Muswell Hillbilly
-
Posts
535 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Muswell Hillbilly
-
-
Hi. Was well-over 300k really that common for a 2-bed in marchmont/bruntsfield?
£280k yes, but well over £300k?
I am referring to non-maindoor flats here. I presume you are also?
Yes, totally! And I think that in years to come (before the next boom) people will find it hard to believe that two-bed flats really did cost that much.
I’ve been monitoring the local market for the last two years, and here are some examples, all of them classic two-bed tenement flats with big bay-windowed living room, kitchen/diner, boxroom and long narrow bathroom. They were in good condition, but were otherwise not exceptional:
• 63 (2F?) Warrender Park Road, OO £225K on 24 Jan 2007, sold for £315,315 on 30 Apr 2007
• 68/5 Spottiswoode Street, OO £235K on 15 Feb 2007, sold for £316,157 on 7 May 2007
• 4 (1F2) Marchmont Street, OO £230K on 12 Apr 2007, sold for £335,800 on 25 Jul 2007
• 51 (3F?) Thirlestane Road, OO £240K on 12 Jun 2007, sold for £330,000 on 10 Sep 2007
• 9/5 Spottiswoode Street, OO £235K on 12 Feb 2008, sold for £340,100 on 8 Apr 2008
• 14 (1F2) Montpelier Park, OO £220K on 21 Feb 2008, sold for £310,000 on 5 June 2008
• 39 (3F2) Marchmont Crescent, OO £239K on 25 Mar 2008, sold for £325,000 on 13 May 2008
• 20 (1F?) Arden Street, OO £245K on 26 Mar 2008, sold for £337,777 on 28 May 2008
Have a look on nethouseprices.com or a similar site. If the sale price is over £350K, chances are that it was a three-bedroom flat (more likely to be the case on Thirlestane Road, Forbes Road or high numbers on Warrender Park Road), but it under £350K, it was most likely a regular two-bedder like the above. I have a big collection of schedule PDFs, along with the original asking prices!
-
I think it was 6/1 Gladstone Terrace but I could be wrong. I meant to save the schedule PDF but didn't. It was a ground floor left flat.
Aha, many thanks for the info. Unfortunately it’s not one for which I have the schedule, as it’s outside of my preferred area.
Nevertheless, your experience confirms that properties with lower asking prices than their neighbours can still sell quite quickly, even in the current climate. In the summer there was one that I viewed in Montpelier Park, Bruntsfield, which came to the market at OO 210, rather than the more usual asking prices like OO 245, and it sold really quickly. I’ve just checked, and it turns out it went for 250. Another one on the same street also went for 250, but it took two months longer to sell; its asking price was OO 229.
Both of these confirm my belief that 250K is now the standard price, or even the ceiling price, for two-bed tenement flats in Marchmont and Bruntsfield. To anybody who denies that there have been significant price falls in Edinburgh, I must point out again that these flats were selling for well over 300K as recently as spring 2008. This is a fall of at least a sixth, or 18%. But that doesn’t mean nothing will sell; if the asking price is lower than that of its competitors, and the vendors accept reasonable offers, a property will find a buyer.
-
Two months ago I went to a first Sunday viewing for a nice 2-bedroom Marchmont ground floor flat. It was priced to undercut some similar property. It had sold within 5 days. The viewing book had over 20 names in it.
Deleriad, please either PM me or post to the forum the address of the flat in question, because I’m intrigued as to which one it was, and I probably have its details saved. I haven’t been on any viewings myself for several months, so your research would be useful to me, and possibly to others on here. Thanks.
-
The crazy 9x multiples seen in england were just not common in Scotland at all. The Scottish market rose less, and will crash less, than elsewhere.
Do you have any evidence at all for this?
Who was funding the mortgages for people to offer £330K on two-bed tenement flats in Marchmont? The same banks that were funding insane bubble prices in England. After all, Bank of Scotland = Halifax, RBS = NatWest, and all the other motley crew of banks and former building societies are the same in Scotland as in England.
In the last bubble of the late 1980s, the Scottish market rose less, but that’s plainly not true this time. In fact the offers-over system probably helped push prices in some areas even higher (compared with salaries) than in England.
