[Catflap]

The sub £100,000 terrace will soon make a welcome return to first-time-buyers in Norwich as prices continue their dramatic slide since the peak last year. After the relentless upward trend in prices that has seen many north city terraces advertised at around £150,000 only last year, many young couples will be glad that some sense of normality is being restored to the market. Buy-to-let 'investors' have been the main driver behind the ever increasing prices as the Victorian terraces have been a firm favourite - now they appear to be on the run and are selling their now empty properties.

Check out this north city property for £109,995

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-211...13&tr_t=buy

Haggle hard and you will get it for even less - recently refurbished by the looks of it and chain free. Whatever it eventually goes for, a new margin price is created on similar properties in that area.... other properties that come on the market have their valuation based to a large part on what similar properties have sold for recently, not what they sold for last year.

So that leaves us with the auction terraces that are now coming back on the market and NOT selling - what are the worth?. The latest TOPS auction today (May 22 2008) featured 2 north city terraces:

Lot 21 - 242 Silver Road, Norwich, NR3 4TL (Guide Price £90,000 - £100,000) AVAILABLE
Lot 34 - 3 Silver Street, Norwich, NR3 4TT (Guide Price £90,000 - £110,000) AVAILABLE AT £90,000

Neither sold so you have to wonder what the true market value of these now is - it's certainly less than £90,000 but how much lower is anyones guess. But the point is you can always negotiate hard - it's a buyers market and a sellers nightmare so that first sub £100,000 terrace has arrived for those that wish to buy and have a big enough deposit. What's incredible is the prices people were prepared to pay a year ago - a few on here will remember the big 'seasoned' landlord who dumped his whole 'north city' portfolio into the TOPS auction house in April last year (some 40 to 50 properties I think...). They all sold and were mainly bought by newbie buy-to-let landlords as many had sitting tenants - TOPS actually marketed these as great investments as they already had paying tenants so you got an income stream from day one!

TOPS auction 12 April 2007 details and results

I can't find a north city terrace that was bought for less than £121,500 - I would love to have been at the auction as it must have been a real feeding frenzy with many newbie amateurs outbidding each other with their cheap interest only BTL mortgage deals from lenders like Northern Rock. Anything over £125,000 and they were also paying some lovely stamp duty to Gordon Brown for the pleasure of buying into the biggest ponzi schemes the UK housing market has had.

The average price paid for the first 16 properties listed in that auction was £128,500 - that was a year ago. You can now buy a similar property for around £90,000 or less from auction - that's a massive drop in value of 30% in only 1 year. The next property auction is with Brown & Co. and this once again features some NR3 terraces but if the TOPS auction is anything to go buy, these will also fail to sell as they have similar guide prices:

http://www.brown-co.com/auctions_residenti...es/19.06.08.pdf

Next target is the first sub £100,000 terrace in the fabled Golden Triangle - I don't think that's going to happen this year but you never know....

This post has been edited by CATFLAP: 22 May 2008 - 10:54 PM

[MattW]

BRING IT ON!

That Knowsley Road house is quite nice. I don't even mind it having a 1980s kitchen. Bear in mind though that it doesn't appear to have a rear box room, which might count against it price wise.

I am due to remortgage in Oct 2009 and it might be possible that I can afford one of these houses. OK, the value of my flat will fall as well but I think it will be worth it if the next rung is obtainable.

[Andytgt]

I am looking to buy in that area this time next year and I am watching the prices, they are falling from £140k average to £120k average but that one at £109,950 is a new low, and to be honest a good £10k cheaper than what I would have expected it to go on for, i dont expect it to stay on for long at that price, but the next round on may now be £115k range, then £110 over the Summer and sub £100k after then? Perhaps.

Fair play to the Buy to Let guy who sold out in April, timed it to perfection I would say. I have no problem with people making a profit, he took the risks and made the £s. Its people who thought they could go in blindly with no knowledge or experiance and "build a buy to let portfolio", "for the long term" with no risk and expecting huge rewards now whinging that annoy me. He saw the market was overpriced so got out, well done that man.

[DementedTuna]

Yeah, anyone selling in April was smart enough to reduce prices significantly to avoid chasing the market down with minor cuts.

