To those selling in these difficult times

suz7

The Estate Agents rang me this afternoon - in a round about way she was asking if I was willing to reduce the price, so have reduced by just over 10% (to £60,000 - it's only a little ex-council house). She's coming to take another photo of the outside tomorrow afternoon.

She kept telling me about a repo in the next street that's just been reduced to £62,000. Can repo's be compared to non-repo's? I mean if mine had been repo'd the asking price would be alot lower than it is. She was just annoying me a bit. Moan over - thanks for listening!

Sue.

Davesnave

Sorry to hear your ditherers didn't bite in the end Jenny. It must've been close though......

suz, £60k sounds very reasonable to me! You don't get houses for that where I live. I can't say whether a particular repo should be more or less than your house without knowing both, but otherwise equal properties should be a bit cheaper if repossessed, especially in this market.

I know sometimes people trash their repos, or remove kitchens etc, but that is by no means the rule.

Just a quick note from me to say I'm completing Friday, so my Internet will be down for a while. I'm sitting here in an empty house with just the PC left and vague promises that I'll be up & running again by about February 5th. Here's hoping....!

Best of luck to everyone who's still in 'waiting mode' on this thread. Speak with you again, eventually.

ukmaggie45

jenny74 wrote: »

I've just had a call from the EA to say that the people who came round for a 3rd viewing on friday will not be putting an offer in.
Jen

Oh dear, Jenny, not what I had hoped to hear.

Never mind, someone will come along when the time is right. If you see what I mean!

Here's hoping you get some more viewings soon.

jenny74

Thanks Dave and Maggie,

I hope so Maggie, we have our eye on a house on our road, (we LOVE it round here!) it is extended and perfect for us. I just hope someone doesn't pip me to the post.

Good luck for Friday Dave, hope all goes well. :-)

smallfry1983

Just wanted to add our story.

Weve not exchanged yet, but it is a 3 person chain, so very confident it will all go through fine.

Put our 2 bed house on the market July 08, we had about 20 viewings between then and December 08. First weekend of Jan, we had 5 viewings in one day, one of which made us an offer slightly below asking, but one we could accept.

We have since put an offer in on a bigger house and its been accepted. Everyone is very keen to get things going, we are all using the same solicitors. Our buyers and sellers are chain free, which makes things a lot simpler.

I hope everyone on the market starts to see an upturn now. I'll be holding my breath until we exchange!

ukmaggie45

Davesnave wrote: »

Just a quick note from me to say I'm completing Friday, so my Internet will be down for a while. I'm sitting here in an empty house with just the PC left and vague promises that I'll be up & running again by about February 5th. Here's hoping....!

Dave, how on earth will you cope without t'interweb thingy? I foresee serious withdrawal symptoms coming on! :eek:

We had a phone call from the lady in the flat under parental flat on Sunday to say that after Saturday's rain and south westerly gale she has a leak in her living room again. Probably from parental balcony. Not a lot we can do about it now, we've informed the EA, but we think it's down to the management committee to fix it. They are not the most efficient in the world - parents had a leak in bedroom for about 5 years :mad: bad enough that Mum had to put buckets under to catch the drips.

Chap upstairs was very unhelpful at the time, made access for work difficult etc etc. We finally seem to have solved that problem (he was helpful to us, I don't think he liked my parents) but it's sad that my Folks had to sleep in a leaking bedroom for the last few years of their lives.

I do hope that the news of this new leak won't put our buyers off! We have been upfront all along that the flat had problems, and buyer was still keen (said to the lady downstairs that he would do most of the work on the flat himself), so fingers crossed he won't back out now. I have become very fatalistic about it all - whatever will be will be. (Was that Doris Day BTW?)

Sarah and Katy, I bawled when we left our first flat (it was only rented too!). We had the first 2 years of our married life there. There is nothing I hate more than moving (partly because my childhood nightmare came true at age 12 when we moved - Mum made me give away all my dollies and teddies to the little sister of the girl next door but one. ) so we've been in the same house for 36 years now!

Daughter is keen for us to sell and move to a bungalow (I have difficulty with the stairs), but I still love our home, can see Snowdon and the hills of Wales from my bed, and despite it being a terraced house we can see loads of sky for miles - we're on a steep hill. Yesterday we had a horrendous hail storm, and I watched it approaching for ages - beautiful and awesome.

