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Prospects for Retirement Property
With leading building societies having announced another fall in average house prices for the month of April, is the retirement market facing the same down turn?
It is widely recognised that the timing of the peaks and troughs in the retirement sector of the property market lag behind those in the main-stream sector. This is primarily because it is not influenced by the mortgage factor but with the main-stream sector having continued to decline what are the current prospects for retirement property vendors and what advantages are there for the prospective purchaser?
In statistics gathered from their portfolio of retirement properties available for sale by Fifty5Plus.com, retirement property sales and search specialists, nearly 60% of these properties have been on the market for more than 6 months and of these, more than half have been reduced in price by amounts varying from10% to, in the worst cases, 50%. Obviously some of these properties came to the market when conditions were much better and the fact that they had not already been sold tends to be consistent in that they are particularly small apartments. Nonetheless, there is a clear indication that the market is slow and frustrating.
Of those properties that have come to the market in the last six months, there is evidence that these are receiving a higher rate of viewings and that potential purchasers, who may have been looking for some time, have not been put off by what they see as 'sticking' properties. It is also likely that the viewer is expecting the valuation to be totally in line with current market conditions as opposed to 'following' the market down.
In addition to the above, Fifty5Plus.com recently carried out a survey which has shown that some 40% of people hoping to move to a retirement development will not put their own property on the market until they have found somewhere to buy. The problem with this approach is that should a property be found that is appropriate to buy, an offer is of no value until such time as the purchaser is able to proceed. These people may be well advised to follow the route of some 20% of those surveyed who said they had intentionally sold and moved into rented accommodation, of which there is an abundance, to ensure they were able to press the 'all systems go' button when they found the right new home. As in all brackets of the property market, there are relatively few who indicated that a purchase was not dependent on a related sale as they had cash in the bank.
So what does this really say about the retirement property sector - it is a slow market, prices are not high but owing to its nature there will always be new properties coming to the market and always someone looking to buy. Being prepared
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