First 2 pages on Property snake are showing discounts of 25% to 12 % on the first 10 properties listed. Looks like crash in full swing (for those that don't know the area Surbiton is a very desirable area in Royal Burgh of Kingston Upon Thames)

I have been seeing this for the last couple of months. 2 Bed flats in the nicer parts of town (by the river) that were going on for £350k and selling quickly last year are now down to £300-£325k and are sticking for months.

Houses don't seem to be coming down as much (very few in Surbiton itself), but are also hanging around for months on roads where they would have sold inside a week last year.

In a way, I think this is because Surbiton saw quite high % increases in 2007 compared to some areas. Overall, though, Surbiton is still very cheap compared to it's more fashionable neighbours like Wimbledon and Richmond, so it will be interesting to see what happens in those areas.

Another quick update on Surbiton/Thames Ditton.....

Three bed in Winters Road with a converted basement went on the market 3 months ago for £399,950 I just had an email from the estate agent and it is now £349,950. It is a buy to let, I know this because I viewed it about 18 months ago.

Things really are starting to move, towards the beginning/middle of 2007 this would have gone in days at full asking price!

I had a look in some estate agents windows in Surbiton this morning, and this is REALLY moving on now, for flats at least.

It has been quite a while since I have seen 2-bed flats in a reasonable part of the town with an asking price of £250k. There have always been loads in Berrylands, and down towards the Tolworth border, but this morning I saw adverts for decent looking 2 bedders in the Lovelace area, Cranes Park area and Ditton Hill all below the stamp duty limit.

This is a massive change from a year ago, when you could only get 1 bed places in these parts for that money. The 1 bed flats themselves are now much nearer £200k than £250k.

Even in the central (River Roads) area, things are coming down. There are very few 2 bed flats on above £300k now, and a few are down as low as £270k.

Houses are moving a little bit as well. A good example is a 2 bed victorian house on Cleaveland Road that is on for £399,950 - this would have been £450k+ six months ago.

still got a long way to go yet then

The comments for KT6 are a perfect illustration of how sentiment has changed over the last 9 months or so

Property Bee has discovered a new leader in the race to the bottom.

The previous biggest faller in Surbiton was this one with -25.4%

But as of yesterday, we have a new leader, with a massive -29% - this one.

Although it is not at the end I would choose to live at, and I still would not pay that much for it, I have to admit that the seller seems to understand the future and is taking the sort of action that a determined seller should take.

I might even make an offer when it hits 99k!

BD

Edit: speling

I have just posted on the Kingston thread about c.15% falls in the Maple Road area of Surbiton. As I suspected, it seems that the less sought after areas are even worse hit.

I don't know that area of the town that well, but I would assume that £220k for a 2 bed flat is already below the 2006 price. I remember seeing flats like that for £180-£200k as far back as 2003-4.

Drove down upper brighton road yesterday and noticed that there is an auction on a semi-detached house.

Checked at Barnard Marcus' site and it is the 29th July (tomorrow as I write this).

It is 11b and the guide is 390k. Not familiar with prices round that way so can't comment on whether that is high or not.

Interesting to see what it goes for.

The house is not in great condition from the outside and the garden looks overgrown.

That part is a bit cheaper, primarily because the road is so busy. From the recent ones I have seen £450-£475k seems about the norm for one in ok condition. If this one needs a refurb, £390k is probably top end, especially with the falls noted in the area at the moment.

Cheers worried1, it will be interesting to see if it sold for that or not. Only have a day to wait.

watched this auction live on the net. The property above had one bid of £415k and was UNSOLD at this. It wasn't a distress sale and it has development potential so these were probably contributing factors.

cheers
redshoes

Thanks for finding that out, I was busy yesterday and coulcn't check myself.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Still if it is not by order of the bank, that might explain it. Not sure what the development potential is, other than doing it up.
It is a busy road and a semi.

There is a 3 bed detached wreck in a quiet road in Esher that sold when the asking price was 450k (and is still under offer rather than sold).

That is interesting. Development potential or not, I think they would have been well advised to accept £415k unless they want to hang on for a while. Asking prices in Surbiton seem to be falling every day now.

The problem is with these 3 bed semis is that there are a few roads by the river and on the 'Southborough' estate where they are so scarce that people have been paying £600k+ for them. This leads people who own similar houses in the less sought after locations to think that theirs are worth not much less. Logically, it is a reasonable argument, but the market around here does not seem to work like that, and never has done.

