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HOLA441

If the £675k one actually sells for anything like that, the £400k one must surely be a target for developers. Spend £100k on loft conversion, extensions and refurb and take a quick £175k profit.

In reality, I'd have thought they are going to really struggle to get more than £600k for the £675k one.

how about the 800k one :lol:

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HOLA442

I notice this one has still not been reduced:

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/36476812?search_identifier=107e5a850bd5f5ff6ad1c12cf5f262d6#RzLvxQGOaSg2ZjBI.97

£675k for a basement flat. The current advert shows it has been on since 7th April, but I think it has actually been on longer than that.

It is a nice flat in a good location and would probably sell easily for £525k, but they are obviously holding out for much more. The way it is going, the market probably will have caught up in a year or so and that will look like the right price.

nice enough , could be damp though . looks in the 4`s to me really

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HOLA443

The £800k one in Thornhill Road should really struggle, I'd have thought. It is about the same size as the £675k one, and that hasn't even sold!

I also wonder if there is a ceiling in that area. I think I have mentioned before, but in central Surbiton, the market really runs out of steam at around the £1m mark.

Semis in The Mall are snapped up around that amount within a day of going on the market, but there was a really nice 1920's house a couple of roads over that wouldn't shift at under £1.4m. It was detached, much larger than The Mall houses, big plot, nicer road and could be made into a 3,000 sqft house quite easily and cheaply.

Pound for pound, it was just a much better house than what is available at the lower end of the market, but few people with budgets of significantly over £1m want to live in Surbiton it seems. I guess they are going to north to North Kingston or south to Esher.

I would assume that there must be a similar ceiling in Tolworth and that it must be significantly lower than £1m.

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HOLA444
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HOLA445

That is the type of thing I really don't understand. I know that they are probably marketing that to out of towners, but it won't take most people long to realise just how bad it is to live in that direct area.

Victoria Road is a very busy route with constant traffic and lots of buses. A lot of the road is quite run down, and this is definitely the worst part of it. This is right opposite the ugly building that houses both Sainsbury's and the troublesome YMCA so you will get the flotsam and jetsam associated with them hanging about all day and night. The 24 hour McDonalds is just down the road with all of the trouble that had bought with it.

Yes, you are a few minutes walk from Surbiton station, but you can do much better than this for the money. If you live on the Maple Road end, you avoid all of those trouble spots, and Surbiton seems a completely different place to live. Not perfect, perhaps but a lot better.

I have lived in Surbiton for years and I would be surprised if I get down to that end of Victoria Road more than once a year.

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HOLA446

I still can't post links for some reason, but someone has really upped the ante today, trying to sell a semi in Westfield Road in Surbiton for £1.35m!

It is marketed as a 6 bedroom house, but there is no floorplan or pictures yet. I'd expect it to be 4 reasonable bedrooms and a couple of boxes at best.

I guess we have to be realistic here. In this stupid market, a house like this will sell for £1m very quickly, but £1.35m seems far too high. There is a much nicer detached house on another of the river roads on for £1.3m and that has been on for ages.

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HOLA447

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/37838298?search_identifier=068625f7963b6ce9a23deb4ca5a9fd7b#vQDZ1TjE6UrBBMI5.97

This one has made me laugh. Was on during 2014/15 IIRC for £1.1m, including ultimately with it seemed like all of the agents in Surbiton, didn't sell, now reappears on the market at £1.5m! It obviously needs a fair bit of money spending on it to bring it into a decent condition, but I just don't understand why it would sell now if it didn't before.

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/37448103?search_identifier=e68ef06f0542aee55b2e21a4f544475d

This second beauty has also been on the market for yonks, with multiple agents etc, and has finally seen its price reduced from £1.2m to £1.15m. It is even being falsely advertised, as it is on Fleece Road not Cockrow Hill, St Mary's Road. I will contact the agents about that. I can speculate why this is the case, as Fleece Road is a bit of a dump whilst Cockrow Hill is a rather more desirable private road.

