Birmingham serviced apartments: is 49 days really the current selling time?

D

DirectCairn

Homeowner
Established
I’m looking at Birmingham serviced apartments listed between £299,500 and £449,300. The current sample suggests roughly 49 days to find a buyer, but it is weighted toward properties still advertised. The main outliers also appear connected to property tax issues.

Would recent completed sales support that 49-day figure, or are withdrawn listings and slow-moving stock distorting it? I’m particularly interested in what has changed this month.
 
Listings still online will naturally overrepresent the difficult stock. Completed sales have the opposite limitation: they reflect offers agreed earlier, not necessarily this month’s conditions. I’d separate newly listed, under-offer, completed and withdrawn properties, then compare the original asking price with the date of the first reduction.
 
What exactly counts as “Birmingham” in the sample, and what do you mean by property tax issues? A serviced apartment in one neighbourhood may attract a very different buyer pool from an apparently similar unit elsewhere. Condition, remaining fit-out obligations and whether buyers can obtain suitable financing could matter more than the broad price band.
 
I’m not convinced completed deals will answer the question cleanly. Completion dates can lag the actual buyer decision, while some advertised properties may already have an accepted offer but remain online. If the aim is to measure time to find a buyer, the useful date is when the offer was agreed, where that can be established—not simply listing removal or completion.
 
New-listing volume is another missing piece. Forty-nine days can look weak if plenty of comparable apartments arrived recently, or fairly normal if supply has been thin and the remaining listings are mostly stale. I would group by neighbourhood and condition first, then note financing limitations and seller motivation rather than treating every serviced apartment as comparable.
 
Also record withdrawals separately instead of counting them as unsold indefinitely. A withdrawal could mean no buyer, a change in the seller’s plans or preparation for relisting at another price. Without that distinction, the online sample may exaggerate both the typical marketing period and the effect of tax-related outliers.
 
A practical way forward is to build a small table for each genuinely comparable property: first-list date, original and current asking price, first price-cut date, under-offer date if visible, withdrawal or completion date, condition and neighbourhood. Then calculate the 49 days both with and without the tax-related cases. If the result changes sharply, those outliers are driving the story; if not, the broader market may really have slowed.
 
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