Thursday, Jul 12, 2007
Sellers must be "realistic" in SW8
PropertySnake: Battersea & Clapham
Slashing asking prices has become quite common south of the river, and EAs are also talking the prices down (I mean privately) since there is many more EAs competing for fewer sales. Race to the bottom has started!
Posted by confused76 @ 11:18 AM (188 views) Add Comment
11 Comments
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1. Stoatgobbler said...
Saw three houses last week on the common and chase areas in Clapham. The agent actually CALLED UP afterwards to check our interest (there was none) which has to be the surest, clearest sign of an imminent decline in prices! Very very odd behaviour. No offers from anyone on any of the houses to date by the way.
2. Scott said...
Clapham, Battersea, Lewisham, Peckham, Brixton; south of the river is really bad. The prices are unjustified. Reminds me of Only Fools And Horses where Rodney comes back from a break and looks out the window and says "I missed that", then Del says "The only thing that missed that is the bloody luftwaffe".
3. planning4acrash said...
This is an area dominated by young first time buyers. If there is a FTB exodus, it could begin in places like this, but, it will take a lot to knock the Clapham market dead. I hear people say that a room in a shared house can be chased by as many as 50 odd people in the peak months. If places like this fall, its not from choice, it will be a forced thing from people basically not being able to afford and from more flats coming onto the market. The question is, can FTB's afford 250-275k for a one bed flat? Paying about £350/week on a 7% variable rate when you can rent a studio or 1-bed flat for anything between 180-250/week. I rent a studio in the area for £180/wk including bills, so won't be buying for a while! That extra £150/week is being saved for a deposit when prices come back down!
BTW, property snake has been showing a similar qty of price falls for a while now, I've been checking SW4. It will be interesting if qty's go above 200, closer to 300. 150 odd reduced properties isn't enough to create a buyers market, so maybe wait till the autumn or January and 6 - 6.25% rates for the tide to turn. These types of places are congested with BTL flats, many bought in the last few yrs, a couple of BTL empires falling would start a localised panick that could quickly have a ripple effect if it stops other people from selling at prices they want and forms a growing que of sellers, rather like on the motorway, when a freely moving road suddenly stops for apparently no reason and thousands of cars turn the place into a car park!
4. Pelethar said...
Somehow this website's existence has passed me by - it's great! Are there any historical statistics available from it? - eg monthly number, value and average % reduction by postcode? Or is the raw data available anywhere?
5. Anotherclaphamite said...
Snap. I wonder how many more of us there are in the 'hood..
6. doomwatch said...
It would not surprise me to see prices dropping off here.
Back in 95 Clapham and the surrounding areas were relatively leafy
areas for less well off families, and had a problem with crime.
However, despite the fact a lot of cabbies wouldn't even go there in 95, a
lot of young profs p1ssed of with rising rents in "trendy" Islington and
Notting Hill, along with canny landlords, took advantage of bargains sold at auction
from repossessions after the last crash.
Since then Clapham became a popular rental area for antipodeans etc to
become the BTL Citadel it is today, and a lot of churn has bloated prices well beyond sane values.
I would imagine over 50% of properties in SW8, SW11, SW12 are BTL.
Needless to say a lot of those young prof and landlord buyers back in 95-98 are
now deciding to cash in, so I'd expect the volumes on property snake for these post codes
to rise significantly over the next few months. I would imagine rentals will drop around
Clapham soon also, as it has become a victim of it's own success; lot's of miserable
people in the morning who can't get on the rammed Northern line won't want to live there much
longer, and the village feel has been lost at weekends with an influx of scum bags
from further sarf, innit.
7. Popalot said...
I think Clapham has become possibly the most overpriced area in London. I lived there for a year and have never felt so unsafe, anywhere in the world, and I have travelled widely. Clapham High Street is filthy and features a permanent cast of down and outs and general low life. The fact that small victorian terraced houses are going for £1m when you can't actually leave the front door with any real sense of safety or reach any shops or restaurants worth much means it will fall the furthest. IMHO
8. Bottledtolet said...
I've rented in Clapham with my missus for 2 years. £460/m for a room in a shared victorian house 'between the commons' (it's cheap for clapham, our elederly Irish 'hobby' landlord is slightly cenile and hasn't a clue about letting). I noticed more of the 4/5 bed houses put the For Sale signs out pre-HIPS (say 1 in ten houses compared to 1 in 40 previosuly). I think this area is more likely to get done over by a reposession induced panic (steets full of For Sale signs - I can't wait!), rather than FTB evaporation, since I'm sure a lot of families here will have borrowed BIG to buy these places.
Spent most of last year looking to buy for £250k but the supply was very poor and gradually got priced out of Clapham, started looking at Balham, etc. Then decided we didn't want a mammoth mortgage given that our rent is so cheap, so we looked at a £125k BTL investment in my hometown of Birmingham. Got all the way to the survey stage on that one before bottling it. The sums simply weren't adding up, we'd have needed capital gains of at least 4% to break even vs. putting the deposit (40k) in the bank, and that was with a fixed rate of 5.29%. So we concluded that in our situation, BTL is a loser, and buying-to-live-in is a stupid and inflexible thing to do at the top of the market.
A friend who has been developing one-bed flats (~£120k-140k) in Streatham (one at a time) has asked us if we want to partner with her. She started with nothing, and has been making about 30k each time, but it takes her 4-6 months on her own, so doesn't mind splitting profits in exchange for speeding up the work and spreading the risk. I think I'm going to give this one a whirl, cos even if they start to crash while we're developing, provided we make the place look mint we should be able to tempt a sale through by dropping the price and should still break even, and can then just sit and wait for the prices to bottom out. I just look forward to the proper crash where we can buy somewhere nice to live in!
9. Bottledtolet said...
doomwatch
I've definitely noticed the scum bags sneaking in. Was woken up by a noisy chav showdown in the middle of the street at 3am recently!
10. Scott said...
South London makes Cambodia look like Beverly Hills
11. doomwatch said...
Bottledtolet, think your friend should issue flak jackets and/or stab vests for any unsuspecting mugs
who move into that Streatham development.