Find Houses That Have Dropped In Price
Like any market, supply and demand is key in the housing market.
Put simply this means that if demand is high and supply is low, then prices tend to go up, and if supply is high and demand is low, prices tend to go down.
Which all explains why house prices in Britain show an inexorable rise up as a directional trend: it's a relatively small island, with not enough house building going on to meet the demand for properties and the increasing population of these Isles.
Therefore, you might expect that a house for sale would not need to drop in price. But that is too simplistic a view, because the above is talking about the average. Each property is individual, and how it fares depends on a huge number of factors. These include:
- Where it is in the country. Some areas experience much higher demand than others, so whilst one property put on the market in location A can be snapped up within days, another property but on in location B might have hardly any viewings at all and struggle to sell - even if it's a nice house, purely due to location.
- The property itself: depending on the type of property and what people are after in the area, then this can have an impact on appetite for it.
- The condition of the property: something that needs a lot of work done to it will put a lot of people off, whilst some love to do up property or even buy to develop, many want somewhere that's pretty much ready to move into straight away
- How much the owners are asking: some people always start really high then drop a bit when they realise no-one is interested, particularly if the estate agent advises they need to do that in order to get a sale
Given all of this, when do people drop their price? When they are struggling to get enough interest in the property to sell it at its current price, which could be for any of the reasons above, and quite commonly from a combination.
However, if a house is struggling to sell, this could be an opportunity for a buyer as the house could be priced very attractively to stimulate interest, or alternatively the owner may be more open to lower offers as they want to move quickly, particularly if they have a new property for themselves to live in lined up.
The best way to find when a house drops its sale price is simply to follow it on one of the major property websites that list properties for sale: if you see a property that's potentially of interest, check out the listing on a regular basis and see if the property falls in value over time or not.
There are also some price alert services where you can monitor properties and get updates when something changes, for instance if the listing is removed or if the price changes, so that can be another easy way of keeping tabs on a property you are interested in.
The more of an understanding you can get of the property market in the area you want to live in, trends, and realistic asking prices, the better, when it comes to undertaking viewings and ultimately making an offer yourself.
More first-time house buying articles:
- How To Get a Landlord to Deal with Problems
- How To Get Your Deposit Returned by a Landlord
- Saving Money Whilst Renting
- Getting a Survey on an Auction Property
- Renting With People You Don't Know