The hardest place to sell a house may be a surprise

The days of plucking a sale price from the air, and laughing all the way to the bank, are over, because it's getting much harder to sell a property in London. A study looked at the hardest places to sell your home in the whole of the UK, and discovered that the top three trickiest postcodes were within the M25 - and six of the top ten were in London.

The study, by online estate agent House Network, found that London property sellers have to tempt 16 people through the door before they get an offer, whereas those in the North of England sell after an average of 11.

The trickiest place to sell was named as Ilford - where houses are seen 23 times on average before being sold. This is followed by Wembley at 22, and West London - with 20 viewings before an offer is made.
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Dumfries was the only area outside of London to get into the top five slowest selling - with 19 viewings. This was followed by Southall (18), Sutton (17), Twickenham (16), Iver (16), North London (16) and Croydon (16).

Why aren't people buying?

This is a far cry from the beginning of this year, when even the least promising properties were being snapped up for huge sums, and an enormous number of homes were selling for their asking price -or even more.

The fact that buyers are not snapping up these properties any more has an awful lot to do with how buyers and sellers have reacted to price rises.

Over-priced

At its most simple, some prices have risen so far and so fast that people feel they are not worth the money.

In some instances this is because sellers are pricing properties over-optimistically - factoring in the next couple of months of price rises. Buyers looking round, therefore, simply feel they are overpriced. In these cases, sellers are having to wait for the market to catch up with their asking price - or are having to let reality sink in and lower their prices - before they sell.

Analysis last month of Zoopla data found that 18% of London properties priced over £1 million had seen a price cut, while 16% of those costing more than £2 million had been cut in price. Estate agents have reported incredibly sluggish sales at the top end of the market.

Buyers

In other instances, buyers are not being realistic. Prices have risen so fast that they have moved on since they first though about their budget and their requirements. It means that they can no longer get what they want for the price they expect. It takes a while - and a number of viewings - to lower their expectations.

This is one of the reasons why properties are selling much better in areas where price rises have been much slower. Carlisle. was named as the easiest place to sell - with just six viewings before the property is snapped up. This is followed by Glasgow, Middlesborough, Wrexham, Torquay and Perth at seven.

Buyers know what to expect, are satisfied with the value for money, and are confident they can buy within their budget. It's a long time since buyers in London could expect anything of the sort.