-
lux·u·ry (lgzh-r, lksh-)
n. pl. lux·u·ries
1. Something inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort.
2. Something expensive or hard to obtain.
3. Sumptuous living or surroundings: lives in luxury.
I think the use of the word luxury is quite apt.
4. Does not have a kitchen, but there is a kitchenette in the corner of the living room.
Surely that’s the current definition of ‘luxury’, as it seems to be the thing that all ‘luxury apartments’ have in common.
-
At least renting in London is a damn site easier than stuffy Edinburgh.
Yeah, but in London £900 per month gets you a crappy two-bed conversion of around 65 square metres with zero storage and no garden access in a mediocre area miles away from anywhere (I have East Dulwich in mind, from bitter experience!), whereas in Edinburgh £725 per month gets you an 85-square-metre elegant purpose-built tenement flat in a high-quality area a stone’s throw from the city centre.
London may have a much more varied lettings market than Edinburgh, but London rents are so high. It’s largely based on the rental yields that I have long been convinced that Edinburgh sale prices have a long way to fall. The £900 per month flat in London mentioned above would, at the height of the bubble, have sold for maybe £270K, whereas the £725 Edinburgh flat would have sold for £330K.
-
I'm concerned about the possiblity of a drought. I'm just disliking the quietness of ESPC recently, but hopefully it's a sign of people buckling down for the winter.
Is is just me? Or does anyone else think this is one of the quiest periods in years?
I don’t think it’s any worse than normal for December, other than maybe being compounded by the introduction of Home Reports (or whatever they’re called) on 1 December.
Looking back at my archive of properties from my search, here are the numbers collected per month last autumn/winter:
Oct 2007: 20
Nov 2007: 8
Dec 2007: 2
Jan 2008: 17
Feb 2008: 26
So virtually nothing appeared on the market in December last year, either. I shall expect a significant pick-up in January, followed by a veritable flood in February.
-
Why are almost all rental properties in edinburgh let furnished ? Who wants someone else's mangy furniture in their place ?
In europe most places are let unfurnished and on much longer leases. No wonder there's a vibrant rental sector.
I agree that it’s very weird in Edinburgh, and very annoying. In established tenement areas, only about 1 in 10 or even fewer of properties for rent are unfurnished. In areas of speculative new-build flats, the proportion of unfurnished seems to be higher.
In London, where I lived for a long time, in my experience it’s about 50/50 between furnished and unfurnished.
I would have thought that the high proportion of people renting now, due to being priced out of buying, would mean that unfurnished lets would be more popular, but seemingly the average Edinburgh landlord hasn’t realised this yet.
Is it the same in Glasgow too, or is this just an Edinburgh speciality? Any Glaswegians care to comment?
-
My regular search (over 150K, 2+ bedrooms, Marchmont/Bruntsfield and around) is now returning exactly 100 properties, after peaking at around 120 sometime during the summer. Nothing new is coming to the market, some properties are being taken off (for Christmas? or ‘Let’s just rent it out instead’?), but in any case nothing seems to be selling. I expect my search results to drop below 100 very soon.
What a boring time of year, and what a long, slow drag waiting for this crash to play out.
Let’s hope for some new properties coming to the market in January, at lower prices, and for some Edinburgh property solicitors to go out of business! What on earth do they do with themselves at the moment?
-
clearly its not at J-Berg proportions but there has been plenty of attacks reported in the area, so it's therefore not piffle either. i was a student in the area a couple, of years ago, and was advised to avoid the area.
more:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/edinburgh?articleid=4029113
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland?articleid=4568103
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/edinburghp...able.3296323.jp
edit to add a statsistic from one of the articles:
Thanks for the links. Of those incidents reported, though, the two mentioned in the first article took place at 0200 and 0230, and the one in the second article occurred around 0400. At those times of night, inevitably there would be fewer people around, and a sensible person would exercise caution anywhere in a city. (I very much doubt whether I would walk across the Meadows myself at those times.)
The third incident was more worrying, taking place at 0030 while there were still many people around. However, while not wanting to detract from the horror of the attack described, it was just a regular mugging, of the kind that wouldn’t even make it into the local papers in London.
If your lifestyle involves frequently crossing parts of town at those kinds of times, then yes, you’d probably want to avoid living in a location that requires crossing the Meadows, but your original statement about anyone female getting attacked after dusk was a gross exaggeration. I just wouldn’t want J’adoube or anyone else getting the impression that it’s a no-go zone.
