Cambridge

[gannet59]

'The flip side to the next new development is that Cambridge is now over-heated: central Cambridge is too crowded to be any fun any more, and the area around it is in gridlock.'

Can't really sum up Cambridge in that one sentence! Agree the housing market is madness but that is an imbalance in supply and demand, thus developers can charge what the market will take for poorly designed boxes. But still the city has a great deal of charm, many high skill jobs and great sense of community (in parts!). Transport into/through and out of the city is pretty much only a problem at rush hour so more needs to be done to encourage flexi-time for example. But I still wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

[neuvilla]

I'm going to watch this one and see what happens. It is already at least £150,000 over what similar properties are going for in Cambridge in the same area. It's currently £7,222 per sq m, which is crazy.

[neuvilla]

Just now, neuvilla said:

I'm going to watch this one and see what happens. It is already at least £150,000 over what similar properties are going for in Cambridge in the same area. It's currently £7,222 per sq m, which is crazy.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-47318733.html

[neuvilla]

On 04/04/2017 at 5:39 PM, neuvilla said:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-47318733.html

Hasn't gone under offer yet. 

This one popped up today. Staggering. £850K for a 3 bedroom terrace house.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-59246914.html

[Guest TheBlueCat]

On 21/04/2017 at 0:11 PM, neuvilla said:

Hasn't gone under offer yet. 

This one popped up today. Staggering. £850K for a 3 bedroom terrace house.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-59246914.html

WTF?! That has to be a mistake.

[neuvilla]

On 22/04/2017 at 8:08 PM, TheBlueCat said:

WTF?! That has to be a mistake.

I thought that too. Am tempted to ring the estate agent to alert them to the mistake in their listing! 

[HaveAniceDay]

28 City Road is an attractive mid terrace Victorian city townhouse that has been cleverly extended in recent years using platinum support rails and diamond encrusted floor tiles........

 

 

There I fixed it for the EA

[b_real]

I share the horror and outrage of 28 City Road, but it's 118m2 and works out at £7,200psqm... which is actually cheaper psqm than the other one on Tenison. It doesn't seem to have much of a garden tho. 

[neuvilla]

15 hours ago, b_real said:

I share the horror and outrage of 28 City Road, but it's 118m2 and works out at £7,200psqm... which is actually cheaper psqm than the other one on Tenison. It doesn't seem to have much of a garden tho. 

£22 cheaper. And without a garden.

[neuvilla]

Cambridge is definitely seeing a lot of reductions at the moment. This one, for example, has come down almost by 10%, from 800K to 725K.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-47254122.html

Still waiting if this will affect lower priced properties though.

[Guest TheBlueCat]

On 25/04/2017 at 4:11 AM, neuvilla said:

I thought that too. Am tempted to ring the estate agent to alert them to the mistake in their listing! 

Now 795, still seems unbelievably expensive for somewhere that size in the Kite.

[Timak]

Friends spending the best part of £650k on a 120sqm house in Cherry Hinton.

Admittedly they are getting £475k for a house they are selling so it is "only" £175k more but it strikes me as crazy money.

£650k is about 12x their annual family income.

[neuvilla]

21 hours ago, Timak said:

Friends spending the best part of £650k on a 120sqm house in Cherry Hinton.

Admittedly they are getting £475k for a house they are selling so it is "only" £175k more but it strikes me as crazy money.

£650k is about 12x their annual family income.

It could be worse. They could be paying £650K for this wreck in Cambridge:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66552359.html

No floor plan and nothing in the description to suggest the size of the place, so maybe its a mansion!

[MuTron1]

On ‎24‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 8:04 AM, neuvilla said:

It could be worse. They could be paying £650K for this wreck in Cambridge:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66552359.html

No floor plan and nothing in the description to suggest the size of the place, so maybe its a mansion!

EPC says 114 square meters, so a reasonable size for a 3 bed. The price is in the location, however, as it's close to the station, town centre, Addenbrookes, the Biomedical Campus and the offices around the botanical gardens end of Hills Road

 

I do love the wood cladding in the kitchen, though.

[b_real]

How about this "ideal for a first time buyer or investor" little shoe box right at the end of Mill Road...

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-59505559.html

Just reduced to £290k for 36.9 m2 ... that is £7,859 per m2. Utter craziness. 

[neuvilla]

4 minutes ago, b_real said:

How about this "ideal for a first time buyer or investor" little shoe box right at the end of Mill Road...

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-59505559.html

Just reduced to £290k for 36.9 m2 ... that is £7,859 per m2. Utter craziness. 

Ridiculous.

Interesting that in the last 24 hours, over half of the listings are reductions on Rightmove. I've never seen the amount of reductions that there are now since I started looking two years ago.

Also, this was in the local paper:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-house-prices-down-brexit-13085708

[b_real]

On 2017-1-23 at 5:07 PM, b_real said:

Anecdotally - of the 33 properties that were emailed to me today by Rightmove because they're in my search criteria (£250k - £400k all around Cambridge & surrounds), 8 of them were reduced. That's nearly 25% of properties at a reduction. This one stands out:

Bridge Road, Impington. £425,000 (September 2015) down to £365,000 (today). That's a 15% drop in asking price in 4 months. Decent area too. 

