Over the past year, the 39-year-old, who works in risk management for a financial institution, has been struggling to sell the three-bedroom family home he and his partner bought in Farnham, Surrey, back in 2013.
“We had the house on the market last year, but there was no shift. Very few viewings,” says Blackall.
And yet, there was such little interest in Blackall’s home – listed at £425,000 in a desirable area in the south east of England – that he and his partner took it off the market.
Despite frenzied warnings in the immediate aftermath of former prime minister Liz Truss’s so-called “mini-budget” in 2022, Britain’s housing market has not crashed. Nor has it suffered a major downturn. Instead, something rather more languid has unfolded.
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As The i Paper has reported, Britain’s housing market is stalled. Buyers and sellers alike report that they are finding it difficult to move. And except for a mad dash before the stamp duty break ended in March this year, that has been reflected in official transactions data.
However, as expert housing market analyst Neal Hudson has noted, the actual number of homes sold is still lower than the quarterly average of 365,000 that was recorded in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.
Consider Blackall’s £425,000 home. To buy a home with that price tag, you’d typically need at least a 5 per cent deposit of more than £20,000 and a household income of at least £80,000, which is far above the national average. And that’s assuming you have a lender prepared to lend 5 times your income.
The Blackalls are not the only people affected.
“I had a young couple who wanted to buy it in 2022, but I think they got spooked by the interest rate spike after the ‘mini-budget’,” says Cohen. “I took it off the market after that.”
“Everybody says it’s a lovely house, but my estate agent says the problem is across the market – properties in my price bracket just aren’t moving. He thinks it could be to do with stamp duty or because people are worried about what will happen in October with the next Budget.”
“We’re in the £1-2m bracket,” he explains. “So our story won’t arouse much sympathy, but it seems there are an increasing number of people like us.”
“We’ve had to reduce it from £2.25m to just over £1m.”
Family still looking for next home
“We have ultimately ended up accepting a significant drop in the original price we listed as sellers,” he reflects. “Of course, this leaves us with nowhere near as much equity [as we had hoped] considering all of the fees, paying off our renovation loan, etc.”
While making offers on four-bedroom homes, Blackall says they’ve been “turned down by vendors” when not offering above the asking price.
“I understand the challenges that sellers face in the current market, but to me, holding on for the sake of vanity is surely ludicrous.”
The Government wants to build 1.5 million new homes, including social housing, over five years. Builders of those homes for private sale will need to be confident that they can make a profit when they sell the houses they build. This will be difficult if buyers cannot afford the homes being put on the market.
However, the decline was 0.8 per cent, which, though significant, is not a dramatic change.
With ongoing global volatility making sharp interest rate cuts look unlikely, this housing market stall is likely to be here for the foreseeable future.
“I know it’s a bit of a first-world problem, ” Lowensmith concludes. “But it’s disheartening… and surely there’s a bigger economic impact to all of this because they’re not keeping things moving.”
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