Great attitude Toyboy.A lot of sense there.Cheered me up as we are putting our house on the market in the next week or two.

hi toyboy , sale not going good the chap thats buying is short 9500k on deposit that the bank expects him to put down so he s going to leave it ive already knocked 10000k off for him not chipping any more off i have read your quote some of it makes sense and some of it dont , my estate said to me to day that the market is dead at the min and no one is buying unless you are willing to write a big chunk off the selling price my place is modern apartment well spec-ed up one of the nicest in the area and ive had 2 viewing since may with this agent before that i was with other another agent for 5 months 5 viewings every one loved place but sadly no offers since its been on market ive chipped 17000k off original asking price i aint going to move any more on price i might as well keep hold of it ! but while we are on the subject about the property market and how bad it is it aint just the property its every thing the builders that are building on sites have all stopped working and the sites have been closed down . We sell vans and we are use to selling big numbers a week well it aint happening we are lucky if we are selling 3 vans a week at the min and that dont cover the over heads , the local newspaper we advertise in used to have 18 pages of vehicles in its now down to 6 pages in , they are now having to lay staff off , i dont want to sound all doom and gloom but its very bad out there , i just want to sell my place here in the uk and move to my place in spain i just hope it sells soon other wise i will have too look at renting it out and remorgageing it which is not what i want to do .

Interesting toyboy, having been trawling to see what is available not that far from the area to which you refer, I found just under 2000 houses for sale over 500000 pounds within a 20 mile radius of my search centre. I do wonder if any of these sellers would come down 100000 which is "only" 20% of the 500000. There must apparently be loads of millionaires in the UK.

Blimey! I dunno if you think that’s where I am in the market. £500,000 houses don’t have many people chasing them in the good times let alone the bad.

I also doubt if any sensible buyer would search a 20-mile radius in SE England unless they’re addicted to the fumes you get on the petrol forecourt.

Putting my parameters in this afternoon gives me 13 found, of which 4 disappear if I deselect the Sold STC ones. Of the remaining 9, only 4 have the same family buyer appeal as mine. One of those four is on a busy main road corner.

If I narrow down the dosh to what is a sensible bracket for mine, it gives me 6 properties, of which 4 disappear at deselection.

These figures have not varied very much in the last year or so.

My search was 20 miles from Basingstoke.

It’s tempting to comment on Basingstoke, but I won’t.

A 20-mile radius search is complete madness for SE England. That means you’d effectively be prepared to drive 45mins (on peak) to, just as an example, get the kids to school.

I don’t understand where you are going with this.

"It’s tempting to comment on Basingstoke"

I heard a lovely expression last night from some comedian who, describing some less than salubrious town, referred to it as 'The holding pen for the Jeremy Kyle Show'.

I am not looking for a base to drive the grandchildren to school. That is the responsibility of their respective parents. With flights to Gatwick and Heathrow, somewhere within 20 miles of Basingstoke makes perfect sense for me and mine, unless we ditch England and head for Scotland. Toyboy, me thinks you assume a little too much but que sera sera.

I thought we were talking about the ability, or not, to sell a house in the UK (generally) and making comparisons across the various UK regions that 1) sell easily and 2) apparently have trouble selling. My POV was focussed on who is ‘in the market’ for my particular type of house. From what you’ve now said, in my case it would be the ‘respective parents’ who’d view my house, not you.

Would you really consider Basingstoke or was that just an example? There are a lot of similar places much closer to Gatwick and Heathrow, if that’s your key constraint.

And I did say quite clearly, “just as an example”. There must be other reasons why one would not randomly add 40mls to possible journeys in the SE.

Read the thread

Telling it the way it is for a change!

The news being totally divorced from the position in the UK, has to be given much thought. The balance between the UK and Spain and their comparative work,living and home costs is to say the least unsettled.

Sell now at a discount and rent after hard bargaining!!

BUT be prepared to pay far more heavily for other living costs. If you are retiring to Spain it appears that your money isn't going to go anyway near as far as it does even now.

I'm still intent on living in Spain but it's now going to be anywhere near as cheap as it was only a short time ago. On the other hand the UK is still going to be more expensive.

My daughter is already well housed in Bracknell and the other soon to be in Portsmouth so it would not be the respective parents at all it would be me as a cash buyer and some radius around Basingstoke is a very sensible search area for me. My point is that from the current asking prices, a 20 to 30% "readjustment" is quite realistic to bring buyers to actually making offers at this time. I used the 0.5M mark as (a) there seem to be so many and (b) the "readjustment" at 100k pounds sounds a lot but is just like an asking price of 120k falling to 100k. My daughter sold recently by dropping around 20% and that was at the lower end of the market.

Look on the no doom and gloom thread

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7513563.stm

This says that house prices aren't so bad.

Yes and it's just false rumour that estate agents are closing. I can't see for the life of me why they are pretending to close where I live

You can’t win with ‘Los Negativos’ Bil, it ain’t worth it! The IMF really should have learnt by now to tour southern Spain getting opinions before making such rash predictions.

My point with the specific house parameters is that there is a type of customer for a type of house. Half a mil round here (Surrey Heath) still gets you one hell of a house.

I still maintain that the twenty-mile radius of search at one extreme gets you forty miles nearer, or further, from a certain point, such as Heathrow.

What it actually says bil is that house prices in the survey are still up on this time last year. During that year they went up and now are coming down. I do not see this as doom and gloom. I see it as an opportunity for me, and my youngest daughter for that matter to be able to afford to buy a house again. I simply refuse to put over 100k pounds into something like a double caravan mobile home "house" when I know that I will then lose most of what I have saved over recent years.

Spanish press is reporting that in "development areas" 60% of houses built in the last year remain unsold. Why?