Woking Town Flat prices barely moved in 10 years - why?

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bars_and_plates@reddit

In general I think most people who want to live in/around Woking do so because they want a house, a car, a bit more of a rural life, whilst still being feasibly able to get into London.

A flat in the town centre sounds like the worst of both worlds. Basically, you are still in an urban area but it's not the urban area you want to be in.

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We briefly considered buying in Woking last year. Reason was that we could afford a house there while only a flat in London. We thought of Woking as it’s just 25 minutes from London by train, but to actually get that time you need to be close to the station. If I had to get the car or the bus, to go to the station to then get the train, it was adding up and commute was becoming too much. We bought in London after all. Woking fell very run down.

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Sideways-Sid@reddit

Affordablility.

What were interest rates 10 years ago?

Compare mortgage costs for the buyer 10 years ago to today. There is your answer!

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The_39th_Step@reddit

I am house hunting. I currently live in a flat in central Manchester and I love it. I’d happily buy one here. The leasehold issues and stagnating prices mean I won’t. It’s a shame because I’d like to but I’d be financially hurting myself if I did

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Englishmuffin1@reddit

COVID and WFH burst the bubble for 'commuter flats'.

My grandmother's flat in Welwyn Garden City was valued at £350k in 2019, but when she died in 2020 my dad and uncle were unable to sell it, even after dropping it to £295k.

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Bonar_Ballsington@reddit

They’ve converted loads of office blocks in Woking into flats plus all the new ones going up in sheerwater etc mean there’s a shit load of flats for sale. There’s also the cladding issue which has caused insurance rates to go crazy on some of the newer blocks by the station

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mavwok@reddit

I think the ones by the station have bigger issues than cladding. My understanding was that the concrete pour was faulty, so during routine checks they discovered it was more sand than concrete and the building was declared structurally unsafe.

This is one of the ones that kind of looks like the prow of a ship. Suspect they are going to have to demolish it.

But yeah, there are so many flats that have gone up it is untrue. The population of the town has risen by about 30% in the last 30yrs but seems to have levelled off. The flats are still being built though.

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nfoote@reddit

They are demolishing it. There was an article a few weeks ago about it. A special firm will retrieve like ten items from each of three residents units, everything else comes down in the rubble.

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mavwok@reddit

Thanks for the update. I completely missed that article. I feel so sorry for the people that lived there. Out of their homes in a heartbeat and all of their sentimental items left behind.

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Clean_Material_5047@reddit

Because most flats have insane and unregulated service charges. You can get the fanciest flat at the fanciest price in the fanciest area, but nothing guarantees you they won’t 10x service charges for no reason.

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LHG_93@reddit

People are waking up to the fact leasehold is just renting upfront, service charges, poor management companies and since Covid, most people want at least some outside space, to name a few things.

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happybaby00@reddit

how much you renting it out for?

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MTW27@reddit

Property prices don't automatically increase (those times are sadly long gone) and the market in London and the commuter belt is currently depressed, especially for newer build flats. There is too much supply, interest rates have increased and buyers have concerns about service charges / ground rent and cladding.

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EloquenceInScreaming@reddit

Why 'sadly'? Isn't it a good thing that housing is becoming more affordable?

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TellMeManyStories@reddit

People are getting more and more scared of flats with service charges always at risk of spiraling out of control and making them worthless.

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wybird@reddit

That and cladding.

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Regular_Zombie@reddit

Most economic questions do boil down to supply and demand. If prices are flat nothing is changing, demand is increasing in line with supply, or demand and supply are falling together.

All else being equal most people would rather live in a house than a flat. Especially after Grenfell and the pandemic the market for flats is weak when other options are available.

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OilAdministrative197@reddit

Yeah flat in london good wtf would i want a flat in woking. Get all the negatives of a commute and cramped of a flat.

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turbo_dude@reddit

Flats have underperformed all other types of housing

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Wise-Youth2901@reddit

It's not a law of nature that property prices go up. Even house prices in London have stagnated in many areas for the last ten years. The south east saw big price rises in the 2000s and into the 2010s but arguably prices are now as high as they can get with higher interest rates and first time buyers struggling. Flats are effected the most because they're more likely to be bought precisely by the people with the least financial means. Plus, issues with service charges etc... But I don't think that's the main issue, actually. I think prices simply became too high in the past and with sustained higher interest rates now a reality, buyers cannot afford the prices. The UK went from having extremely low interest rates to now having higher interest rates, so basic economics would tell you this would cause price stagnation/ correction.

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Colleen987@reddit

My house is 5 bed 2 bath, 3 reception rooms, on an acre of land and cost £265k. From the highlands how the hell do you people afford anything?