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HOLA448

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/37838298?search_identifier=068625f7963b6ce9a23deb4ca5a9fd7b#vQDZ1TjE6UrBBMI5.97

This one has made me laugh. Was on during 2014/15 IIRC for £1.1m, including ultimately with it seemed like all of the agents in Surbiton, didn't sell, now reappears on the market at £1.5m! It obviously needs a fair bit of money spending on it to bring it into a decent condition, but I just don't understand why it would sell now if it didn't before.

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/37448103?search_identifier=e68ef06f0542aee55b2e21a4f544475d

This second beauty has also been on the market for yonks, with multiple agents etc, and has finally seen its price reduced from £1.2m to £1.15m. It is even being falsely advertised, as it is on Fleece Road not Cockrow Hill, St Mary's Road. I will contact the agents about that. I can speculate why this is the case, as Fleece Road is a bit of a dump whilst Cockrow Hill is a rather more desirable private road.

Yep, there seem to be a few examples of this, people asking a price way above where the market is, not getting it and then asking for MORE shortly afterwards. It is one thing asking too high a price and then waiting for the market to catch up, but keep raising the price just means you will never sell.

I think that this boom has made some sellers think that people should buy now at next year's price. I don't think too many buyers will do that.

Here is another one that has been on and off the market for ages and now with multiple agents:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53341754.html

This one is going to be very difficult to sell, because houses in the centre above £1m seem to move very slowly. People spending that type of money either want to be in the leafy Southborough area or not in Surbiton at all. There are better houses on the market for very similar money.

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HOLA449

Can't do links on the iPad but even by Kingston standards I found this one astonishing. It's a so called 4 bed semi in Tudor Road Kt2 - we walked past it the other day - on the market for £1,350000. When I looked again a couple of days later I was staggered to find it sold STC. There is a very fancy downstairs extension, but bedroom 3 is very small, 4 is positively minute, there is only one bathroom and no downstairs loo that I can see. The back lawn looks like AstroTurf to me, though I could be wrong there. Yes, it is very close to Richmond Park but that doesn't usually command such a relatively whopping price.

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HOLA4410

£1.35m for the Tudor Estate!

It doesn't seem that long ago that I was wondering when the first interwar semi in the Kingston area would go for £1m. That was when Liverpool Road and The Mall were bubbling just under that, but I doubt anything on the Tudor Estate had got much more than £700k at that point.

Now there are quite a few of them around - the one your mention on Tudor Road and one on Westfield Road in Surbiton both at £1.35m, a scruffy one on Maple Road in Surbiton for £1m.

Only one (on The Mall) seems to have actually sold for seven figures, but you'd assume anything that sells now in any of those roads would be over that now.

The suburban nature of these houses made them deeply unfashionable not that long ago, it seems that is totally out of the window now with the rush to buy anything at any price.

These houses are also a good indicator of how the exact area affects prices. Less than a couple of miles from the £1.35m Westfield Road house is another similar semi on the market for £450k. You'd need to spend £100k on it to bring it up to the size of the other one, but that is quite a big difference!

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HOLA4411

Foxtons have just opened a Surbiton office, despite already have one a mile away in Kingston.

They have taken on quite a few properties as they are offering 0% commission to get themselves up and running.

The strange thing is that their pricing actually seems slightly more in touch with reality than most of the other agents around here! Their Kingston branch consistently has the most over-priced properties in the whole area, so I was surprised that the new one doesn't.

I am sure normal service will be resumed shortly!

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HOLA4412

Had a loop on Zoopla this week for Surbiton, and it looks like the BTL brigade are putting their flats on the market. Hardly a traditional time of year to market property either in the run up to Xmas....something in the air?

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/property/surbiton/?new_homes=include&q=Surbiton&radius=0.5&results_sort=newest_listings&search_source=home

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HOLA4413

Can't do links on the iPad but even by Kingston standards I found this one astonishing. It's a so called 4 bed semi in Tudor Road Kt2 - we walked past it the other day - on the market for £1,350000. When I looked again a couple of days later I was staggered to find it sold STC. There is a very fancy downstairs extension, but bedroom 3 is very small, 4 is positively minute, there is only one bathroom and no downstairs loo that I can see. The back lawn looks like AstroTurf to me, though I could be wrong there. Yes, it is very close to Richmond Park but that doesn't usually command such a relatively whopping price.