This type of house is now regularly cropping up in the better parts of Tolworth with asking prices of well under £300k. I guess people are always going to prefer an average part of Surbiton to a good part of Tolworth, but the gap can only get so big...

It occurred to me on the way home lat night that this bid could have come from what I think they call "the wall", ie a false bid from the auction house to get things going. That might be why it didn't sell at that price, it may not have been a real bid.

I certainly wouldn't pay that much for it, even if I wanted to live there and it was done up.

You could be right. That location would not suit me particularly, but these houses have sold for more than that on this road in the last year or so, so I suppose it is not totally unreasonable.

This is the link to the BM auction held on the 29th. The house was lot 234.
http://www.barnardmarcusauctions.co.uk/Auction-Results.html

11B Upper Brighton Road, Surbiton, Surrey, KT6
http://www.eigroup.co.uk/auctioneers/templ...rn&l=508607

The property was bought for £410k on the 27/02/2008, the reserve at auction was £420k, highest bid £415.
That looks like an off-the-wall bid, be very careful buying at auction.

http://www.houseprices.co.uk/e.php?q=11B+U...rbiton&n=10

At a rough guess, you could rent something similar for about £1600pcm, so before renovations the yield is about 4.5%, that's still well in bubble territory.
Ten years ago that house would have cost £180k.
Call me old fashioned, but £400k for a 3 bed house in desperate need of modernisation on a noisy road still has a long way to drop.

Absolutely. Interesting that they were trying to offload it, undeveloped at pretty much what they bought it for plus costs.
Unless it was some sort of transfer.

Incidentally looking at the link and then clicking next a few times, there were quite a few bids just below the reserve, normally around 5k. The wall was my first thought on this property and it looks as though it will be the same on a lot of these as well. It won't be long before they won't even bother to hire someone to stand there making phoney bids. It won't be cost-effective.

Edit to complete a sentence I forgot about.

Hi,

I'm looking to buy in Surbiton and have so far seen 2 properties I like-


http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-185...=3&tr_t=buy
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-177...=3&tr_t=buy

Both new builds (or totally renovated), so its difficult to tell what their true value is. Do you guys think these are overpriced or do you know anything more about them?

Thanks Steve

Hi Steve,

Can you hang on for a while until the 2bedders come down in price?

Being stuck in a one bedroom flat all through the property crash could be daunting.

I can do yes. Why's that- Do you think that 1 beds will be hard to sell?

Do you think these 1 beds are really badly over-priced?

Oooo Steve you are either a) a comedian or very naive

...I wonder, you wonder, Stevie who...no Steve Wonder

I assume then that you mean that the flats I mention are over-priced and also 1 beds will be more difficult to sell. My apologies for my ignorance here, but I'm not an expereinced buyer of flats and I confess I don't undersatnd the market at all. So far, I've had contadictory advice about this. Not naive, or trying to be funny.

Steve,

The first flat is very over-priced. Even at the peak of the market, only the very best 1-bed flats in Surbiton went on with asking prices of £300k, and I doubt there were very many that achieived much more than £250k. We are now 10-15% off that peak.

I do not know this individual development, but it is in the worst part of the town. This would rule it out for me, even if it were well-priced.

The second flat is on a very busy road. This is not the best part of town, but not the worst either. In today's market, I would have thought this should be on for about £200k. I agree with the advice about perhaps looking for a 2 bed place, but if you definitely only need 1 bed, this would be my pick of what is on the market at the moment:

http://www.findaproperty.com/displayprop.a...p;agentid=05559 - Good size, and in a nice, quiet part of town.

http://www.findaproperty.com/displayprop.a...p;agentid=05559 - Very central, but not as noisy/busy as Ewell Road.

http://www.findaproperty.com/displayprop.a...p;agentid=01545 - probably the nicest location, but less flat for the money.

All of these are priced about 10% off would they would have been last year, but in the current market, I would expect a lot more off.


New-build is a bit of a problem in Surbiton at the moment. There are a couple of developments that are just too central (Surbiton Quarter, Surbiton Place) and the rest of them are in the poorer areas of town like Alpha Road. Three large houses in Maple Road have just been sold off with permission to build 21 flats. This will be a nice, well located development, but I would be surprised if they bother building it during the current downturn.