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staunchs@reddit

Commuter town just outside of London vs the highlands? No idea mate

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Colleen987@reddit

Why choose to live somewhere wildly unaffordable

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

People generally need these things called jobs in order to eat.

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Colleen987@reddit

Do you think we’re all unemployed?

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

Do you think people just choose to live in wildly unaffordable places?

Or is it that London and the major cities (Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol) are just about the only places that you can actually get jobs these days?

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Colleen987@reddit

I work on an office and moved from Newcastle to this office. There’s an entire hiring crisis in northern Scotland with move to work initiatives that give you up to 2 years free council tax.

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

Please do send a screenshot of the local job board to see how many opportunities there are available for people with no experience looking for a career.

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Colleen987@reddit

No experience at all? Absolutely hundreds our tourist industry is booming! You can just look at indeed or linked

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

Do us a favour and send a location so we can actually check this please.

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Colleen987@reddit

I live in Caithness

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

Searching full time, permanent for the entire Caithness-shire (so an entire county) yielded a total of 60 results on Indeed. Do you not think there might be 60 people already living in the area that are competing for those jobs?

Bear in mind I didn't bother even looking for "graduate level" etc for people to looking to build a career. This is literally all the jobs available.

So with those 60 jobs, how many thousands of young professionals (who may well like the idea of being in a city with like-minded individuals) are you expecting to jump at the opportunity to live in the middle of nowhere, isolated from their entire group of family and friends, for minimum wage?

Now let's look at London. London accounts for roughly 15-20% of the UK job market. Let's be extremely pessimistic and say it's 10% though. Last jobs report was around 700,000 vacancies across the UK. So automatically we're talking about 70k jobs just in London. We're talking about orders of magnitude more opportunity here. I'm no good at maths myself, but what is that - over 1000x more jobs in London ?

I grew up in Lancashire myself so I know what the struggle is like after finishing uni. Literally competing for minimum wage jobs and rarely even getting a screening call because you're competing against actually qualified people looking to move out of the city. So I expanded the search. Where did that lead me to? Manchester of course. Because there's magnitudes more opportunity there.

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Colleen987@reddit

Based on what you’ve posted I think you’re an idiot actually. Our A&E has jobs for 20 graduates alone. My own work has jobs out for 5. My wee company wants 5 from apprentice to qualified solicitors and you want me to agree that’s there’s no jobs?!

If not even been able to staff my office for the 5 years I’ve been in charge of it

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

Right so you're in the NHS. Looking on NHS Scotland's vacancies for the highland region, there's about 54 from what I can see. Clearly they don't utilise Indeed at all. If you're responsible for recruiting as you say you are and you're that desperate for staff, you should probably look into that. Of course not all of these jobs are gonna be full time and permanent either I guess.

Let's be extremely generous and say there's 10x the 50 or so we can see available on Indeed and across the highlands and there's over 500 jobs available.

Again, how many hundreds of thousands of people do you expect to be descending upon the highlands in search of cheaper housing? There's literally millions of people living in London. Do you expect that housing to stay cheap for very long if there's a huge exodus of Londoners moving North? Look at house prices in Manchester and you might be surprised how long things stay cheap for.

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Colleen987@reddit

I’m not in the NHS I’m a solicitor in a private law firm with a London office. In case that matters.

I bought my mum a house in Oldham, not Manchester but is was £200k for a simple 2 bed 2 bath and tiny garden.

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

And how much has said house appreciated in price over the last 10 years?

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Colleen987@reddit

My mums? I bought it’s 3 years ago so honestly not sure

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Colleen987@reddit

Just read you comment to a friend and she asked if yours got 100x more hiring opportunities then why aren’t you employed?

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

I am employed lmao. I was unemployed in Lancashire, to gain employment that would get me a career I had to move. That's what normal people do instead of sitting in a pub for decades hoping that you miraculously move up the chain.

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staunchs@reddit

Clearly on the wind up or thick as mince so won’t bother explaining basics to you

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Colleen987@reddit

Guess I’m thick as mince. 2 6 figure earners paying buttons compared to London. So why choose insane cost of living. If you have the secret you can explain

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staunchs@reddit

Ah, out of touch with reality as well

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Colleen987@reddit

My husband and I moved from Cambridge to the highlands. Work jobs like other people. What’s the out of touch?

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staunchs@reddit

You think the average person could just uproot to the arse end of nowhere and have the same job opportunities? Yeah, out of touch as I said.

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Colleen987@reddit

We have 6 of our “home friends” up here now. So if you saying they’re not average than sure

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Terrible-Group-9602@reddit

oversupply of flats

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JimmyBallocks@reddit

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pointlesstips@reddit

Has the Pizza Express closed?

