House prices

There is a small 2 bedroom bungalow for sale in a road close to mine on sale for £5 off half a million and it needs to be gutted. Even after a full refurbishment the room sizes would still be small. Somebody will snap it up no doubt.

We are all lucky in the north then. When people relocate here from parts of the south they are amazed at what they can buy for the price they made for their property

The house we sold three years ago has just sold again at a £30,000 profit and from the look of the estate agent's online details, it's just as it was when we sold it! Where else would you get a £10,000 a year return on your outlay these days?

When we got married in the mid-sixties, DH's sister and BiL owned a terraced house in Battersea. We lived with them for a while before we went abroad. There was a garden flat which had a sitting tenant, and S and BiL lived on the second and third floors. They sold it in the seventies for what they thought was a very good profit, but, as Luckygirl has said, they are now selling in that road for a million plus. A lady I worked with lived in a detached house on Wandsworth Common - I can't imagine what that would be worth now.

I recently looked at the price of our second house, a 2 1/5 bed small semi and also at the price of our 4th house which was twice the size. The smaller one is now worth more than the bigger one simply because it is on the end of the Metroplitan line in Amersham. The other one is in a very nice area in the Midlands. We had upmortgaged (is there such a word?) twice during the time between selling the one and buying the other.

I still think I would rather live here though as I hated all the rush and commute during the times when we lived in the London area. I love the lack of light pollution and all the fresh air.

I forgot to mention that the house in question is in NW London.

Although, if you are not moving to a cheaper area, you still have to pay a lot for a house , so no point being happy that you have made money on the house as you will soon have to put it all back into the new house,plus the huge cost of moving house and the legal bills.

London prices are very high, and not just the ones you would expect, but areas like Bethnal Green.The prices make your eyes water.

Tatty old bungalows are always expensive because they are on large plots and will be replaced with two or more large luxurious houses. Bingo! Huge profit!
I bought this house in 1994 for £45000, when prices began soaring. It's market value is now £265000. It's a two-up two-down labourer's cottage and probably still the cheapest house in the town, as it was when I bought it.

apricot I agree, normally tatty bungalows are on a large plot but not this one, it has a small jungle of a garden which may take a very small extension but little else. Good luck to whoever throws their money at this dump.

We paid £11000 for our first house which was a two up two down terrace bought in 1975 it was sold earlier this year (not by us) for £120000.

I sold my Dad's house 13 years ago for £290,000 and it has just resold for £595,000 ...... Not happy!
My daughter's house in Berkshire suburbia, a 2 up 2 down terrace, has been valued at over £300,000 while mine - a 5 bed, 3 reception detached Victorian with views over the sea to Edinburgh and a good sized garden would only fetch 500,000. It's all location, location, location - but I know where I'd rather be

My PiL sold their 4 storey town house in Islington in the 60s for around £2000 and were delighted to be able to buy a 3 bed semi with a small mortgage near Southend. That London town house has long since been divided into 4 flats, each of which is worth around half a million today. The semi is worth about £250k today (the one next door sold for £249,000 two months ago)

Indinana that made me smile as DH grew up in a large house in Islington. It was devided into flats (they were only renting) it has now been converted back to one large house and recently sold for 1.5 million So the opposite of your FiL.

In the early 80s we lived in N London, very near an underground station with only a couple of stops to central London.
We sold our very small semi-detached cottage and bought a 4 bedroom terraced house nearer the station, for the same price, under £50,000.

We had to modernise and do up the 4 bed, mostly out of income. Today there is no hope of a young couple doing this.

How do couples move from expensive 1 beds to family homes, unless they move out of London?

x

I live in NW London and feel that I am stuck here unless I moved to the wilds of Scotland because I really could not afford to move although my house is worth (to me) an eye watering amount.

We moved out of London in 1972 and lived in Newcastle-u-Lyme for 3.5 years- where we were able to buy a 2.5 bed semi for 6.500 - there was NO way we could ever go back and live in London, or in Surrey where DH comes from. Not in a month of blue Sundays. We moved to East Leics and as we were let down by dishonest sellers at the last minute, when I was 7.5 months pregnant with a toddler and NO family support- we had to stretch ourselves silly to find a family box we could afford- then the mortgage went up to 19.5% and we were in trouble- we managed to see it through. Our next house was our last in the UK and we did make a few bob on that- having lived in it for 30+ years and done a lot to it.

How can anyone complain about the house prices in the South (my poor children/grandchildren can't afford to have a place of their own etc.) and then rub their hands together in glee at how much their own pile is now worth?

Not getting at anyone on this thread it's just every time you hear this in the news, it just seems to be the way.

You can't have it both ways can you?

Because, gillybob, their 'own pile' is only worth silly money if they're going to sell it and move to a much cheaper area, to release some equity. Yes, they could do this and let their 'poor children/grandchildren' have some of the money thus realised to use as a deposit towards their own home in the South. In the meantime they're now living hundreds of miles away from their children/grandchildren.

Property isn't money until you sell it. And if you need that money to buy a new property, then it still isn't money. Swapping a £1m home for another £1m home in the South is no different from swapping a £100k home for another £100k home in the North. In fact it's worse because the estate agent's fees are higher, being a percentage of sale price!

One of the big problems with London house prices is the impact they're having on other areas. The south west coast being a prime example. We're in the process of selling a relative's house in a town on the coast. The estate agents consistently recommended a starting price of double what you'd pay in almost any area north of Watford. Their comments included that half a million is nothing to people from London, and they're the one's who'll buy this as a 2nd home.

sorry, who will buy this (i should have said). It's the people who downsize, buy a smaller place in London and a house on the coast with the money from their original home. Or people borrowing on the strength of their increasing home value, investing in a 2nd home they rent out to create income. I don't have any bright ideas about how to stop this, or improve things, wish I did.

You are right Iam64. We live in the SW, and the average wage here is one of the lowest in the country, and yet property prices are out of reach to the majority of young people, for the very reason you mention.

The average wage in Torquay, for example, is quite similar to Middlesbrough. A quick check on the internet shows the prices for a 3 bedroom house start at under £20,000 in Middlesbrough, while in Torquay you can expect to pay a minimum of £120,000. Londoners don't want a holiday home in Middlesbrough, do they?

DD1 has sold her house in Derby and I am shocked at what is available in their price range in her area. The same amount of money could buy much more house in an equivalent area around Leicester.

In 1975 we looked at 2 brand new houses one at £15,000 and one at £19,000. DH persuaded me that we could afford the more expensive one but I was really worried for ages that we had spent too much. Don't times change [and house prices!]

I think it is far more complex than Londoners buying second homes, I doubt there is a very high percentage who do that. It has to be down to supply and demand, most commodities are.

Those of us who bought our first house 40+ years ago had a very different experience from those buying today. Prices were based on one income only and that was up to 3 times salary. Nowadays it is normal for two people's salary to be taken into consideration and sometimes by more than 3 times salary. It is good that lenders now have to look at affordability.

There were always people who couldn't afford to buy a property but nowadays there seems to be an expectation that everyone can and that they shouldn't have to go without to do so.

When we bought our first house it was necessary to have saved with a particular building society for a period of time and then go and pretty much beg for a mortgage. Interest rates were a lot higher and not long after we were paying 18%.

We have helped all our DC to buy a property because in the long run they will be better off. In London this is particularly relevant as it is easy to pay £600 per month just to rent a room and it would be better to pay that off a mortgage. For many shared ownership is probably the only option.