Remember it's location location location

What can I say - if you fancy some real peace and quiet then this might not be the one for you:

http://old.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-186...3&tr_t=rent


How much?

£1,200 per month - but it's got a lovely front garden .... even the cat will appreciate this giant outdoor litter tray

..... second thoughts, having a cat here is'nt a good idea as it would probably be sqashed within the first week of moving

So where is this delightful property.... hmm, on the busy Newmarket Road (Leopold Road corner). Ideally suited to those who are partially or completely deaf and without cats/dogs or young children.

It's overpriced, but I wouldn't complain about Lime Tree Road...

However, if I was trying to flog a £725,000 house, I'd want better photography than this!

Maybe it's supposed to be soft focus property porn, or maybe it's to disguise something truly awful about the place - who knows...

Maybe this is Norfolk's answer to Sandbanks - Mudbanks

http://old.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-153...=1&tr_t=buy

Nearly 3/4 of a Million





Once all the Londoners start start selling their second homes guess what this will be worth in 4 years time - less than half price without adjusting for inflation

Compare it to this one for the same price in Branksome Road - a much bigger property, it has 4 bedroom and is in a quieter/nicer area - probably has a huge back garden as well for pets and children to play in. Looks like the Newmarket Road one was bought as an investment property but at that price who would want to live there - it's already been empty for ages. At least £400 per month overpriced in my opinion and probably losing the owner a fortune.

Oh dear, I'm enjoying myself too much on this new sub-forum!

How about £850 per month to live above a car dealer on Sprowston Road?.... it's the one that used to be a petrol station next to the High School. Ha ha ha - I know the owner so might be able to get a discount

http://old.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-168...1&tr_t=rent

The one above the garage takes some beating I think! I wonder who told him it's be worth £850/month?!

I think the Branksome Road one was up for sale (or rent I believe) over the summer/autumn - either it didn't sell, so they've put it up for rent, or it sold for an "investment" property - one to watch, as it'll probably be back on the market come Easter if they can't find a tenant - although I have to say I have a bit of a feeling of Deja Vu on the Wells one - can't find an old link to it (thought I'd put it on the overpriced thread, but must have chickened out...) - I'm pretty sure it was on that street, with a similar view out, but can't find one on nethouseprices. It's a shocking price for it though!

Some day this craziness will be over.

The Newmarket one has been up for sale for many many months. Couple of agents, on SSTC then back up for sale..and of course now for rent. Been empty for the whole time (least 6 months, and has a broken window which has been left unrepaired for about 6 weeks. Anyone doing their research will realise the owner would prefer to sell and would probably be trying to the whole time you were in there. Secure tenancy for a family l dont think.

Just come across it 'For Sale' with 2 different agents - does'nt give you much confidence to rent it. I wonder who will buy at this price - front garden is pretty useless unless you have a 6ft fence/wall erected all the way round to give you the privacy. I don't think there is a rear garden, only a garage - amazing it has a broken window which has'nt been repaired which makes you wonder if this is someone outside of Norfolk that has bought as an investment.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-187...=7&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-186...80&tr_t=buy

Hmm, what else can I try?.... I know, £80 per week house share

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-193...8&tr_t=rent

My current favourite is not on rightmove yet (maybe someone bought it?) and is one of the old nurses accommodation terrace opposite the old hospital development.

Terrace
On the busy road with 0 privacy
1700 sq ft
no great garden

475,000

A joke

An guess what some idoit has apparently sale agreed on some of them.
t
Of course i happy the dregs no longer live in these houses but I still feel sorry for the foks who have at least 150k negative equity from the word go as everyone knows town and country over value by 100k for no better reason than having a beige website.

I mean where are the photos of the rear gardens if they are so spacious?

http://www.fineandcountry.com/site/php/pro...amp;from=search

http://www.fineandcountry.com/site/php/pro...amp;from=search

http://www.fineandcountry.com/site/php/pro...amp;from=search

Honestly if you can afford these then pay more for a much better place of which there are loads.