-
they are charging London/Manhattan/Singapore prices for Edinburgh (the meadows, where anything in a skirt gets attacked after dusk).
Sorry Eejit, but that’s absolute piffle. The paths across the Meadows are very well lit and a great many people walk across them at all hours. Naturally one should exercise some caution very late at night, but generally speaking crime is low on the Meadows and around Marchmont and Bruntsfield. It’s pointless scaremongering to make a statement like that.
Besides, ‘after dusk’ can be as early as 15.45 in Edinburgh in the winter, and I think you’ll find Middle Meadows Walk is almost as busy as Princes Street at around that time.
I’m posting this mostly for the benefit of Jadoube in response to his question:
I grew up in Edinburgh, and am about to move back after over 30 years away. With wife & daughters to consider local opinions like this can be important. How much weight should I put on it? And can people offer any similar thoughts relating to the safety of other areas of Edinburgh? -
Speaking of newbuilds, I'm keeping my eye on http://www.qmile.com ; a huge development (conversion and newbuild) where even the most tiny sub 500 square foot one bed flats are being marketed at £230,000. … Who wants to live in those horrible old Victorian infirmary buildings ?
Personally I’d much rather live in one of those solid, elegant and well-proportioned Victorian infirmary buildings than in one of the hideous glass-and-prefab-panel blocks that are being squashed in next to them.
But whatever one’s taste in architecture, the Quartermile development is unbelievably overpriced, and is finally hitting the market at a very bad time. Have you seen the asking prices for rentals there? Search for EH3 on citylets.co.uk or lettingweb.com, and list the results in descending order of price. You’ll spot Simpson Loan near the top of the list. There is currently a three-bed flat in one of the converted hospital buildings for £2950 per month, and a two-bed penthouse in one of the glass blocks, also for £2950 per month. There is another three-bed flat in a new block which seems almost reasonable at £1700 per month!
This one is a bargain at £1350 for two bedrooms. It’s on the second floor above Sainsbury’s, so don’t expect much privacy!
With the financial sector going down the pan, who on earth is going to rent properties like these in Edinburgh?
I’m expecting (hoping?) that Quartermile flats will crash and burn in style during the coming months.
[Edited to add the paragraph about the £1350 flat]
-
Just catching up on some sale prices from the last few months on nethouseprices.com, I checked a very short road of tenements in Marchmont, Edinburgh:
7 (1F2) Strathfillan Road sold on 2 Sep 2008 for 286. It had come to the market in mid April for offers over 295, and had remained at that price. Note that this is a genuine three-bedroom flat, in fairly good condition.
New to the market on the same stair is 7 (3F1) Strathfillan Road. This is a genuine three-bedder, in need of renovation, initially at OO 250. I now expect it to sell, eventually for no more than 250, and I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
In any case, I shall be taking ‘offers over’ prices, where they still exist, with a large pinch of salt.
-
For ease of reference, anything currently tagged as 'new' with a ref no in the region of 272nnn is genuinely new, anything around 263nnn, 264nnn is a 6-month renewal. Lower numbers indicate 12 month renewal.
I’d noticed that we’re now in the 270s, so anything remaining with a reference number in the 260s is old, and there are even one or two still around in the high 250s.
Do properties automatically get taken off the ESPC if unsold after six months? If so, that could certainly explain why one that I’m watching has disappeared, even though the ‘for sale’ sign is still up.
Sellers are still clearly in denial, though. Genuinely new to the market today is 99 (1F2) Warrender Park Road, at OO 275. The flat mentioned above, which has disappeared, is 115 (2F1) Warrender Park Road, also a genuine three-bedder, in the same run of tenements. It came to the market in May for OO 295, then went to 340 FP, and was last seen advertised at 310 FP. Therefore if anyone is daft enough to offer over 275 for 99 (1F2), I can’t imagine them offering more than a few pence over. It would be far better to wait for three-bed flats like this to drop below the 3% stamp duty threshold, as they surely must during the coming months.
-
This relentless theme of insisting that New-labour must be left wing because that is its traditional defining position really needs to be laid to rest once and for all, but almost every day we get posts here which seem to have a built in prejudice and assumption that Labour must be left and therefore everything "left" must be bad. It really is time that people on this forum awakened themselves to the fact that almost nothing about the Labour party is remotely left wing.