Surbiton is a great area, but it is worth doing a bit of research as some parts offer much better value than others.

Are you sure you want a kitchen in your living room?

In the Ewell Road one?

I totally agree. I think that this is a massive failing with most of the conversion flats being completed at the moment. These are the flats that will lose the most value as their market must be severely limited.

Traditionally, conversion flats have had a large living room and a small, separate kitchen. Developers have now cottoned on to the idea of using the small kitchen as a bedroom, so that a studio flat becomes a 1 bed flat and a 1 bed flat becomes a 2 bed etc.

Aye - and don't they just take umbrage if you suggest you might be interested, as long as they can slap up a wall between the kitchen adn the rest

Cheers mate, really helpful post! I am not going to rush, I think. I'm so glad I've found this site- this kind of stuff is so helpful!

Anyone in Surbiton free on Saturday?

See

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...amp;hl=surbiton

I am interested to see how these flats get on in the falling market. Langley Avenue is a fantastic road, and the flats there will always be amongst the most expensive in Surbiton, but £475k for a 2 bed flat of any kind starts to look a bit more ridiculous now you are starting to see 3 bed houses in good parts of town for that sort of money.

I have given up looking at property snake - or at least take their huge percentage drops with a pinch of salt - as the huge drops are inevitably for properties that were so over-prived to begin with that the sellers have had to drop hugely to even begin to contemplate actually finding a buyer. Which serious sellers are now doing. There are plenty of muppets still asking crazy prices.

I had another look in some Surbiton estate agents windows this morning - this is REALLY moving on now.

There are now several good sized 2 bed flats in ok locations (e.g.Ewell Road) on with asking prices of £225k. This is the type of flat that would have gone on for £285k - £300k at the peak, so I expected them to get sucked down below £250k quite quickly, but a £225k asking price indicates that sellers may be prepared to accept nearer £200k.

Either way, £285k to £225k is a minimum 20% drop already, and I expect sellers were getting a bigger proportion of asking price in 2007 than now.

The better areas around Maple Road are showing drops as well, with virtually all 2 bed flats now having an asking price of less than £300k. Some of these were up for as much as £375k last year.

There are a number of 1 bed flats back below the £175k stamp duty limit as well - only the real dross was below £200k last year.

Houses out towards Berrylands and Long Ditton seem to have taken a 20% hit in asking prices as well.

My feeling is that Surbiton is back to late 2004 / early 2005 prices now.

when it gets back to near 2001 then i'm looking...

One of the flats that I have been watching for ages has just sold (stc). It is a 2 bed flat on one of the river roads, looks ok in terms of size/condition, but not exceptional.

This went on at the start of 2008 at £350k, which they probably would have got in 2007 judging by similar sold prices. It has been steadily reduced until it got down to £285k a few weeks ago.

I very much doubt it has gone for asking price, but even if it did that is an 18% drop from peak. If it completes, I will be interested to see the actual selling price and what % drop it represents.

Houses are made for homes the greed of today's person made this crash happen and the spiv's who run the stock market "who" break companies are now responsable for kicking the home owners these Low lives inturn should be weeded out and their assets removed you may call it the nick L,,,son syndrome and the same should happen with a one in front of his sentence I could have cleaned you windows sixty years ago as i lived in Kingston

If anyone is looking for an affordable home, then I can put this forward on basis of price :- http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-197...p;mam_disp=true.

Granted, it does not look much from the outside but I have not seen a flat in central Surbiton for 139k for quite some time. The floorplan tells us that for your money you will own an entire 28 sq meters, so cat-swingers need not apply.

These have really started to come down in price. They are built on top of an existing block of flats right in the centre of town. It is a convenient, if very noisy location.

These first came on the market a couple of months ago at about £175k. The reduction in price of better-sized one bedroom flats to around that level has obviously forced them down a bit, but 28 sq metres is really more of a studio than a proper 1 bed flat, so I think they may have a way to go.

I am looking to buy in Surbiton, and am loathed to go further down the trainline, but the fact that you can get a much better sized flat than this for £140k in places like Walton and Woking is tempting.

I'd strongly recommend you go no further thank Walton, or really just hang on for Surbiton prices to get in your range - me and my now missus had the same dilemma some years back. We moved to Woking as it was cheaper. We call the time we spent there "the wilderness years".

