To those selling in these difficult times Part Deux. AKA sellers support network!

harz99

not_loaded wrote: »

If you don’t get your property on RightMove, you’ll be amazingly lucky to sell in this sluggish market. There isn’t a lot of that type of luck around.

Depends where you live, none of the EAs in the town I live in use RM..................

They still manage to sell houses, all have their own web sites accessable via simple Google (or similar) search.

Chiaroscuro

casperlarue wrote: »

Putting in an offer when you don't have the funds to proceed is frankly pointless....we had a viewer who really liked our house....it was lovely....just what she was looking for..... but it turned out she hadn't even got her property up for sale! So that was 2 hours of my time tidying up for no reason.....my house is up for sale because I want to sell it not because I want every tom !!!!!! and harry wandering round having a nosey.

You could register an interest in a property you liked but I would be very suprised if the seller just stopped marketing it and waited for you to sell your property first.

We've registered an interest in a property and I said to the EA marketing it that whilst we'd love to put in an offer I don't think it'd be right until we've had an offer on ours. He's been really understanding and helpful and is keeping us in the know about what's going on. I know the owner's quite keen to sell to us but we still haven't had a viewer.

Blodwen wrote: »

Hello and welcome to all the new peeps, this is a great place for advice, support or just to rant!

I got feedback last night from Friday's viewing - apparently the guy think the house is too small for his requirements. Fair enough, I said, that's a perfectly valid reason for discounting a house. Then the EA went on to say that he wanted a 3 bed (mine is 2) and he was thinking maybe the front lounge could be made into a bedroom (I suspect to rent to students) but it is too small for that. I am slightly annoyed because it was a fairly short notice viewing and I spent hours that I didn't really have to spare cleaning and tidying a house which the bloke knew didn't have enough bedrooms for his needs, and also knew the dimensions and layout of the lounge - feel like it was a complete waste of time :mad: Anwyay, rant over!

Oh now that is annoying. He'd have know the size of the room from the details so why waste your time?

Anyway, good luck with the next viewing.

beeswax wrote: »

Two and a half hours to change the floorplans - not bad I suppose. Now its just sit tight and wait. Good luck everyone.

Good luck to you too. Our floorplans were finally added to our details too - at least they got ours right!

NEH

not_loaded wrote: »

If you don’t get your property on RightMove, you’ll be amazingly lucky to sell in this sluggish market. There isn’t a lot of that type of luck around.

If you’ve gone with a local EA at their extortionate percentage fee, then it’s their job to know these things.

When they tout for the business, you should always ask for the three prices:

1. I wanna sell it tomorrow.
2. I wanna sell it in the next two months.
3. I wanna sell it sometime, but I ain’t really bothered when.

Rightmove isn't used much in Scotland either...

not_loaded

NEH wrote: »

Rightmove isn't used much in Scotland either...

Yes, I forgot to mention Scotland is different for that.

I still think for ‘darn sarf’ you’d have to be mad to go for an agent that doesn’t bother with RightMove. They make enough money on the sale after all…

vet8

casperlarue wrote: »

Putting in an offer when you don't have the funds to proceed is frankly pointless....we had a viewer who really liked our house....it was lovely....just what she was looking for..... but it turned out she hadn't even got her property up for sale! So that was 2 hours of my time tidying up for no reason.....my house is up for sale because I want to sell it not because I want every tom !!!!!! and harry wandering round having a nosey.

I agree 100 per cent about the 2 hours cleaning and tidying for some idiot who just mooches around with no real interest in buying, we have had a lot of those. :mad: But I think it is funny how much house selling has changed.

We bought this house 22 years ago, in the dark ages, and it was SOO different then. We were not even thinking of moving when I saw this house in the local EA's window, we came to view on spec. and made an offer long before we had our house on the market or had talked about a mortgage offer. The offer was accepted. Of course in those day houses tended to sell quickly, we found a buyer on the second day after it went on the market.

Our previous purchase to that was the same. In those days people tended to look and find a house first and then sell theirs. They were easy days. SIGH>

farmerboy

Slinky wrote: »

Can't see where you get an advantage by not paying the council tax if it's going to cost you a £5K asking price drop or possibly auction. Our buyer liked what he saw so much he's paying £1K less than the asking price, and for that we decided we'd throw in most of the furniture (as we don't need it), saves getting rid of it. He's delighted.

