Despite seeing almost none of the properties I've been watching for the last 2 months sell there are still new ones being added. This encourages me to take even more time in looking - there is no rush to buy whatsoever, there is ever increasing choice and unfortunately very little in the way of price reductions despite the static market. I wonder how many of the sellers really believe they'll get their asking price? Or even within 10%?
Cornwall has a really difficult housing market. Its prices are dictated by fickle outside investors whilst locals have really low wages and are all but priced out. Anyone who already owns a house in Cornwall (whether they are local or not) when they come to sell it naturally wants as much for it as they can get... however those fickle outsiders are currently much more wary since although it is lovely to be able to spend the odd week by the sea luxuriating in one's "investment" its not a very good value investment if its "losing money". But the property market is a strange one, a house doesn't actually have a value until its sold. The idea that its "worth" some specific value is based on what someone else has paid for somewhere else and rather assumes other people will have the money and want to spend it similarly.
This is currently not true.
People with cash know they can wait and get much better returns for it right now in savings accounts. And people who need mortgages are much less likely to get them after the credit crunch whether or not they are themselves "sub-prime" or not. And of course people with houses to sell before they can buy are all stuck in the same tangled web.
Of course if a property is a business then its value should be easier to judge. I've been checking out holiday cottages and what one might hope to make from letting them out and its currently not good. The returns tend to be far less than 6% (before income tax). And no-one in their right mind would currently buy at full price in the expectation that their investment will then continue to go up to cover any short-fall in returns from holiday lets.
As the owner of a house I'm all too well aware that houses cost real money to keep going, they need maintenance to stay watertight, updating to stay attractive (important if you want to let it out) and cost real money in council tax (or business tax), electricity etc. If one is not nearby oneself there is also the need to hire people to do the gardening and housekeeping. Money in the bank doesn't cost this much to maintain!
I'm also interested to see which houses start to come on the market in the next few months as people with second homes hope to sell them just after April's change in CGT makes any profits far less heavily taxed.
Of the houses in the photo above slashed with red "NEW" banners I'm sure I've seen some of them before, making them rather less new...
Here are the one's marked new:
St Erth, 3/4 bed, detached reverse house in cul-de-sac - £375,000 - this one does not have any energy charts to show for itself which makes it seem, as a 4 bed house, to have been quite a long time on the market...
St. Ives, detached tea shop + 3 bed apartment - £675,000 - this one specifically says the date of instruction was December 2007 so not really very new...
Angarrack - 3 bed semi - £269,950 - doesn't seem to be on rightmove so may indeed be new...
Penzance - pub - £185,000 leasehold (22 years remaining) - plus £53,000 rent per year (not mentioned in the paper but in the details on the web) with a rent review coming up in September - seems like quite a lot of money to be finding every year! Luckily running a pub has never been one of my dreams...
Angarrack - 2 bed, reverse - £197,500 - no energy chart...
Incidentally, I wish estate agent details would give ceiling heights as well as room sizes.
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