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fire-wannabe@reddit

😂

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Antique_Newt1922@reddit (OP)

No it’s still there !!

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clearbrian@reddit

might have lost its Royal Charter... now that he lost his ;)

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AnonymousTimewaster@reddit

One thing that' rarely discussed in house price discussions is that flats generally actually don't have much of an upward price movement.

I live in Ancoats for instance in Manchester, and the flat I live in is still going for a pretty similar price to what it was a few years ago. Part of it is because leaseholds are a pain in the arse due to management companies etc.

This is why flats are generally letted out to people, it's far more profitable as an owner of a flat to rent it out for double the price of the mortgage than to sell the whole thing.

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Icy_Yam_9951@reddit

It's stupid to buy a flat, if you can buy a house instead.

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Sure-Junket-6110@reddit

Go Woking go broking

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SJTaylors@reddit

Purely conjecture but I suspect of the people who can afford to buy property there's not many in the market for flats.

Of all my friends and family in the UK, not a single one has bought a flat, so I just suspect flat prices are not keeping up with market increases. I may be massively off the mark here, I suspect as always London is a completely separate story

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Tundur@reddit

Generally, flats appreciate less than houses because of the land-to-asset ratio. The building itself is a depreciating asset, only the land is going up in value. Flats have much less 'land' in the mix when you pay for them, compared to an equivalent sized house (because it's shared with other people in the building, often no garden, higher maintenance costs).

Obviously it's also heavily dependent on where you buy- a Georgian property is going to appreciate because the actual building is interesting and valuable, but for most flats- even lovely renovated tenements - it's always losing value.

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palpatineforever@reddit

This isn't quite right, as it ignores that the price of flats was linked to the price of houses. They didn't lose value as you suggest. Depreciation was only a thing for new builds and tied to the inflated original sale price.

Flats went up in price because houses went up and people still needed somewhere to live.
So the flats increased but their value was lower for the same size. so a 100sqm house and a 100sqm flat would not be equal value.
so they proportionally appreciated the same amount but from a lower starting point.

That has changed.
The changes in various laws over the last 10 years have impacted flats more than houses.

over this time increasing stamp duty for second homes, and the renters rights act has made being a landlord very unappealing. So landlords have largely left the market.

People often move out of their family home into rented accomodation, usually this is small flats or shared houses. This means there is always a healthy influx of people who want a small rental flat. Then over time they decide where they want to live, maybe partner up etc, then they buy a larger flat or a house, or rent a larger place.

Importantly they dont buy the same type of small flats they would be happy to rent.

This is due to a few factors, losing first time homeowner stamp duty breaks, and high interest rates, people dont want a flat for 3-4 years then to try to move up the housing ladder. it is too risky.
There is a very good chance they will lose money.
They would rather continue renting then buy a bigger place down the line.
Anyone buying a property needs to look at it as a 5+ year purchase.
in the past it was not uncommon to keep a place for only a few short years before selling for a bigger place.

So the buyers for flats has shrunk while there is countless property for sale.
2 beds are bad, 1 beds are absolutely dire.
OP hasn't lost money because their property is still more attractive than others in the town.

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m1nkeh@reddit

I have a flat and a house.. the flat has barely moved in almost 20 years.. like perhaps 30k

The house has almost doubled in less time.. go figure

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palpatineforever@reddit

flat prices peaked in March 2016 due to the changes in stamp duty for second homes and low interest rates. the prices were high into that summer when they declined and while they have increased a little here and there location depending, but in many places they have bascially have remained the same. right now is also a bad time to sell flats due to many landlords selling up, but many people dont want to buy right now.

So if you bought in spring 2016 you bought at the height. It could be worse, in some places they have gone down the fact it is a fairly desireable location ie near transport to London etc is why it has held its value.

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Antique_Newt1922@reddit (OP)

Yeah you might be right but it is in a desirable area, perfect commute into London. There’s no cladding, not high rise. I think Woking town has an awful lot of rental properties as well. Over the 10 years the price peaked at £340 so some people will be in negative equity now.

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palpatineforever@reddit

I also bought spring 2016, Zoopla currently recons I have 2% increase in value since then. I am in zone 2 london, with about 5 different tube lines in a 5-15min walking distance.
I sold a flat outside London at the same time, that flat has lost 4% since I sold it.
So yeah prices really haven't changed much.

That said I dont plan to move any time soon so it isn't too bad.

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PaleConference406@reddit

Oversupply of flats generally, exacerbated by reduced demand due to WFH/Covid-era changes, BtL changes leading many to exit the market and reduced overseas buyers (particularly China) due to domestic economic issues and stricter controls on movement of capital.

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