Here you go, is this it? - another buy-to-let No. 58 St. Stephens which was maybe one of the first to be finished and sold at the time of the Northern Rock collapse, which was the peak of the housing market (Q3 2007). Nethouseprices says that property completed on 25 September 2007 for £468,500 so stamp duty would have been 3% or £14,055 as well.....

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-189...2&tr_t=rent

A whopping 3% yield - wow, what a great investment not.

Someone is getting their fingers badly burnt with this one - even if it was rented at £1200/month it would be losing money. Eg. with an 85% LTV (loan to value) interest only mortgage with a fixed rate back then of maybe 5.5% that would mean the annual interest was £21,902 or £1,825 per month. A 15% deposit (£70,275 worth of equity) is going to dissapear as soon as the next one sold sets a lower margin price in todays credit crunch market with volatile stock markets and falling house prices.

You can only remain cash-flow negative for so long before you go bankrupt, so how long will this owner be able to lose almost £2,000 a month while a property stands empty?

Flat for rent on Guildhall Hill...

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-874...1&tr_t=rent

Picture 5 - I actually think that is the kitchen

Fantastic! Anyone else would consider that an alcove for storing the hoover & broom, but no! Stick in a tiny sink/2-ring hob/nano-fridge out of a caravan & it magically becomes a kitchen/diner. Perfect for those dinner parties

<<<dont miss this opportunity>>>

Came past there on Monday to have a nose and it still has a broken window which is a further 3 weeks. How long can people leave houses like this before they start to look neglected and then become the subject of vandals?.

I had a look at the house number and think it must be 121 Newmarket Street which sold for £225,000 on the 10 October 2006 - it was up for £285,000 recently. Legal fees and stamp duty when the property was purchased would have been several thousand, then there's the cost of complete renovation which would have been several thousand more.

If it's a typical BTL mortgage then the interest on the amount borrowed will be £800 to £900 per month and it doesn't look like it's been occupied since it was completed. So in 16 months it's cost a further £13,000 or so in mortgage costs plus the loss of interest of about £2,000 had the deposit money been invested - how can people service debts like this on empty properties?

That is so small - where do you actually put anything?!

The Newmarket Road house has just had £200 knocked off the asking rent - so I now expect this bargain to be snapped up pretty quickly, not

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-186...4&tr_t=rent

Buy-to-let was always going to be buy-to-lose for those that came to the party late looking for the easy money that had already gone.

£925 a month for the pleasure of living in a flat on the peaceful Prince of Wales Road above an estate agents

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-168...6&tr_t=rent


Edit:

The flat above the car dealer on Sprowston Road seems to have 2 different prices:

Marketed by this agent for an incredible £795 pcm

and strangely at £145 less a month with this agent at £650 pcm

According to Mouseprice.com, average earnings in the NR3 postcode is £18,623 so don't know how anyone could afford almost £10,000 in rent per year in that location - crazy.

From the blurb for the above flat:



Well, it's not actually much of a challenge to prove them wrong...

I can find more central 3 bed apartments:

this one in Bethel Street is £25pcm less

this one is £30 less a month

and this one is only £675 pcm, in Tombland

They're all as, or more central, and they're all better than living above the letting agent that's letting out your accommodation!! These idiots just talk a whole heap of pants...

And I'm guessing that you have to be a working tenant so you're out most of the time so the letting agent can use your flat as his hidey hole during the day, on his regular daily inspections... or maybe because it's so sh!te you wouldn't want to be stuck in there all day for fear of realising what a pants deal you're getting!

