The Agency UK Cheltenham & The Cotswolds

The Agency UK Cheltenham & The Cotswolds Experienced local estate agents providing a premium, personal service that is delivered without exception.

Nobody who bought in 2015 remembers what rates were.They remember the kitchen.Ask anyone who bought ten years ago what t...
30/09/2026

Nobody who bought in 2015 remembers what rates were.
They remember the kitchen.

Ask anyone who bought ten years ago what the base rate was that month. They won't have a clue. Ask them about the house and you'll get twenty minutes. The kitchen they hated and then didn't. The neighbour who turned out to be brilliant. The tree they planted that's now blocking the light and they can't bring themselves to cut it down.
Rates matter, and they matter enormously in the year you buy. What I'm saying is narrower than that. They stop being the story faster than anyone expects, and the thing that ends up mattering is how long you were there and whether it was the right house.
So if you're waiting, be clear what you're waiting for. If it's a deposit, that's a plan and I'd wait too. If it's a feeling that conditions will be nicer at some undefined point, that's not a plan, and the years go by at exactly the same speed either way.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

Buyers decide in the first three photographs.The other twenty are just confirming it.Somebody scrolling gives your house...
30/09/2026

Buyers decide in the first three photographs.
The other twenty are just confirming it.

Somebody scrolling gives your house about a second and a half. In that time they've seen the front, the main room and whatever the third picture is, and they've already decided whether to tap or keep going.
Which makes the third photograph the most undervalued thing in this entire industry. Everyone thinks about the front. Nobody thinks about the third one. It should be whatever your house is best at. The kitchen if the kitchen's the reason. The garden if the garden's the reason. It shouldn't be the second bedroom taken at eleven in the morning with the curtains half shut, which is what it usually is.
Professionally marketed homes get considerably more enquiries and sell quicker. Not because a nice photo is a nice photo, but because those first three are doing a job and somebody's thought about what the job is.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

You're already paying a mortgage.It's just not yours.Every month your rent goes out and it clears somebody's mortgage. N...
30/09/2026

You're already paying a mortgage.
It's just not yours.

Every month your rent goes out and it clears somebody's mortgage. Not yours. Theirs. You've kept a roof over your head, which matters, and at the end of it you own precisely the same amount of house as you did at the start, which is none.
That's not a reason to buy something you can't afford, and it isn't a reason to rush. Renting is the right answer for plenty of people and there's no shame anywhere in it. But if you're renting while waiting for the market to be perfect before you buy, be clear with yourself about what the wait is costing you. It isn't free. It's a payment a month to somebody else, for as long as it goes on.
The average five year fix is 5.63 per cent and there are sub five per cent deals about for a decent deposit. That's not 2021 and it isn't going back. But it's a number you can work with, and the sums are worth doing properly rather than assuming.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

Autumn's the shortest useful season in this job. About ten weeks between the schools going back and everyone deciding it...
28/09/2026

Autumn's the shortest useful season in this job. About ten weeks between the schools going back and everyone deciding it'll keep till the new year. Anything completing before Christmas is being agreed right about now.
The conditions are odd and worth understanding. Record stock, so buyers have more to pick from than at any point since 2014. Normal demand, with net sales this year within half a per cent of last year and ahead of where things sat before the pandemic. And achieved prices per square foot at a seven year high, which tells you the money's still there for anything priced where a buyer recognises it.
So the homes that go in the next few weeks are the ones that launched at a number nobody had to argue with, in front of people who need to move rather than people having a look. Everything else joins the pile that comes off in January and has another go in spring, a season older and no better priced.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

Stand at the back of enough viewings and you learn to spot it. First few minutes, people look at a house the way you loo...
27/09/2026

Stand at the back of enough viewings and you learn to spot it. First few minutes, people look at a house the way you look at a car park. Checking, counting, measuring the second bedroom with their eyes. Then something shifts and they're not inspecting any more, they're in it.
It's always small. A hand flat on the worktop like they already own it. Somebody working out where the tree goes. One of them wandering back to a room on their own and not saying why. That's not a survey. That's somebody trying a life on.
None of it's on the floor plan, which is worth remembering when you're getting a house ready. Square footage is on the portal and every rival has it too. What people are hunting for is the school run that takes six minutes, the light in the back room at four, the garden that gets the evening. Show them the life and the numbers sort themselves out.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

If somebody wants a price I can't stand behind, I'd rather they went somewhere else. That sounds like a boast. It isn't....
23/09/2026

If somebody wants a price I can't stand behind, I'd rather they went somewhere else. That sounds like a boast. It isn't. It's the only way this works.
I can only run so many houses properly at once. Properly means I've seen it, I know it, I'm the one on the phone when the survey throws something up at half five on a Thursday. Take on twice as many and every one of them gets half the attention, and you'd never know, because the ones that fail just come off the market in January and nobody writes about them.
So the honest version of a personal agent is somebody with a limit. If I say yes to your house I'm saying I've got room for it, and if I've told you a number lower than the one you wanted, that's the same conversation from the other side.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

Every year there's a reason to hold off. In 2019 it was the referendum fallout. 2020, obviously. 2021 everything was too...
21/09/2026

Every year there's a reason to hold off. In 2019 it was the referendum fallout. 2020, obviously. 2021 everything was too hot. 2022 the rates went mad. 2023 they were still mad. Last year it was the Budget and this year it's the Budget again, plus the Middle East, plus whatever the next thing is.
There has never been a clean year. There isn't going to be one. And the people who've spent six years waiting for it haven't saved money by waiting, they've paid somebody else's mortgage for six years and they're no closer.
This isn't me telling you prices only go up, because they don't and anyone promising that is selling something. It's simpler than that. The thing that makes buying work is time in it, not timing it. Buy when your life needs you to, stay put a while, and the market gets on with whatever it was going to do anyway. Trying to pick the bottom is a hobby, not a plan.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

In all the years I've been doing this (20+), nobody has sat at their kitchen table and told me they were moving because ...
18/09/2026

In all the years I've been doing this (20+), nobody has sat at their kitchen table and told me they were moving because of the base rate. Not once. What they say is there's a baby coming. That the stairs have got hard for her mum. That the job's in Leeds now. That the marriage ended and the house is too quiet on a Sunday.
People move because life moved first. The market's weather. Worth a look before you set off, it'll change your route, and it has never once decided whether the journey needed making.
So when the headlines get loud, and they're loud at the minute, turn the question round. Not whether the market's right, but whether you are. If the stairs are a problem or the baby's coming or the commute's stopped being funny, the market will do whatever it does and you'll move anyway. Everyone who held out for perfect conditions is still holding out.

📲 01242 501221
📩 [email protected]

Address

Charlton Kings
Cheltenham

Telephone

+441242501221

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Agency UK Cheltenham & The Cotswolds posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to The Agency UK Cheltenham & The Cotswolds:

Shortcuts

Share

Category