You have heard that online sellers (in particular holiday firms but also other industries I believe) offer higher prices when they pick up the browser footprint that says you're using an Apple idevice?

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HOLA4414
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HOLA4415

I am absolutely stunned by the prices that standard 30s semis are on the market for now. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was posting on here about one of the ones on The Mall or Liverpool Road breaking £1m. Obviously that has happened a while ago, but now similar houses in such less sought after parts of the borough are asking similar.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56267123.html

The location of this one is ok, although it is not exactly the part of town where people are looking to buy this type of house and it is a trek to the station. Loft conversion not done properly and it needs a complete refurb. Where does the £1m asking price come from?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56265893.html

This is only a few roads away, but is Tolworth rather than Surbiton and is nearer a mile to the station than the 0.7 they claim. I assume the price is based on it being a '5 bed house', but two of the bedrooms are 8ft square! I suppose you could knock a £50k loft conversion on and then reconfigure the first floor to make it 5 proper bedrooms altogether, but then it will be well in excess of £1m which is a lot for this location.

I fully expect to be back in another year complaining that flats in the Cambridge Estate towers have hit £500k. All bets are off now!

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HOLA4416

Time was when the "Christmas period" would be used as an excuse by EAs for lack of instructions and failing demand for the whole of October through to February.

Not so in 2015. On December 23rd ('proper' Christmas period) this has come on:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56837099.html

The problem appears to be that they have got it confused with April Fools Day.

I am always behind the times on prices, but I am well aware that the prices of these suburban 3 bed semis on Surbiton's river roads and some of the premier north Kingston roads are now well in excess of £1m, but this one is in the south Kingston hinterland between Surbiton and Kingston that is dominated by the University, a hotel and student housing.

It is not a bad area, I quite like it, and it is walkable to Surbiton station in about 15 minutes, but it is never what would have been described as the most popular part of town. £1.1m???

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HOLA4417

Another milestone reached in Kingston/Surbiton last week, an asking price of £1,000 per sqft! I have seen a few of these tiny flats bubbling around that level for a while now, but this one finally broke it.

I still can't link unfortunately, but it is a 1 bed flat on St James Road weighing in at £365k for 357 sqft.

What makes it even more strange is that it is not on with one of the real 'aspirational pricing' agents. A neighbouring flat (that is with one of those agents) is on the market for £360k and it is 645 sqft and has share of freehold. Admittedly, it is an attic flat so it is not quite a big as it sounds, but still a lot bigger than the other one.

£560 per sqft still seems crazy to me for Surbiton but I suppose it is actually well below average because of the attic/eaves situation. The other one is asking £1,022 per sqft....

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HOLA4418

More Kingston insanity .... http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=40588005&sale=19152674&country=england

Sold in 2007 at the height of the market for £500,000, since then this hard-working house has earned £70,000 per year after tax, so puts 99.5% of workers in this country to shame and could now be yours for .... £1,100,000. Don't miss out.

This is the sort of example that really makes me wonder how so many people can still think this bubble is a good thing.

How can it be positive to the economy as a whole if an average house in zone 6 earns the equivalent of someone on a salary of £110k a year? After this sold in 2007, it would have gone down a little bit as well so if you just look at 2010 onwards it has probably been increasing by £100k a year or the take home salary of someone earning £170k!

Why take the stress of a job like that when you can just sit at home and let your house earn it? Moreover, where is the incentive to take on a 'normal' job when your house is netting you many times more? It isn't quite as simple as that of course because people need some income to tide them over until they sell their best ever investment and retire in wealthy glory, but it is still very unhealthy.

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18
HOLA4419

I still can't paste links, but a good 'flip' has come on the market today.

41 Westfield Road, Surbiton sold for £600k in May 2015 and has appeared back on the market today for £875k.

This wouldn't be too bad if the owners had extended/loft converted to make it a much bigger property. In actual fact they have just given it a makeover, probably spending no more than £30k if they knew what they were doing.

£630k total investment will have made almost 40% profit if they get their price, and all in under a year. Prices generally seem to be up more like 10-15% in that period.

