Deleriad Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 Seeing as this forum just had a flicker of life, wondering if anyone has any experience in buying or selling near Melton Mowbray (like what it says on the tin.) To cut a long story short, my fiancée bought a house in a village just outside Melton Mowbray in 2004 in a panic about not being able to get on the "property ladder." It's a really nice house (1820 with period features etc) and she got a reasonable price for it in the climate - which is to say it was overpriced but not as overpriced as some. She took out a 100%+ mortgage in order to refurbish and everything was going fine until she met me, we decided to move to Edinburgh and were unable to sell the house for a price we could afford. It has to go on the market in the spring and we've been saving so that we can take a hit if needs be. Housing calculators don't show us in negative equity but we're not far off and as far as I can tell, no one's sold a semi-detached in that village for over a year. So I'm wondering if anyone has any sort of insight into what is actually happening in the villages around Melton, if there is a decent EA that can be recommended or even whether anyone has actually seen a house get sold in the last year? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sage Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Seeing as this forum just had a flicker of life, wondering if anyone has any experience in buying or selling near Melton Mowbray (like what it says on the tin.)To cut a long story short, my fiancée bought a house in a village just outside Melton Mowbray in 2004 in a panic about not being able to get on the "property ladder." It's a really nice house (1820 with period features etc) and she got a reasonable price for it in the climate - which is to say it was overpriced but not as overpriced as some. She took out a 100%+ mortgage in order to refurbish and everything was going fine until she met me, we decided to move to Edinburgh and were unable to sell the house for a price we could afford. It has to go on the market in the spring and we've been saving so that we can take a hit if needs be. Housing calculators don't show us in negative equity but we're not far off and as far as I can tell, no one's sold a semi-detached in that village for over a year. So I'm wondering if anyone has any sort of insight into what is actually happening in the villages around Melton, if there is a decent EA that can be recommended or even whether anyone has actually seen a house get sold in the last year? Hi Deleriad, We've been on the market since April last year and had a number of viewers initially but all went quiet from September! This year we've had about 6 viewers but no offer yet!! We've dropped about 20% since our initial valuation. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleriad Posted March 4, 2009 Author Share Posted March 4, 2009 Hi Deleriad,We've been on the market since April last year and had a number of viewers initially but all went quiet from September! This year we've had about 6 viewers but no offer yet!! We've dropped about 20% since our initial valuation. Good luck. My rightmove search has just shown a flicker of activity - roughly 25% are under offer or STC. Most surprising. We're expecting to put it back on the market at around 20% off the valuation we got Feb last year. Basically, it looks to me like the Melton area is already back to early 2004 prices and maybe back to late 2003 prices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sage Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 My rightmove search has just shown a flicker of activity - roughly 25% are under offer or STC. Most surprising. We're expecting to put it back on the market at around 20% off the valuation we got Feb last year. Basically, it looks to me like the Melton area is already back to early 2004 prices and maybe back to late 2003 prices. That is interesting. I'm just wary that we may have already seen the flicker and that's probably all we may see for a while and headline price drops per month may put buyers off. Personally I wouldn't buy at the moment! Our agent's (Humberts) office in Melton closed in Feb so we were transferred to the Nottingham office! Do you have an agent in mind? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleriad Posted March 6, 2009 Author Share Posted March 6, 2009 That is interesting. I'm just wary that we may have already seen the flicker and that's probably all we may see for a while and headline price drops per month may put buyers off. Personally I wouldn't buy at the moment! Our agent's (Humberts) office in Melton closed in Feb so we were transferred to the Nottingham office! Do you have an agent in mind? Probably going to go with Anthony Hancock. He sold the house to my fiancee back in 2004 and that was the first time it had been on the market in over 30 years. As it turns out he gave us the best advice when valued last year but we ended up signing up with a more bullish agent who promptly failed to find even a single viewing despite me dropping the price over 25% once I had done some *proper* research. It's an old story. I think (hope) that what is happening is that different areas are all crashing back to around at different rates before pausing before the next leg down. Melton area didn't see a lot of HPI after 2004 so we might get lucky and see it pause here for a few months while other areas catch up. If not, well it's not that I don't want to take a loss - resigned to that - it's that we simply won't have the savings to buy ourselves out of the negative equity and the price is likely to go down faster than we can save... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleriad Posted March 15, 2009 Author Share Posted March 15, 2009 I'd rent it out if you can or let the girlfriend take the hit and go bankrupt. It already is rented out and the rent is slightly higher than the interest in the mortgage. And you don't get engaged to someone and let them "take the hit." As for prices, my regular monitoring on Rightmove for the area shows roughly 25% stc or under offer (out of about 30) compared to roughly 5% in the last few months. How many of those will conclude and what the final prices will be remain to be seen but what can be gleaned from Our Property at in the last few months is that there are so few sales you really can't draw any kind of informed opinion. My best guess is based on previous house crashes where prices tend to go down in a lump, pause for a while and then go down again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleriad Posted March 16, 2009 Author Share Posted March 16, 2009 if you've got tenants then at least you have the choice.as for 'And you don't get engaged to someone and let them "take the hit." ' How old are you? ... yes you can,the market is tanking.I'm trying to help,may not seem like it but if you want me to tell you what you want to hear,I can drop a few agents names who'd be more than happy. A) I'm 43 and I'm engaged as noted in my posts (she is not my "girlfriend") and c) if we have to become bankrupt then we become bankrupt together. Maybe I'm a little old-fashioned when it comes to the whole "for better or for worse" schtick. Thanks for the graphs. I have seen them before and am well aware that the market is "tanking." However a market that is falling does not fall at some universal, consistent rate; similarly local markets don't all act in tandem with a national market. My personal equation is based on how much of a loss we can afford to take by selling it now and whether it is possible to sell in the current market for that price or better. If not, do we hand in the keys or will it make sense to let it long term. That means finding out what is happening in the local market and seeing if there is price that is presently achievable. It is extremely hard to value the house because it is in a village, had not been on the market since before 1970 when my fiancée bought it and there are no directly comparable properties around. (It was built in 1820, has various original features, "quirky" layout; 2-3 bedrooms semi-detached is the best comparison.) My intent on asking here is to see if I can find an informed local opinion. Given that it takes a while for actual sale prices to come online it would be nice to know what the actual selling prices or experiences or trying to buy or sell recently have been. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleriad Posted March 16, 2009 Author Share Posted March 16, 2009 http://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/browse/leicestershire/have you played with this before? Thanks for the links to the auction sites. I have struggled to find auction results in the area. I "claimed" my house on zoopla a little while ago on the basis that it couldn't hurt. Our tenant is great; he took it on it the full knowledge that we would give him a 12 month contract and then put the house back on the market - which is where all the timing issues come from. He would stay longer but, like most people here, I tend to think that if we can't sell the house now it's going to be at least 5-7 years before prices get close to being back to where they are now. Will do that if there's no other choice but, basically, I think this is our last chance to escape with just a *small* loss (i.e. a few thousand). Do you have an experience with the house buying company you linked? I struggled to find examples that didn't look extremely dodgy but it's certainly a possible route to explore. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleriad Posted March 17, 2009 Author Share Posted March 17, 2009 must get back to work. Thanks for the suggestions. Time to see if we can get out of this trap before things get any worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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