Yup. I posted this back in January. I thought I'd repeat the exercise today, using the same search criteria: 

Of the last 33 properties emailed to me today (25th May 2017) by Rightmove, 17 were reduced. That is over 51% of properties at a reduction. 

[Trajan394]

A very optimistic article in the Cambridge news: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/property/reassuring-news-homeowners-housing-prices-13178085

However:

1) YOY rise of 1% is considerably below what the UK-wide figure is;

2) Local area figures seem to have high variation: I seem to recall recent months had YOY figures of -5% and -10%;

3) Transaction levels are lower (seems to go against what the estate agent quoted says);

4) If I understand the lag between Nationwide and land registry, this slight uptick is consistent with the slight uptick in February's Nationwide numbers - prices have been falling since.

Wish I could post this on the article but they aren't allowing comments!

[tyres]

An embarrassment to the city': what went wrong with the £725m gateway to Cambridge?

Quote

Initially planned by Richard Rogers, CB1 was to be a world-class arrival point, with park, piazza, heritage centre and affordable homes. Instead, it’s ‘a future slum’ plagued by antisocial behaviour and sex-trafficking

more here...

[VeryMeanReversion]

I live a few miles South of Cambridge and have never understood the attraction of the city and actively avoid it. I used to drive in to work 7.30am-4pm and never found the traffic to be much of a problem, far better than when I used to do the M25 and Hertfordshire traffic.

I sometimes go up to the Mill Road area with my son and point out the conditions in which some people are prepared to live at great expense.  

I have a ~220sqm property with big garden probably around £550K so a measly £2500/sqm in comparison.  But it still only takes 15 minutes by bike to get to a mainline station with fast access to London, dedicated cycle path most of the way. My garage is bigger than many of the Cambridge terraces.  I just don't understand why people pay so much to live there.

[ognum]

2 hours ago, VeryMeanReversion said:

I live a few miles South of Cambridge and have never understood the attraction of the city and actively avoid it. I used to drive in to work 7.30am-4pm and never found the traffic to be much of a problem, far better than when I used to do the M25 and Hertfordshire traffic.

I sometimes go up to the Mill Road area with my son and point out the conditions in which some people are prepared to live at great expense.  

I have a ~220sqm property with big garden probably around £550K so a measly £2500/sqm in comparison.  But it still only takes 15 minutes by bike to get to a mainline station with fast access to London, dedicated cycle path most of the way. My garage is bigger than many of the Cambridge terraces.  I just don't understand why people pay so much to live there.

I don't get this, you are happy living where you do, I live in the centre of Cambridge and am happy living where I do.   I have lived in the villages around Cambridge and hated them and like you would avoid central Cambridge I would actively avoid living where you do.

What I don't understand is your need to bring your son to a place and berate other people's choice. Stay where you are and be happy.

 

 

 

[neuvilla]

There are so many reduced properties now in Cambridge. But the new ones that come on are all coming on with kite flying prices. With the end of the bidding wars that have characterised the market for the last few years, I think the EA's new strategy is to mark them high and hope they can convince someone they are getting a bargain when they offer below the asking price.

Anyway, this came on today. 

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67520426.html

Someone is trying to flip this. They bought it in 2014 for 440K. Have extended it and now want 700K for it. Highest price so far on the road is 560K, so even though its a lot bigger, I can't see them getting what they want for it. Will be interesting to see what happens.

[tyres]

I've been looking at properties in the Abbey Ward for the last few years. A 3 bed semi on whitehill road was bought by some developer back in 2015 for just under 400K

06/03/2015

£396,000

15 Whitehill Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LT

They knocked down the old single extension to the side of the house, and in its place built a 2 bed house. Also, they knocked down the garage at the end of the house

and built a 3 bed house in its place.

Info is here:

http://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?AIId=14886

The 3 houses are now back on the market , the new builds have already gone SSTC at 300, and 495 K each!
https://www.onthemarket.com/details/3813556/

https://www.onthemarket.com/details/3813555/

the original house is still on the market at 450K

https://www.onthemarket.com/details/3852323/

Whats really strange, is that I can no longer find any info on zoopla, rightmove of the original house, No 15 Whitehill Road:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detail.html?country=england&locationIdentifier=STREET^2262907&searchLocation=Whitehill+Road&referrer=landingPage

There is no trace of the property sold prior to redevelopment, but you can still see it on google streetview:

http://******/2sPOrxN

It would be interesting to see what the actual sold prices will be once published, but its crazy someone is willing to pay £300k , for a side extension of a house that

sold for £396 18months earlier 

 

[Timak]

Been to look at 2 houses on the outskirts of the city. 

On both occasions it has been me and about 10 Chinese people.

These aren't even newbuild flats, these are run down places needing major work. 

How are young buyers supposed to compete against international money?

[gannet59]

There are a lot of people of Chinese origin in Cambridge and so they need not be 'internationals'.