jmk

I feel you are right. Yesterday the agent called me to see if I'd raise my offer as they'd just had another offer in at asking price. I said no thanks. Today, I received an email with the property at a reduced asking price - down around 5%. My original offer is now around 97% of that asking price!

For what it's worth ... I actually made an offer on a place in KT2 this week. I thought it was a good offer - just over 90% of the asking price. It was flatly rejected. In a way, I'm actually glad, since it was only really impatience getting the better of me. Let's hope the correction gets underway soon :angry: ... and those boats are an eyesore. They've been there for quite a while now. Wish they'd spring a leak.

How overpriced is this area? Well, here's a property that must provide a benchmark. It's a 4-bedroom townhouse in the centre of Kingston, priced at 550K. http://www.findaproperty.com/displayprop.aspx?edid=00&salerent=0&pid=6514641 From what I can see, all the properties in this little row are identical. In fact, I looked at #1 about 2 years ago when it was put up for sale. I didn't like it at all - and it seems the vendor withdrew that one. http://www.houseprices.co.uk/e.php?q=nightingale+mews%2C+kt1 As you can see in the link above, the last property to sell here (in June 2007 at the height of the boom) went for 458K. So this has been priced by the agent about 20% above peak price. Do you think this is the standard premium to 2007 prices across the area?

I'm not surprised either. Does surprise me that we voted this lot back in again

Seems to me that there are a lot more properties coming on in North Kingston (the area I'm interested in). My Globrix search email has gone from a trickle of 1 or 2 properties every few days or so, to multiple properties each day - for instance 36 three+ bedroom properties in the last 6 days. Of course, asking prices are crazy. But things could be getting interesting at last ...

After some time I actually got a response on this matter from the council, in the form of an email from a "level 2 correspondence team advisor." He told me that my comments had been passed on to one of the "Green Spaces Team Officers" who had passed my complaint on to their grounds maintenance partners, Quadron Services, who are responsible for the cleansing of the Memorial Gardens. The green spaces team officer commented: "I am sorry to hear of the condition you found the Memorial Gardens in. The cleansing schedule for the garden is a daily morning litter pick and emptying of bins during the winter months, with a second afternoon visit included to carry out these operations in the busier summer months, traditionally starting from May." Level 2 Correspondence Team Advisor! Green Spaces Officer! Grounds Maintenance Partners! You can't make this sh!t up. And anyway Mr Green Spaces officer, the council is responsible. Quadron services are merely implementing your totally inadequate cleaning schedule. Talk about passing the buck. Just employ a good old fashioned parkie FFS. Oh - of course - nobody wants to do that sort of thing anymore. They want to sit in an office and be called a "green spaces officer" etc etc I wonder if anything will change after next Thursday ... let's hope so.

A little bit off-topic, and a bit of a rant, but I was in the centre of Kingston at the weekend to do some shopping with the family. The weather was glorious, so we decided to eat a sandwich outside in the Memorial Gardens. The place was filthy. The bins were overflowing with putrefying food. The pavement was covered in pigeon excrement. Broken glass everywhere. It was truly disgusting. We let our 3 year old run around on the grass and soon discovered him picking up a paper cup half full of vodka. Of course we left immediately. Unbelievable. I know it gets busy but surely they can do better than this - it is the only small piece of parkland in the centre of Kingston. It should be something precious ... an oasis ... with manicured lawns, clean benches to sit on etc. Other towns manage it on much smaller budgets. Sent an email to the council ... yet to be acknowledged of course. There you go ... rant over. The thing that really gets me is that we pay one of the highest council taxes in the land and yet they still can't get simple things like this right.

Thanks. I'll follow this with interest.

The website says "under offer" which of course is quite different to "sold." However, if it were to complete, it'd be interesting to see how much it finally went for. What's the street number?

Here's a question for you ... I'm looking at eventually buying in the North Kingston area to the east of Richmond Road (if I can ever find something I like that is reasonably priced ). Has anyone been following properties in this area on Rightmove etc and then on houseprices.co.uk? If so, do you know generally at what discount, if any, that sales are going through at? Although I haven't seen any examples quite so bad as the one in the previous post, the asking prices, even on a relative basis, do seem high.

Either they are (having a laugh) or they are clinically insane. Trouble is ... however insane they are, there always seems to be someone out there (the greater fool) even more insane. Surely this is a step too far though, even if the "valuation" is unwritten by the professional judgement of "Waterview Properties."

I'm afraid this is what a £1m property looks like these days. It's what everyone on a £250k salary aspires to, don't you know