Feels very static around Oakdale, Poole, with a real absence of saleboards. But I can't se prices dropping soon, as the following may indicate.
Close to me is a quiet street of 60 or so late Victorian houses, mostly terraced. The best of the terraced houses reached a peak price of around £200,000 by Dec 2006. In Dec 2007 - with the 'credit crunch here, and all the bad news about housing escalating - someone paid £243,000 for one property. 3 bed plus loft conversion, extended kitchen out back. Similar to many others in the street. This price is more than bigger, detached three beds are fetching nearby. Maybe a buyer with 'London money' who thought it a snip? Maybe someone desperate to buy quickly, job relocating here, kids needing new schools? I'll never know.

But the consequence has been that the next two houses up for sale in that street are currently priced at £225,000 plus. With the vendors no doubt claiming that 'that's what they are fetching now'.
One over-valuation, and a new benchmark has been set for the street which valuers will use now that it's on the Land Registry based sites.

These two current sale properties will doubtless be on the market a very long time, but they would have probably sold at somewhere under the 200 mark, if it hadn't been for that single overpriced house and a clueless buyer.
It seems insane that any individual, who may not even work in EA locally anymore, can pull a valuation out of the air; chance upon the one individual with more cash than sense; and thus dictate pricing in perpetuity.

I shall follow this, and report the outcome as the year unrolls...

Am doing repos in Poole this week - will see if the court is getting busier.

New kid on the block


Down in Poole High Street this morning.

Work goes on apace to complete a huge, brand new Kinghams Estate Agent ready for the official opening this Saturday. Ground floor is a standard EA; the second floor a Lettings Agency. Through the window black leather 'n chrome Mastermind chairs await the backsides of the 'sales negotiators'.

What an audacious strategy to open these expensive premises with the market tottering like it is!

The state of the market can be seen in the window of EA Tony Newman not many yards down the street. Pehaps 30%-40% of the houses in their windows are 'reduced', have 'discounts' or mention 'offers'. Nothing sensational yet - biggest reductions are £10,000 on £200,000 plus properties, but the trend is clear.

Will their big, brash new competitor be able to reverse the slide? I'll be watching with interest....

Is Oakdale Primary school still the force it once was? At one time you could only get your kid into Grammar if they wen to Oakdale or St Peters. Maybe desperate parents who can't afford to go private?

Hi - I don't think 'Oakdale Primary School' exists as such any more. It's now Oakdale Middle School ( it absorbed South Road Middle School) where kids go from about the age of 8. It's in smart new premises about 3 mins walk from the old Primary. My 2 sons went to Oakdale, and thence to Poole Grammar. Funnily enough, I'm a semi retired uni academic who does guest lectures on uni application at Poole GS and Parkstone GS and Poole High. So I get to see the local schools.

I don't get the impression that the grammar schools favour any local feeder schools specifically. Pooleand Parkstone Grammars draw their intake from far and wide. Having seen my kids end up with Firsts from Russell Group uni's, I think Oakdale gave them a pretty good start. But Poole High ( where a lot of kids who fail to get into the GS's go) quite surprised me on a visit last year. Teaching and atmosphere seemed good, some kids just a little chavvy compared to the GS kids, but polite and attentive. Staff seemed dedicated. Good Poole High students get offers from some very good uni's.

Overall, I think parents are pretty fairly served around here, and a bright kid will get where they want to go. If a youngster is clever they don't really need private education in this part of the world. If you want any more info come back to me.

Housing market here seems stagnant

Are you moving down here, or already in situ?

Back to house prices.

EA by the train level crossing in Poole High Street had almost a third of the displayed houses marked as 'Reduced' today.

I read these anecdotals about Poole with great interest. I own a house in Charminster in Bournemouth but currently live with my mum just outside London (Watford). She's been I'll for a couple of years and I've been looking after her whilst running an Internet services company from (her) home. My Girlfriend has just put her house on the market and if she can sell and retain the deposit she originally put in 2 years ago, we're thinking about moving back down. We want to live somewhere where we can think about having children and raising a family, against the backdrop of the current economic crisis.
Is Richard Carr still the same curse upon the local area? I watched that docu-b0llocks about sandbanks a month or 2 ago and it made me fear the worst.
All I know is I'd rather raise my children where they can experience the Purbecks, the New Forest, the local beaches etc rather than the suburban shit hole where we live right now.
I'll be keeping an eye on this thread and hoping for the best...

Well things have obviously changed for the better since I was in the Poole education system. Back in the 70s St Peters and Oakdale were Grammar Crammers with a lot of 11+ (or 12+ in reality) training. My school thought this all very unsporting and as a result sent hardly any of its pupils to Grammar. I'm not saying that I would have been a suitable Grammar boy myself but obviously when St Peters send 20 out of a hundred pupils to Grammar and say Courthill 2 there is either a serious issue with the school or the system.

My mother was a local teacher and was also on the Grammar selection board so I have some insights into the system pre 2000 and know that it wasn't completely transparent.

Anyway that's all by the by - I was just curious is parents were desperate to get into the Oakdale catchment.

In reply to Ked, Charminster is a good place to live. One or two areas are a bit rough and some drug issues at one time in the local pubs if you have older kids. It is pretty easy to get down to the beach too either by bike or bus if you don't want to drive and you can walk into town if the bright lights of Charming Charminster tire. Traffic has become much heavier though - don't expect to spend too much time in the New Forest or Purbecks unless you like sitting in jams. My cousin is a senior teacher in one of the Charminster middle schools and it is pretty good standard.