Why do some properties get snapped up while others struggle to sell?
By Hugh Graham
Is it a buyers’ market or a sellers’ market? It’s the perennial question in property. In the case of London right now, the answer is both. Sometimes those markets are just streets apart — sometimes they are different houses on the same street.
While good quality family homes below £1.5 million are being snapped up (with many going to sealed bids), more expensive properties can languish on the market enduring discounts in the hope of finding a buyer. Doer-uppers are no longer in favour while turnkey properties near good state schools are in high demand.
Take the case of Yasha Estraikh and Maya Magal. The couple live in a four-bedroom terraced house in Kensal Rise, a family-friendly neighbourhood in northwest London. They have children aged seven, five and one and would like to upsize. They put their Edwardian house on the market for £1,699,950 in November. “We thought it was a terrible time to list, before Christmas, but we had found a house we really liked, and thought, we better get ours on quickly,” Estraikh, 40, a brand investor, says. “We were actually amazed by the reaction.”
They had 12 viewings in 16 days and two offers — one over the asking price at £1.71 million. In hindsight, Estraikh is not surprised. “Every month we get handwritten letters through the door saying, we’re a family, we want to move to the area, are you considering selling?”
Take the case of Yasha Estraikh and Maya Magal. The couple live in a four-bedroom terraced house in Kensal Rise, a family-friendly neighbourhood in northwest London. They have children aged seven, five and one and would like to upsize. They put their Edwardian house on the market for £1,699,950 in November. “We thought it was a terrible time to list, before Christmas, but we had found a house we really liked, and thought, we better get ours on quickly,” Estraikh, 40, a brand investor, says. “We were actually amazed by the reaction.”
They had 12 viewings in 16 days and two offers — one over the asking price at £1.71 million. In hindsight, Estraikh is not surprised. “Every month we get handwritten letters through the door saying, we’re a family, we want to move to the area, are you considering selling?”
The house the couple wanted to buy fell through. But, after accepting the offer for £1.71 million, they were able to find a bigger house with a larger garden in the same neighbourhood, but for a lower price: £1.437 million, reduced from £1.8 million, the initial listing price over a year ago. The reason? It was a fixer-upper.
It’s the houses that are modernised and sold in turnkey condition that are selling well, according to their estate agent Stewart Boyd, who runs Winkworth in Kensal Rise and Queens Park. “In the last five years, since Brexit and Covid, there has been a complete 180 from people who want doer-uppers and people who want a plug-and-play house, just because of the cost of labour and building works.”
Estraikh and Magal’s story is playing out all over the London suburbs. The property market may be in the doldrums in some parts of the country, with reports of price falls and long sales times in the home counties, and a stagnant super-prime London market. But London’s family-house market, between £1 million and £2 million, is hot in many postcodes, according to The Advisory, a property advice website. Its PropCast data determines heat ratings by counting the number of properties on the market in a postcode and calculating the percentage of these that are under offer or sold subject to contract: 0-25 per cent is very cold, 26-34 per cent is cold, 35-49 per cent is hot and anything above 50 is very hot.
PropCast assessed 35 London postcodes and found that 26 of these were hot or very hot. The hottest market between £1 million and £2 million was SE21, which covers Dulwich and Tulse Hill, where 71 per cent of the properties were under offer, followed by N8 (Crouch End and Harringay, 69 per cent), SE22 (East Dulwich, 60 per cent), SE15 (Peckham and Nunhead, 57 per cent) and E11 (Wanstead, 56 per cent). Homes priced between £1 million and £2 million sold 14 per cent more quickly than at all other price points across the capital in 2024, according to the estate agency Savills using data from the consultancy TwentyCi.
Estraikh and Magal’s story is playing out all over the London suburbs. The property market may be in the doldrums in some parts of the country, with reports of price falls and long sales times in the home counties, and a stagnant super-prime London market. But London’s family-house market, between £1 million and £2 million, is hot in many postcodes, according to The Advisory, a property advice website. Its PropCast data determines heat ratings by counting the number of properties on the market in a postcode and calculating the percentage of these that are under offer or sold subject to contract: 0-25 per cent is very cold, 26-34 per cent is cold, 35-49 per cent is hot and anything above 50 is very hot.
Geoff Wilford, the owner of Wilfords estate agency in Battersea, south London, recently sold his own house in a hot area (Wandsworth, SW17), where 48 per cent of the stock is under offer. In 2020 he and his wife spent £400,000 renovating and extending their four-bedroom Victorian terraced house in Bellevue Village, which is in a catchment area for good state schools. They paid £1.23 million for it in 2017. In October they put the house on the market for £2 million. “We had about six viewings, and sold in November for £2.25 million. The market is absolutely flying, as long as houses are priced sensibly.”
Tales of sealed bids are common, but it’s not a frenzied market. In 2014 you might have seen ten parties bidding — now it’s more like two or three, according to Amy Reynolds, the head of sales at Antony Roberts estate agency in Richmond, southwest London. Properties typically get the asking price, or a bit above or below. Savills has forecast a 3 per cent rise in prices for the mainstream London market in 2025, but no price rises for outer prime areas (£1.85 million and above in areas like Chiswick, Wandsworth, Fulham and Islington) and a 4 per cent fall for prime central, such as Chelsea and Belgravia.
“In the outer prime London family neighbourhoods like Fulham and Clapham we’re definitely seeing increased competition, sealed bids, not enough supply and more buyers than there is available stock,” says Camilla Dell, the founder of the buying agency Black Brick. “Part of the reason is people are moving less. In the days when stamp duty was lower, people would take baby steps up the housing ladder. Now they save and live with their parents for longer, and when they are ready to buy, they start with a family house. And that has caused increased competition.”
Supply is still much lower than in previous hot markets, agrees David Fell from the estate agency Hamptons. In January 2016, for instance, there were 386 sales of £1 million to £2 million houses in Greater London; Hamptons expects between half and three quarters of this for January 2025, although the property website Rightmove says the number of sales agreed in London is 17 per cent higher than a year ago.
Not so hot for others
Not everything is being snapped up, though. The PropCast data shows that in the £2 million to £5 million bracket, 26 of the 35 postcodes are cold or very cold. There is a smaller pool of buyers at higher price points, and some of those postcodes have few properties above £2 million.
At this level there are some significant price drops in family-friendly areas. A seven-bedroom Victorian house in Crystal Palace, southeast London, went on in May with Hamptons for £2.35 million and last week reduced its price to £2 million, a 15 per cent drop. An eight-bedroom Victorian fixer-upper in Balham, south London, went on in August for £2.95 million with the agency Knight Frank and was reduced to £2.75 million in December.
