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Essex - This Must Be The Breaking Point


lostinessex

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HOLA441

OK my first attempt at creating a topic in the 9 nine years I've been lurking (and very occasionally posting).

Been following property in Chelmsford and north Essex for around five years. Three years back I was just able to put in offers on two-bed flats then along came h2b2 and everything leapt out of reach again.

I still religously check Rightmove every day though for signs of the market easing off. This got posted today:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-55542665.html

THis is a close made up of identical maisonettes - I put in an offer on one just under three years ago gor 180k and missed out to a developer (who it turrned out got it for the same price I offered)

Three years later a similar one is on for 275k - that's a 50% rise in three years. In fact it's a 20% rise on what was being asked just earlier this year.

That's 12x the national average wage for a maisonette in Chelmsford - if you've not been there is a pretty bland commuter town (with some admittedly nice countryside around it and an easy train ride into the City).

This feels like the last stand against insanity to me.

Anyone else looking at property around mid / north Essex?

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HOLA442

Hi lostinessex, welcome. Interesting anecdote.

Given that other leasehold properties sold in the past year for around the lower £200ks I would say say that the one in your link is right royally overpriced! :(

That aside, they look like nice homes. I'd love a flat like that.

I'm seeing a similar form of house price insanity some 80 miles north of Chelmsord.

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HOLA445

The prices are so absolutely bat shit crazy that people seem to not realize how long it takes to earn 250,000 or as they used to say a 1/4 of a million. I'd wager that the median wage in Chelmsford is less than 20k so that makes it even more ridiculous.

This.

Someone at work was asking why I didn't buy a million dollar house (USD) but rented instead. They said I could get a good mortgage deal with my job and credit history. When I explain that even if I keep earning what I earn it would take 20 years of VERY good saving to pay off the debt, and if I lost my job or got sick I would lose everything, they just could not get it. Kept saying how the monthly payments would be affordable.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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HOLA446

This.

Someone at work was asking why I didn't buy a million dollar house (USD) but rented instead. They said I could get a good mortgage deal with my job and credit history. When I explain that even if I keep earning what I earn it would take 20 years of VERY good saving to pay off the debt, and if I lost my job or got sick I would lose everything, they just could not get it. Kept saying how the monthly payments would be affordable.

The prices are so absolutely bat shit crazy that people seem to not realize how long it takes to earn 250,000 or as they used to say a 1/4 of a million. I'd wager that the median wage in Chelmsford is less than 20k so that makes it even more ridiculous.

Spot on.

My parents keep sending me links through rightmove on properties he thinks I might be interested in.

The other day they sent me a bog standard 1990s 4 bed estate house which was only 10 sq metres larger than the house I currently live in.

£550k.

These are the people who were shocked that people spent over £1000 a month on rent/mortgage suggesting spending over half a million.

Yes interest rates are low but you still have to pay back the capital. Do people not realise this?!

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HOLA447

It's gone beresk at the moment. Dozens of houses I might be interested coming on each week - but very few are actually any good. A lot are going SSTC within a month - & one or two quickly falling through - but the ones I like seem to go fast. In fact, I would've been very interested in this, but it flagged up as SSTC on appearance!

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-55847636.html

Stupid money, but others are even stupider.

It can't go on ...

Edited by cock-eyed octopus
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  • 4 weeks later...
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HOLA448

Well the property I quoted in my original post as being so insanely priced it *had* to be the top has moved to SSTC today. Truly depressing. Two years ago I could just about scrape enough together to put in offers on these maisonettes - now they're tens of thousands over my budget despite saving like crazy these last few years.

To say I feel deflated would be an understatement - I really have no idea what to do any more. It seems the more I save the smaller and miserable the pool of properties I can afford - and the less I want to risk all my hard-earned savings on buying them. Even if prices were to fall now they would have to drop by a huge percentage to even get back to the merely overpriced of a couple of years back. I genuinely can't see that happening any time soon.

I really thought the changes to BTL coming through might put the brakes on but it looks like the madness is set to continue.

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  • 1 month later...
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Ye gods and little fishes,

My then GF thought of buying one of those back when I was about 21. I think the price was about £18k and her dad said no because it was leasehold. I didn't like it as the guy upstairs walked around in hobnail boots.

My sister in law lives in a ground floor flat and the folks above have a fairy elephant child.

I think you had a lucky escape being outbid.

Given the Chinese govt doesn't understand that gambling on a stock exchange has to have losers, I think the crash can't be far off.

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HOLA4411

Hi Travisher, thanks for posting - really interesting to hear from someone who knows the properties.

Yes, at the back of my mind was the issue of noisy upstairs neighbours - however I guess that's always going to be a potential issue with flats / maisonettes. I was simply priced out of all but the strangest houses with my budget (a kitchen so small I couldn't stand upright in it. Another where the only room for a fridge-freezer was, er, in the living room).

Of all the properties I looked at round Chelmsford in my budget these maisonettes seem to offer the best layout and space (and unusually for maisonettes a private garden with no shared access).

All fairly moot now as the prices they go for are now well out of my reach anyway!

Interestingly another has come on the market - slightly cheaper. I think it's one I viewed after the prices starting going silly - it had been left in a real state by its elderly owner and the EA reckoned it would need a 15K refit - of course it sold immediately. Came on the market a year later with a 10% price increase - and judging by the photos (I didn't bother going to view it) the owner had bugger all in the last year and it looked as run down as before. It of course sold immediately. It's now come up again (with another chunky price increase and interestingly no photos of the interior) - my guess is another owner backing out on doing-it up and simply trying to flip it and pass on the hassle to the next person.

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HOLA4412

My best find was a small house/hut in Malden. The bath was upstairs but you had to sit at the tap end because the rest of it was under a low sloping roof. Unless you wear a snorkel in the bath! It was a ex fisherman's cottage. Presumably he got so wet in the North Sea that he figured he didn't need a bath.

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  • 3 years later...
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HOLA4413

Thought I'd resurrect this thread - as I'm starting to see signs of Essex prices going into reverse - at least in some sectors.

While I'm not interested in new build, there's a lot of 'luxury apartments' being built around Chelmsford. What's interesting though is the fate of the previous round of new-builds that are now hitting the market as second-hand sales as their original owners move on / get out.

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/50854723?search_identifier=f249f345a53ccd1e9019a71d6f61e8e2

This was originally bought for £180,000 in 2007 - it's now on the market for 170,000 after having its price dropped twice since its original listing in March. So that's a £10,000 loss after 12 years in an area of the country that is larelgy viewed as having a fairly buoyant housing market in recent years! Can't go wrong with bricks and mortar...

I've yet to see this sort of drop in older, more traditional homes but hopefully these are the first indicators of wider falls.

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  • 3 years later...
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