I wonder how long it really does take to sell a house at the moment. In Monday's Guardian it says 8.5 weeks but that is averaged out over the whole country and doesn't take into account any of the houses that have been languishing unsold for months on end. Or the ones that come off the market without having been sold. At least I assume that's true - I'd like to know how its calculated.
Guardian - Saturday 26th January 2008And talking of the Guardian in their Snooping around section they featured one of the round houses in Veryan near St Mawes. Its not in my St. Mawes list as to make it manageable the list only contains properties actually in St Mawes. But I did mention it in my South Coast Villages post a couple of weeks ago. I was disappointed to find that the Guardian did not include any more details than I'd already gleaned from the particulars on the website. The Guardian had it priced at £495,000 whereas the agent specifically lists it as offers in excess of £495,000.
(I think that anyone currently listing as "offers in excess of" is very brave! From what I've seen hardly anyone is selling and it looks like no-one is achieving their asking price. Its all very well having a lower limit beyond which you won't drop but this is now a buyers market...)
When I started this blog I was expecting there to be a lot more change in the houses on the market than there has been. However I'm glad I did start it as its giving me a way of tracking what's happening in the area I'd like to be living...
Would you buy a flat?
One of the things I've been struck with is just how expensive flats are now that they are called "apartments". I've never owned one, though I have rented a couple, and thinking about it now I doubt I ever will buy one. There are so many problems with them:
- Maintenance costs - one of my friends in a flat has recently been landed with her share (a quarter) of the roofing bill of £60,000 (£15,000 for her share) - seemed a little extortionate and entirely unexpected but she had no choice but to pay up!
- Self-run Management Companies - what a pain they are - especially if any of the people who own the flats are letting them out to tenants - next door has this problem...
- Lack of security - communal front doors get left open or are opened without due care via buzzers...
- Noise - I don't like people walking around in rooms over my head or playing music that vibrates my floor from below (I had enough of that at university!)
- Stairs - I don't want to have to drag my shopping up loads of stairs (both flats I rented were top floor and too many stairs up!)
- Parking - Even if there is parking its going to take luck to be are the one who gets to park by the door (I won't seriously consider any house without parking - I've never yet bought one without its own off-street parking though I have rented them and regretted it)
- Smells - especially cooking smells and cigarettes - these often seem to pervade the insides of flats - maybe the communal stairwells aren't well ventilated?
- Leasehold - if I'm forking out hundreds of thousands I want to actually own my own place - and if its not a very long lease when one comes to sell it may not be viable any more.
- Lack of a private garden space or worse still a garden that is down loads of stairs and not even visible from the flat. This seems to "add value" to the flat but in practice the garden becomes neglected and is just a pain - where do you keep gardening tools when your little patch of garden would be totally consumed by a shed?
- And currently they seem to be rather poor bets as investments...
2 comments:
Does Scotland still function with "offers over"? That seems so much more difficult to negotiate to me. And I would also never buy a flat. We bought a townhouse -- tehnically a mid-terrace but in a strata-controlled complex -- and it was nothing but headaches. And we got out not a moment too soon. Nothing ever sold for more than we got (only $2K more 5 years later)and the price has stagnated, even dropped, though the house we bought after selling the townhouse has doubled in value since.
Andrea - I think most properties in Scotland are still sold on an offers over basis, some are "fixed price" but the part about it that we look at admire is that once an offer has been accepted that is it - or at least legally that's it - I suppose it means if someone pulls out you can take them to court...
Quite a lot of houses here, when it was booming, were going out to a variation of offers over - sealed bids - but its not legally binding. I've always refused to get involved in them.
Good job you got our of your complex when you did!
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