[Catflap]

Here's another one in great condition that's just come on the market for £114,950 undercutting similar offerings in the area by a large margin.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-164...=9&tr_t=buy


There seems to be loads of north city terraces in the £130,000 to £140,000 bracket on Rightmove so these two properties at £109,950 and £114,950 are really well priced in relation to them - lets see how quickly they sell. If the next lot of terraces fail to sell at auction then I can see new guides being given by the auctioneers of £70,000 to £90,000 in a few months time.

[DementedTuna]

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-105...=1&tr_t=buy

North City again, not too far north though... £105k for a 3-bed semi.

There was a 3-bed down by barrack street (really nice area next to woodland) that quickly sold for the same price.. very good deal.

I am personally holding out for a decent 3-bedder around £90k in an area that I'm happy with (plenty of space for a young family if I meet a girl, tax-free lodger income if not). It's going to take me the next 2 years to save up a deposit anyway, so I should probably stop stalking rightmove and get on with earning it.

This post has been edited by DementedTuna: 08 June 2008 - 04:55 PM

[howlowcanyougo]

CATFLAP, on May 25 2008, 12:09 AM, said:

There seems to be loads of north city terraces in the £130,000 to £140,000 bracket on Rightmove so these two properties at £109,950 and £114,950 are really well priced in relation to them - lets see how quickly they sell.

.... very quickly.

So there are buyers out there but they are only buying the bargains???

EAs in Norwich seem to think that real selling prices are already about 15% down on this time last year, rather than the 5% suggested by Nationwide, Halifax etc.

[Catflap]

Bargains.... where?!

No people believe they are getting a bargain with 15% to 20% off 2007 highs but the reality is they are still paying far too much in relation to their earnings. The bargains will come when no one wants property because 'it's a bad investment' and keeps going down in value each year - expect that to be around 2012/2013.

When you can buy the average house at less than 3.5 times average earnings then you can say that you're getting a bargain.

[Catflap]

A £100,000 north city terrace in the Silver Road/Marlborough Road area - looks to be a repo as the windows have been boarded up or is there another reason?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-181...19&tr_t=buy

[waitingandsaving]

CATFLAP, on Jun 15 2008, 01:01 PM, said:

A £100,000 north city terrace in the Silver Road/Marlborough Road area - looks to be a repo as the windows have been boarded up or is there another reason?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-181...19&tr_t=buy

You beat me to it! I couldn't quite work out if it was a house with very well washed windows or if they were boarded up in the picture in the paper (the shiny door gave it away in the end...) Abbots have it as POA.

One other Repo in the paper - 63 Soleme Road (Drayton rd/Bignold Rd way) for offers over the existing £104,950 offer. It was bought in 2004 for £72,000.

[MattW]

waitingandsaving, on Jun 15 2008, 02:18 PM, said:

You beat me to it! I couldn't quite work out if it was a house with very well washed windows or if they were boarded up in the picture in the paper (the shiny door gave it away in the end...) Abbots have it as POA.

I walked past this house the other week (Morley Street, just off Mousehold St). It was on for about £113k and was previously photographed without the shutters. To the right are 2 council houses opposite a park that are also abandoned and boarded up. The plot thickens...

[DementedTuna]

"3 bedrooms" is really stretching the description for that one, it's a 2-bed terrace with an attached study.

The area isn't bad though, I used to live about 2 minutes away from that place.

[howlowcanyougo]

The 100K (repo?) terrace has sold. Was it the first sub 100K terrace?

The latest 110K one is still for sale:
http://www.rightmove...ls-19949207.rsp

and there are a couple at 115K

.... and this one is up for auction with a guide price of 85K !!!!!
http://www.rightmove...ls-21923069.rsp

This post has been edited by howlowcanyougo: 25 June 2008 - 11:18 AM

[MattW]

howlowcanyougo, on Jun 25 2008, 12:14 PM, said:

.... and this one is up for auction with a guide price of 85K !!!!!
http://www.rightmove...ls-21923069.rsp

That one's just gone on the market. Parking might be an issue as its a single yellow line on the road. There is a permit holder's car park close by though.

[Catflap]

As we know from one of the previous auctions, the guide prices starting at £90,000 were too high and this guide price is still likely to be too high. I think these north city terraces need to have guides of around £70,000 to £90,000 in todays market if they are to have any chance of selling.