Thank you for that explanation, which I hope people read.
In my opinion New Labour is a huge confidence trick. By preserving the name ‘Labour’, they have duped a vast proportion of the poorly-educated, traditionally working-class electorate – viz. Glenrothes – and evidently, from this forum, a high proportion of traditionally more right-wing voters have also been duped, somehow associating New Labour policy with the ‘left wing’. However, New Labour is essentially a completely different political party from ‘old’ Labour, and is somewhat to the right of Thatcher’s Conservatives of the 1980s. Only the name is the same as that of the old party. It was very clever of Blair, Mandelson et al. to destroy the party from the inside in such a subtle way and to fool so many people.
Is that not the truth? Or have I somehow missed something?
-
There is one flat in particular that I like to keep a check on for comedic value:
It has a 'new' band across as though it just went up this week - in fact it's been on the market since May of this year and they haven't dropped the fantasy price tag of 335k at all.
I don’t know why some properties on the ESPC web site suddenly appear with ‘new’ on them, when they have clearly been on sale non-stop for six months.
Another similar one is this:
Kitchen squashed into boxroom, en-suite squashed into utility room, and they want £368,500 for it! A very similar conversion near me went for £290,000 back in the spring. This latter was originally advertised for OO 298, but the vendor wisely cut his losses and accepted a lower offer. (It had been bought for 250, converted and flipped.) The Arden Street one was originally advertised for OO 295 (in late May), but rather than accepting any offer that may possibly have been made since then, the vendor insists on the fantasy price. More fool him/her.
-
What will it take ?
2 failed 'spring bounces' in a row.
Sorry to rain on your parade a bit, but it will only actually be one failed spring bounce. Remember that, much to the surprise and irritation of everyone on here, the 2008 spring bounce was actually quite pronounced, with the average price going from 210K to nearly 234K, or 11% up, from Q1 to Q2, after three quarters of falls. Although I can’t imagine a bounce like that in 2009, I really wouldn’t be surprised if Edinburgh prices did increase a little in Q2. I think it must be something to do with coming out of the Scottish winter making people euphoric after the months of darkness.
-
Mapeley is a REIT with a whole heap of commercial investments, but a few years ago, they bought a ton of prime goverment buildings under a sell and lease back scheme. Of particular note, their clients include HM Revenue & Customs - no question that they'll be running out of money in the near future, at least.
For those who don’t read Private Eye, it’s worth pointing out that a large proportion of Mapeley’s operations are based in an offshore tax haven. That’s right, HM Revenue & Customs, who are responsible for collecting taxes and clamping down on tax avoidance, sold their buildings to a company based in an offshore tax haven.
These are the kinds of facts which the mainstream media, other than occasionally the Guardian or an occasional special report on TV or on Radio 4, do not report.
Eyes passim ad nauseam, as they say.
-
Sudden drop this week in the number of flats that my search is throwing up. From about 330 last week to 285 this week.
Wonder what that is about? Can't believe they are sold. People finally giving up selling them and deciding to rent out for a bit. Landlords deciding they can afford to hang on afterall now that interest rates have gone down. OO deciding they don't need to downsize as they can afford the payments?
Any thoughts?
There were a load of removal vans around South Edinburgh today, so evidently somebody is moving! In fact people were moving out of a flat very near to me, which was on the market for a while and then disappeared without a ‘sold’ sign going up. I wonder whether it did in fact sell, but they didn’t bother with the sign, or whether the owners thought ‘let’s just rent it out instead’.
My own personal search has been going down very gradually, from a peak of about 120 to 104 today, but I haven’t seen the drastic falls that you have. Even so, I’m sure it will be below 100 soon, as people take their properties off the market for the Christmas/New Year season prior to putting it on again in time for the legendary Spring Bounce.
-
http://www.espc.co.uk/Buying/269361.html
Biggest single price drop I've seen in one go. FP £298K to FP £230K for a 3 bed (a proper one!) flat in Marchmont.
Sadly, it looks as though that price reduction was a mistake. Two days later, it’s back up to £280K.
