Given there’s never a good time to be house hunting, I feel relatively lucky to be pounding the pavements now.
I never experienced super low interest rates so am happy to be reducing my monthly housing costs – the rental crisis seems still to beat the mortgage fiasco if my experience is anything to go by.
I’m also happy not to be competing in a hot market – homes I viewed weeks ago are still listed, often with 10 or 20 per cent knocked off the price I viewed them at. It feels faintly luxurious to be able to deliberate over second viewings.
The stumbling block – because with the London property market there has to be one – is that so far, there’s barely anything that warrants more than five minutes of my time, let alone schlepping out to see it for a second time.
In my price bracket at least, the bulk of sellers seem to be landlords, shifting unprepossessing, unloved properties, most of which need a good £100,000 spent on them. And I’m not looking for perfection, just an energy-efficient, well laid out, pleasantly liveable home.
These homes aren’t shifting fast, but several estate agents I’ve been dealing with have suggested that they’ll likely sell to another landlord who can pay cash and so won’t be impacted by mortgage rate rises.
Such is the state of the rental market, the new landlord won’t need to renovate these dispiriting properties to attract desperate house sharers paying well over the odds (therein also a clue as to why the starter home hunter’s slog feels worth it).
What regular buyers like me need is for these sellers trying to shift substandard stock to knock their asking prices down to a sum that will accommodate a bit of building work. Sadly a lot of them have already decided to re-let them instead, EPC upgrades and mortgage interest be damned.
We’re only at the start of the slump so perhaps market reality will catch up with those who really need to sell.
But that process may well take longer than I’ve got to spare. So how about this: if you’ve got a nice place in Zone 2, will you sell it to me?