I have waited a while already, so a couple more years won't make any difference. I can't realistically see myself moving out of Surbiton anytime soon. For me, it has just the right balance between London and Surrey living that is lost by moving just a few miles further up or down the trainline.

It is quite strange, because a lot of people I know have no interest in living somewhere like this, some want the true urban experience of somewhere like Clapham while others want a quieter place like Walton or Weybridge, but none of them wants the middle ground.

EDIT: Double post

Want to see something funny?

Stick KT7 0AQ into whichever website you use to look at the Land Registry prices and see the difference in price between No.s 36 and 38 between Nov.07 and June 08.

Yes they are next door.

I will be watching this with interest over the coming months as the big drops start to filter through.

What is interesting about this one is that no. 36 sold for £250k in June 06. The fact that no. 38 sold for £260k in June 08 would indicate that we were already back to 2006 prices by then. Most of the Surbiton area seems to be back to 2004 prices now, so I would be interested to see what the next one down this road sells for!

To be honest, whenever I've had to go to Surbiton it feels more like 1974.

I wish it was 1974 prices,


just looked up my parents old house sole last year for 995k
in 1972 they bought for 37,500
in 1978 they sold it for 127,500
guess now its worth 825k but still not 70's prices (i wish)

Could someone who is familiar with the area give their opinion on the following property please? It would be very much appreciated as I am looking in the area near the station and was astounded to see this be listed for 500k a couple of months ago and then the very next day be listed for 525k. Are these guys dreaming?! There's no parking and half the cars on the road have to stick two wheels on the curb.

http://dexs.webdadi.biz/details.dtx?proper...8B-3CEEEE40FA12

Arlington Road is a bit of a strange one IMO. It is in a very central location, but is actually too close to the railway, meaning that you would get a lot of train noise. You also have to walk down the grotty Brighton Road everytime you want to get to the river.

The price is high due to the rarity of houses in central Surbiton - it is an area full of converted and purpose built flats, and even the smallest houses have always commanded a hefty premium. The houses that are there only rarely have off street parking, unless you are looking at the high end £1m+ market.

This one is the best part of £100k over-priced, I think. These Victorian detached houses have always been pretty much in line with the 3 bed terraces on the 'river roads' off Maple Road (better location but smaller houses). These peaked at about £550k in 2007, but are now back to not much more than £400k.

If I were you, I would be tempted to look on the other side of the railway line, particularly around Maple Road. It is a much quieter area, and you have the advantage of being right on the river and only a 15 minute walk from Kingston town centre. You can still get to the station in not much more than 5 minutes.

Thanks very much for this, really appreciate the advice. I'll check out the areas you suggest now!

No problem. Unfortunately, there is not a single decent house on the market in any of those roads at the moment - I am (passively) looking as well.

The roads to look at are St Leonards, Westfield, The Mall, Cadogan, Grove, Catherine. All are very different in terms of house types, so there should be something to suit everyone. Try to avoid the ends of the roads too close to Maple and Portsmouth Roads as these can be quite noisy. Perhaps I am just too fussy

Worried, do you have any idea what kind of prices these houses on the river roads were fetching in, say, 2003? What would you think they might fall to in a couple years time, assuming any came up for sale?

The Mall is a good example as it is a road of 1930's 3 bed semis. Houseprices.co.uk shows that these were going for around £425k in 2003. They went on to peak at about £650k in 2007 (the ones that show at £700k+ are extended to 4/5 beds).

Altough quite boring, these houses are quite a rarity in central Surbiton because they have proper driveways and garages, and on-road parking is limited to certain parts of the road. They are a lot more expensive than very similar houses outside of the town centre, which peaked at well under £500k last year. I am not sure whether this means they will lose more in % terms or not.

Cleaveland Road is made up of 2/3 bed Victorian terraces. These seemed to be about £300k in 2003, and peaked at about £500k last year. Again, they are expensive compared to similar houses in the outskirts of town. This is a great location, but my view will be that these prices will be hit quite hard, because you get so little space for the money. Some of the larger flats in the area give you more space, and are sometimes only half the price.

The other roads are a bit difficult to generalise about as they are so varied - £1.5m Victorian houses standing next to flats etc.