Still, the standard price for three-bed flats in Marchmont is being further confirmed as under £300K by this one:
59 (3F1) Spottiswoode Road, £288K
It’d been on the market for six months, originally at OO 265, then 309 FP, and now 288 FP. I viewed it in June, and it’s a good enough flat, albeit on a very tatty, neglected, probably student-infested stair.
I wonder what has happened to 115 (2F1) Warrender Park Road, which had also been on the market for nearly six months, from OO 295 to 340 FP and then 310 FP. The For Sale sign was still up the last time I went past it, but it’s disappeared from ESPC. I’ll keep an eye out for that one!
-
http://www.espc.co.uk/Buying/269361.html
Biggest single price drop I've seen in one go. FP £298K to FP £230K for a 3 bed (a proper one!) flat in Marchmont.
Could do with a new kitchen (and possibly bathroom as not shown), is also over a ScotMid shop so may get noise and undesirables loitering about at night, but otherwise looks very nice indeed. Could this be signs of things to come?
You’ve pipped me to the post! I was just about to write the same thing.
As usual, the Monday search is revealing virtually nothing new, but that reduction is a real gem, and it makes that flat significantly cheaper than most of the two-bedders. It must be a forced sale.
The number of properties in my search is very slowly declining overall, from about 120 two or three weeks ago down to just under 110 now. Either a small number of properties are selling, or they’re just being taken off the market – perhaps they belong to the ‘I’ll just rent it out instead’ brigade.
Why aren’t we seeing Edinburgh EAs/solicitors shutting up shop though?
-
We also hand the Bendibus first as I recall, way back in 1978, which, due to a quirk in the legislation regarding articulation vehicles, they couldn't charge admission to, so everyone went on it for free for about a year.
Most people in South London still do travel free on bendy buses! They just jump off sharpish if there is a whiff of a ticket inspector in the air.
-
Speaking of Thirlestane Road EH9, I’ve just seen that 82 (3F1) sold for 470K on 10 September! It’s a four-bedroom flat with a kitchen installed in the (very large) boxroom, so it was marketed as a five-bedroom flat. It was OO 345K in April, so it sold for 36% over the OO price! This is very illustrative of how Edinburgh was so far behind the HPC curve, but still I wonder where people were getting the money from. Maybe the Scottish banks were still lending silly amounts, firmly convinced that Scotland was a high-power financial-services-driven economy like, er, Iceland, and that house prices in Edinburgh only ever go up.
There is absolutely no way that that flat is worth 470K now, so somebody has probably made a big fat (paper) loss.
Nearly half a million quid for a flat in Marchmont, though! The mind boggles!
-
No 37 is about 30% bigger than No 40, so might not be as over priced in relation as it first appears. If (when?) prices are down by about 30%, they might be worth a punt. It seems absolutely static at the moment, though, doesn't it?
Yes, you’re right – no. 40 isn’t a proper two-bedder, but merely has a ‘kichen/breakfast room’ apparently squashed into what should have been a large boxroom. I do wish agents would put floorplans in their schedules. So it’s no wonder that that one hasn’t sold for 288K! It has a long way to fall, doesn’t it? It’s only been on the market for six months, after all.
Price Falls Edinburgh
in Scotland
Posted
I think the layout of the flats is much the same in both areas – I only consider flats with boxrooms anyway – but Marchmont is quieter (when the students are away) and has more spacious streets. Some in Bruntsfield are rather gloomy on account of the tenements running to five floors and the road being too narrow, Viewforth being the worst example.
Anyway, let’s see what overpriced two-bed flats (not maindoor ones) I can find in Bruntsfield …
• 30 (3F2) Forbes Road, OO 190 on 22 Mar 2007, sold for £301,755 on 17 Jul 2007
• 35 (2F2) Bruntsfield Gardens, OO 245 on 5 Jun 2007, sold for £320,000 on 29 Aug 2007
• 11 (2F1) Bruntsfield Gardens, OO 225 on 14 May 2007, sold for a mere £297,115 on 27 Sep 2007
• 19/3 Bruntsfield Avenue, OO 235 on 16 Apr 2008, sold for £300,000 on 1 Aug 2008
Here is a four-bedroom flat:
• 22 (2nd floor) Forbes Road, OO 295 then 390 FP, sold for £389,995 on 14 Jul 2008
It seems like remarkably good value compared with some of the two-bedroom ones!