is 85m according to google, so it's only just over 2x of those.

Is everybody forgetting about inflation? Even nominally stagnant prices effectively mean a 10% drop. Round here (Otley) plenty are still being listed for daft money but they're not moving. Last year anything in a reasonable location and not too stupidly priced sold in days, often at significantly over asking.

Prices are plummeting’ is a very bold statement.
Really?
Where?
How would you define ‘plummeting’?
I’ll hold off from saying it’s factually incorrect

The national average from Halifax has dropped an average of 1.2% per month for the last 3 months. Annualised that's a 14% or a £36,000 drop for the average property. £3k per month is over double the average take-home wage in this country. I'd call that plummeting.

Compared to the price of normal goods, or wages, they're dropping even faster, in the region of 20-25% annually. Ouch.

Colleague in work has been viewing flats in London for a while

Her mortgage offer went to sh!t post truss, but prices have dropped 10% on some places they've viewed, certainly in London looks like there's people holding out for prices that few can afford

It's a mess