It is also £950 per sqft which is the highest I have seen in the area outside of the tiny flats I mentioned before.

Of course, there is still the ability to extend it, but how many people will be able to afford that after paying almost £900k for a small terraced cottage in Surbiton?

I'll watch this one with interest, especially because the market does seem to be turning slightly in the area. Far less really high prices to start with and a lot more reductions. There are two houses on the market in the Surbiton 'river roads' that remain unsold after more than a month on the market and that was just not happening last year.

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HOLA4420

This house keeps making me laugh. A slightly unfashionable road, has been on the market for nearly two years, the owners seem slightly deluded, they of course have got it on with multiple agents but....it's the price STUPID! After nearly two years it has come down from £1.2m to £1.075m. A few months ago I reported it to Zoopla as it was being incorrectly listed as being in St Mary's Road, which is round the corner and far more desirable.

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/33871526?search_identifier=7ee55e4b419beede705f10233fff478e#ukVjtyeReBqowQAm.97

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HOLA4421

It's just kite-flying, I guess.

They are probably in no real hurry to move and will stay put if they don't get their inflated valuation.

What usually happens in these cases is that the market catches up, makes the original ridiculous price look reasonable and the owners accept. Prices definitely don't seem to be increasing that fast now, so that could take a while in this case.

This happened a few years ago with a very small detached house on Cadogan Road. It went on the market at about £775k and was probably worth £500k at the time. They reduced it to £675k when market increases meant it was probably worth £550k. It sat there for ages before eventually selling for the asking price which by that time looked about right. If they sold it now, it would be worth more like £900k.

I can't really understand the mentality of keeping your house on the market for years at an inflated price. It must be a lot of hassle keeping the house on show for the small number of people who come round after a while. Each to their own, I suppose.

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  • 4 months later...
21
HOLA4422

Even by their own standards, Foxtons seem to have gone completely crazy with this one:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-44634942.html

This was last sold two years ago for £565k. It was in terrible condition, but was actually probably quite a good buy in the mad market of 2014.

It has now been refurbished and loft-converted, although I wonder how many people want a loft conversion that puts your master bedroom on the FOURTH floor of a house!

Even if we assume that £150k has been spent on the refurb, getting this asking price would generate a profit of £480k in not much more than two years. Looking at it another way, that is roughly a £600 increase each DAY!

Surely this has to stop somewhere, doesn't it?

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HOLA4423

Wow! I've not been on here for a considerable amount of time. I don't regret moving from the Kingston area. These are not just crazy house prices but fueled by greed. The stakes and pressure on people to pay their mortgages must be immense.

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HOLA4424
On 30/09/2016 at 11:07 AM, worried1 said:

Even by their own standards, Foxtons seem to have gone completely crazy with this one:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-44634942.html

This was last sold two years ago for £565k. It was in terrible condition, but was actually probably quite a good buy in the mad market of 2014.

Surely this has to stop somewhere, doesn't it?

Well; I cannot think of a decent argument to justify a 600k markup in two years. I haven't checked the rest of the road (perhaps that is the normal price) - That isn't a high spec build either...

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HOLA4425
21 hours ago, kittingerjump said:

Well; I cannot think of a decent argument to justify a 600k markup in two years. I haven't checked the rest of the road (perhaps that is the normal price) - That isn't a high spec build either...

 

It is quite difficult to gauge because this is one of the 'river roads'. I guess in terms of £ per sqft it must rank as one of the most expensive parts of the Kingston area, but it is not expensive because it is upmarket like Coombe or Southborough, it is purely based on it's location between the river and station, and the existence of a well rated Primary school in the area.

The housing stock is very varied - small Victorian terraced houses, much larger ones that are now mainly flats, a couple of roads of 30's semis and a lot of greedy Kingston council's favourite eastern-bloc style infill.

This terrace is part of the infill, and the £565k paid for it is the highest ever on for one of these houses. They were always designed to be budget houses, and this one actually overlooks busy Maple Road rather than being tucked down Cadogan Road itself which is much quieter.

£730 per square foot is (frighteningly) not actually that high anymore, but some might see the house as over-extended given that it is on four floors, and most of the other houses in the area are certainly more attractive.

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