We are not that lucky to be able to throw the furniture out as we need it where we're living now. You seemed to have been lucky with the buyer, but similar houses to ours that are furnished and the same price aren't selling either. To be honest the council tax part was a welcome bonus, the plan was always to sell empty.

We have a realistic price we want to achieve and have tested the market at what the EA said they thought it was worth, and we're now trying to be pro active. If that means dropping to get a sale then so be it.

lauhen

I'm back again and have a question, we live in a terraced townhouse, the front isn't fenced off but you can easily work out where the boundaries are to each property. Anyway my question is would you fence it. I don't mean the wire ones but a nice black metal type one with gate, I am wondering if this is putting people off. I don't know, what do we do.

harz99

lauhen wrote: »

I'm back again and have a question, we live in a terraced townhouse, the front isn't fenced off but you can easily work out where the boundaries are to each property. Anyway my question is would you fence it. I don't mean the wire ones but a nice black metal type one with gate, I am wondering if this is putting people off. I don't know, what do we do.

Best have a look through the paperwork that goes with your property before erecting a fence, as there may well be something akin to a restrictive covenant which either forbids the front gardens from being separated, or places restrictions on the height of any boundary you build.

Davesnave

lauhen wrote: »

I do sometimes think is it really worth the hassle, all this moving lark is very stressful and depressing. I am such an impatient person that i want things to happen now, but i know it never happens like this. Our mortgage advisor (who is an old friend of husbands) has said that the base rate will not change and that house prices are definately going down and that we should seriously consider staying put because we wont get a good rate if we move and we are on a good rate now, or we should consider renting (i dont think renting is the answer at all), if it came to it i would just stay where i am and wait. The above is jibberish to me, i dont understand these things very well, to me it is straight forward, sell, buy, move. I think i need to read up on it a bit to understand what they are saying, is there a guide for dummies anywhere.

The hassle is worth it if you are really determined, but a market like this one sorts out those who have the will (and the means) from those who don't.

Now seems very like summer 2008 when the market went dead. We reacted by dropping our price substantially, making a £50k reduction overall, because we believed the market would fall further. We then sold and went into rented.

The market continued falling, so the next house in our road to go went for £25k less than ours. Meanwhile, being cash purchasers, able to move fast, we rescued a distressed seller and thus clawed back the £50k we'd 'lost.'

Now all that sounds fine, but had we just stayed in our house and not rented at all, the price rises in 2009 and through this year would have enabled us to sell for maybe £30k more than we did in '08. In other words, by doing nothing we might have been almost as well off. However, we wouldn't be here, in this property, which is a place that meets our very particular needs. For us, it was worth the gamble....I think!

Calling the market is hard. If people are sure that prices will fall significantly, then it could again make sense to slash their selling prices, sell, and go into rented for a time. Or.....they could ride this period of uncertainty out.

However, there's one significant difference from Summer '08; no one is able to put the proceeds of their sale into the bank and get 6.25% on it!

dvds2000

Hi all

first time posting in here, and can't really bring myself to read 4000+ posts lol.
My house has been on the market for 6 months now, started at £115k, now down to 99950, and not one offer. At this price its the cheapest house that would have sold in the street for about 8 years.
The EA is useless.
I'm seriously thinking about going down the auction route, one I've been looking at is pattinsonauctions.co.uk. What do people think of the auction route. I genuinely believe the house is worth £110k min - even in this market, and the reason I haven't had offers is down to the EA. FWIW 3 EA's valued it at £120-130k in Feb, and to try to get a quick sale I told the one I went with to market at £115k. After 3 months I dropped to offers over 105 and last week to 99950, but that was more in desperation than actually wanting to sell at that price.

How are auctions going at the moment, are they reaching anywhere near market value? The house is in an excellent location for students and families alike. 4 senior schools within 10 mins walk, about 6 primary the same distance. 5 mins from town centre, and under 10 mins to uni. About 3 mins to main bus/metro station and 5 to train station.