Utrecht listings: is 115 days meaningful or just stale stock?

Y

yard.steady

Homeowner
Established
There are more Utrecht listings this month, but not many I would actually buy. In the €253,900–€380,900 range, my sample suggests properties are taking roughly 115 days to find a buyer. The longest-running examples often have notable service charges.

I’m deciding whether to wait for better stock or negotiate on something already listed. Are recent completed sales showing the same slowdown, or does my sample give too much weight to properties that remain online precisely because buyers keep rejecting them?
 
The online sample will naturally lean toward slow-moving properties: attractive, correctly priced listings disappear sooner, while difficult ones accumulate. Completed deals are the better comparison, but also record listings that vanish without selling as withdrawn rather than assuming every removal was a sale.
 
A citywide comparison is convenient, but a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood one may tell a different story. The €253,900–€380,900 bracket could be grouping together properties with very different locations, condition and buyer demand.

I’d redraw the sample using fixed neighbourhood boundaries, then record service charges separately. That should show whether the longest listings share a location problem, unusually high recurring costs, or simply unmotivated sellers.
 
I agree on withdrawn stock. “No longer online” is not the same as “buyer found,” so the 115-day figure could be distorted in either direction. It would help to follow the same listings over time and classify them as still active, reduced, withdrawn or confirmed completed where that information is available.
 
One more complication: decide whether days start from the first listing or the latest relisting. A property can return with new photos or a lower price and look fresh even though buyers have already passed on it. Using the latest date would understate its full marketing period.
 
I wouldn’t dismiss the 115 days entirely. It may not represent typical completed-sale time, but it does describe the choices currently facing a buyer. If most of the available stock has high service charges, poor condition or ambitious pricing, waiting for a statistically quicker market does not necessarily produce a better property.
 
That’s fair. For the negotiation decision, I’d make a small table for the actual candidates: original listing date, current asking price, date of any cut, service charges, apparent condition and neighbourhood. The overall 115 days then becomes background; the history of each property matters more when judging whether a seller may engage.
 
Price-cut timing could be more revealing than total days. A seller who reduced recently may wait for the new price to work, while one sitting unchanged for months may either be firm or simply unmotivated. Buyer financing can also interrupt a deal, so a relisting alone doesn’t prove the property was rejected on price.
 
Exactly, and seller motivation is hard to infer from the advert. I’d ask whether Ana’s long-running group contains genuine reductions or listings repeatedly removed and returned at almost the same price. Those are different patterns, even if both end up counted as 115 days.
 
At viewings, ask when the property was first marketed, whether the asking price changed, and why it remains available. Then inspect whether the service charges correspond to anything you value and whether condition creates near-term spending. The answers may be incomplete, but they give you points to compare across the shortlist rather than relying on one citywide number.
 
Weekly tracking may still leave you studying stock you would never consider. I’d start with a realistic shortlist inside fixed neighbourhood boundaries, then add new listings only when they meet the same criteria.

For each one, record its first appearance, reductions, withdrawals, relistings and any confirmed completion. If suitable new stock is increasing, waiting becomes more defensible; if it is not, the better route may be a conditional offer on an older listing after testing the seller’s motivation. Either result is more useful than treating 115 days as a citywide rule.
 
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