"The Market's Rubbish at the Moment, Isn't It?"

On Friday I was speaking with a local homeowner who, together with his wife, had started talking seriously about moving.

They've lived in the same house in Orpington for years.  Their two children have grown up, moved out and started lives of their own.  The house that once felt just about big enough now feels bigger than they need.  They like the idea of being nearer to Worthing, on the coast.  They want a little less to look after and to enjoy a slightly different pace of life.

The interesting thing was that they weren't talking about where they wanted to move to.

They were talking about why they weren't moving.

"The market's rubbish at the moment, isn't it?" he said.

It's a comment I hear quite a lot.

My response was simple.

"Why do you say that?"

There was a pause.

The answer wasn't based on anything he'd personally experienced.  It wasn't because he'd had his house on the market and couldn't sell it.  It wasn't because buyers weren't making offers.

It was more a feeling.  Something he'd picked up from the news, from conversations with people and from reading things online.

And that's understandable.

If you listen to enough headlines, you'd be forgiven for thinking nobody is moving house anymore.

The reality is rather different.

Across Orpington, Chelsfield, and the villages surrounding Sevenoaks, properties are still being sold every week.  Buyers are still booking viewings, making offers and progressing purchases.  The market hasn't stopped. It's simply become more selective.

In fact, if the market was as bad as some people believe, estate agents would be sitting in empty offices staring out of the window all day.  Thankfully, that isn't the case.

What has changed is that buyers are more careful than they were a few years ago.

During the frenzy that followed the pandemic almost everything seemed to sell.  Buyers were competing with each other, mortgage rates were exceptionally low and some properties sold almost as quickly as they came onto the market.

That was never going to last forever.

Today's market is more sensible.

Buyers still want to move but they're thinking harder about what they're buying and what they're paying.  If a property looks good value, it will generally attract interest. If it is overpriced, buyers will often wait and see what happens.

That's not a bad market.  That's simply a normal market.

One of the problems is that homeowners often judge the market by looking at the properties that haven't sold.

You drive past the same board for six months and assume nothing is moving.

What you don't see are the homes that came to the market, found a buyer within a few weeks and quietly disappeared from the property portals.  Or properties that don't have for sale and sold boards out the front.  Or houses marketed on an alternative portal to the ones you personally search regularly.  Some properties are also sold before they get published onto the likes of Rightmove and Zoopla, with agents matchmaking for sellers and buyers.

Those sales happen all the time.

The conversations homeowners should be having with their estate agent aren't really about whether the market is good or bad.  Markets go up, down and sideways.  There will always be reasons to be optimistic and reasons to be cautious.

The better questions are far more specific.

What are similar homes actually selling for? How many buyers are currently searching for a property in my price range? What competition am I up against? What would I need to do to give my property the best chance of success?

Any experienced estate agent should be able to answer those questions by showing you recent comparable sales, current competition and buyer demand, rather than relying on guesswork.

Going back to the gentleman I was speaking with, by the end of our conversation we weren't discussing whether the market was "rubbish" anymore. We were talking about his house.  We were talking about what buyers would like about it, what price might generate interest and whether moving to the coast was a realistic option - factoring in stamp duty, removal costs, legal fees etc.

In other words, we were talking about things that could actually help him make a decision.

The property market is rarely perfect.  In more than twenty years in the industry I can't remember many times when everybody agreed it was a great time to move.  There is always something happening in the background, whether it's interest rates fluctuating, elections, inflation, a budget announcement, Brexit, a pandemic, or something else entirely.  Yet people continue to move because life moves on.  Children grow up. Families expand. People retire. Circumstances change.

If you're thinking about moving, don't let a headline make the decision for you.  Find out what your property is worth. Understand what is happening in your part of the market. Then decide whether your plans are achievable.  You may find that the move you've been putting off is far more achievable than you first thought.