Needs an awful lot of work doing on it - we've got a huge hole in the kitchen ceiling where about 2 square feet of plaster fell down just in front of the cooker. Fortunately we were out at the time, so no-one was standing there! _pale_ Or one of us would be one of these: :A

Plus there's the cracky bulge in the landing ceiling where a mate put his foot through in the loft when re-wiring the lighting about 30 years ago, only held together by the absolutely revolting polystyrene wallpaper the previous owners put up. They even had that as a "positive selling point" when they showed us round :eek: and it's in the living room and our bedroom too. And they didn't even match up the pattern on it. Sheesh, house was a mess when we moved in, at least we've improved some of it I think.

Not to mention the gas fire in the living room that hasn't been used for about 15 years... And the kitchen is a mess. Whole place really needs complete redecoration and renovation! Apart from the bathroom - we actually finally did that about 3 years ago, and I'm very happy with it. Ah well, maybe in the next few years we'll have more time and energy and the necessary dosh.

Sorry, seem to be rambling!

sarah_elton

I need some advice on the photos the EA is using of my flat (it's really hard to judge them when you live in the place and know what it looks like if you see what I mean).

I think they make it look smaller than it is (esp. lounge, kitchen and master bedroom).

Here is my property's details (not on Rightmove yet):
http://www.spicermccoll.co.uk/buy/propertydetails.aspx?propid=1000154&ref=%2fbuy%2fstandardsearch.aspx%3fpageno%3d4

Here is a flat which is also on the market, exactly the same size/design as mine:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-17531239.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E1471&minPrice=120000&maxPrice=125000&pageNumber=1&backToListURL=%2Fproperty-for-sale%2Ffind.html%3FsearchType%3DSALE%26locationIdentifier%3DREGION%255E1471%26radius%3D0.0%26displayPropertyType%3D%26minBedrooms%3D%26maxBedrooms%3D%26minPrice%3D120000%26maxPrice%3D125000%26maxDaysSinceAdded%3D%26_includeSSTC%3Don%26sortByPriceDescending%3D%26primaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26secondaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26oldDisplayPropertyType%3D%26oldPrimaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26oldSecondaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26newHome%3D%26retirement%3D%26auction%3Dfalse%26partBuyPartRent%3Dfalse%26x%3D132%26y%3D16

I'm thinking of taking pics myself with as many angles as the other flat has used to show:

1) Lounge - I have a small dining table behind the couch - this dining area isn't shown
2) Kitchen - just another angle to show the size better
3) Main bedroom - the wall opposite the window has a recess where we have a double and a triple wardrobe

Am I being OTT? I think I annoyed the agents already by sending them through three sets of amendments for the hard copy property details, but only because it was covered in typos!

Obviously the details have the room size and people looking are likely to know it's the same style flat as the other one, but I know how much influence Rightmove piccies have...

EDIT: p.s. yes, I know the neighbours will love me when they spot it and see I've undercut them by £12.5k

4Chickens

Our house went on the market in August and we have had loads of viewings, in fact I had 2 on Friday and 1 on Sunday. Cleaning the house all the time is driving me mad. Any tips that don't cost much money?

ukmaggie45

smallfry1983 wrote: »

Just wanted to add our story.
Put our 2 bed house on the market July 08, we had about 20 viewings between then and December 08. First weekend of Jan, we had 5 viewings in one day, one of which made us an offer slightly below asking, but one we could accept.

Congratulations smallfry - I hope that you exchange soon and all goes smoothly.

We put my parents' flat up last August, we're not sure how many viewings as the EAs did them (we live about a 40 minute drive away). But there was a lot of interest from the start - they took at least half a dozen people round in the first week or so, had an offer in the first few days, but it fell through after survey. We did have a couple of people prepared to offer the full asking price, but they had dogs, and there is a strict no pets rule so they couldn't buy.

Had new offer that we accepted, bit less than the first one, but still in the ball-park we hoped for (we did price to sell as best we could) I think in September (would have to check diary), but on a weekend of pouring rain and gales in the autumn EAs found dreadful leak in the bedroom. It's now been fixed, and we exchanged earlier this month, completion on 30th Jan. But see my previous post, must cross my fingers here!

So we're on similar time scale here. About 6 months start to finish. (Touch wood for both of us )

I think we've been lucky.

smallfry1983

good luck maggie!

we were expecting it to go on for ages (our neighbour took a year to sell in 2007), and even just the fact things picked up so much in one week made us grin like fools!