My submission for East Anglian Property of the Week is this one It's just as you turn into Church Lane in Eaton - more or less opposite the side entrance to Waitrose. I spotted it in the paper a few weeks ago, I drive past it on a regular basis, and there's no for sale board up or anything. It's been off and on the market for quite some time now
I posted this on Sept 19 2007:

I think it was on for £350k ish last year, in Feb 7th 2008 paper it was £324,995, and it's on for £299,950 now. The ad in the paper says:



So, based on nosiness on a regular basis, they did it up last spring (if not before), couldn't flog it, have lived in it for a while - potentially counteracting the refurb, as it's probably all a bit worn now, and one could possibly guess that seeing as they haven't realised any profit from it at all, they may need a reasonably speedy sale? What's odd is that I can find it in the paper, on the TOPs website, but not on the Rightmove website, and with no for sale sign, something seems amiss (for at the very least, if it had been sold STC, then TOPs would want their sign outside proudly displaying this fact, surely?)

I do wonder what the "Eaton Lifestyle" is though...

Anyhow, it's a relative bargain in comparison to the rest of the ones for sale in the street, and so, for good reasons, I make it my property of the week!

Edit to say - the Eaton house is dropping fast - just noticed that the Feb 7th 2008 ad at £324,995 has "New Price" marked under the picture - so that's 2 price drops in less than a month.

I think it means:

Walking distance from a good-but-overpriced supermarket and from two good-but-overpriced pubs.
Having lots of retired people knocking about during the daytime, in case you feel like a chat about cat food, pensions, illnesses, etc.
Listening to the endless roar of the A11 overpass.
Enjoying watching the odd gang of chavs from Lakenham via Marston Lane looking for better-quality cars to vandalise than round their way

Yep, I wouldn't want to live above an estate agents - but if I did have to then I would play this song with the windows open and the volume turned up on a regular basis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQFo2-xZiks


Hmm, I also go past the Church Lane house on a regular basis and remember it being renovated and then being empty for a while then seeing someone live there, but I think it's empty again with as you say no board outside. With the deteriorating property market and credit market I think they will be luckly to break even if it sold for £275k today but my guess is that they will do like everyone else and chase the market down with small cuts in the asking price that are not enough to sell it.

I would'nt want to live there with a front gargen I can't enjoy - like the house on Newmarket Road, there's no privacy and you would be worried about keeping a cat there plus the rear garden is quite small compared to others on Chestnut Hill.

Have a look at the new MousePrice website - it's fantastic, full of up-to-date information on absolutely everything and also as Microsoft Virtual Earth so you can see any house you want from the air!.... very addictive.








Here's another property which is expensive but not in the best of locations:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-194..._showcase=false


A little history lesson!.... it's where John Henry Gurney (1819 - 1890) used to live before he moved to Keswick in 1864. He was one of the partners in Overend, Gurney & Co. in London which was the last UK bank to have a run on it's deposits before the Northern Rock crisis last year - this was 142 years ago in 1866. It was the biggest bank in London at the time and failed when the Bank of England refused to bail them out after they had lent out too much on speculative investments during that time. The Norwich bank, Gurney's bank was re-structured with new partners in time to prevent it from failing with the London branch and later became Barclay's Bank after it merged with other banks.

More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overend,_Gurney_and_Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurney's_Bank

I actually quite like those houses! Glad that they have been brought back into use. But the noise from St Stephen's Road would bother me, especially if I had to part with over £450k!

Above a car sales showroom but there is only roadside parking. Oh, the irony!

Its £650/month now!

I just had a look on PropertySnake - searched NR4 and up it popped at the very top

http://www.propertysnake.co.uk/site/postcode/nr4

http://www.propertysnake.co.uk/site/detail/6680609

Thanks Catflap - don't tend to look on Propertysnake much at the moment.

It also says that the house has been on the market since mid July last year - I would say that that's amazingly discreet marketing!

How are your Property Bee searches going? Are you finding any good ones, or does Property Snake reflect your findings? Or are you playing your cards close to your chest in case we have our eyes on the same potential bargains?! (This of course, at some point in the game, will be true - us lot on HPC will be the only ones with deposits/funds big enough to be the real buyers round here!)



Me, if I had that flat, well, I think during the day I'd put some earplugs in, and put some of Bruno's finest on repeat - having "HOT PWOPERTY" and "HOUSE PWICE CWASH" being shouted out from upper windows would surely put them out of business as everyone would think they were loony!