Selling my house

debpeb

My house has been on the market for 8 months now and in January was advertised at £189,950 knowing people would try and make lower offers. Despite having plenty of people to look (timewasters in my opinion) we had no offers so we paid £75 for our estate agents to do an "Open day" where they had 4 hours (hardly a "day"!!!) where people could just pop in and have a look at it. When I saw the advert in the newspaper I nearly had a coronary! The estate agents advertised the open day stating that offers would need to be over £150,000!!!
I was assured this would be the way to go to help sell the house so I kept out of the way on the day and let the agents get on with trying to sell the place. Understandably, all we got back was offers of £151,000 up to £154,000 which we can't afford to accept and even back in January told the agents we need at least £171,000 on the property.
Since reducing the price to £175,000 (telling the agents we won't accept anything less than £171,000) we've had people look round and say they're interested but haven't got the funds/haven't sold their house/blah blah blah and I can't help but feel our estate agents haven't tried to sell the house in the best way possible. We got a buyer who pulled out at the last minute but have now had people put in offers of £163,000 (£12k less than it's on the market for) and feel people are being quite insulting with this. My question is can I now insist that people can't look around the property unless they are in a position to buy or have the funds as having two untidy teenagers in the house it's quite a chore to try and keep on top of the tidying up, nagging at the boys etc. only to have a wasted viewing when they have no intention on buying, or don't have the funds?
Sorry if I sound quite sharp but this is getting me down time after time only to find out even if they do like the property they turn round and say they haven't got the funds - which in that case i'd like to ask why bother looking at the place anyway, wasting their time, the agents time and mine?

jenny74

debpeb wrote: »

My question is can I now insist that people can't look around the property unless they are in a position to buy or have the funds as having two untidy teenagers in the house it's quite a chore to try and keep on top of the tidying up, nagging at the boys etc. only to have a wasted viewing when they have no intention on buying, or don't have the funds?
Sorry if I sound quite sharp but this is getting me down time after time only to find out even if they do like the property they turn round and say they haven't got the funds - which in that case i'd like to ask why bother looking at the place anyway, wasting their time, the agents time and mine?

You could but I wouldn't recommend it. We are (just) SSTC (Shhhhhh) to a couple who first came round days after putting their house on the market. They were obviously not proceedable, but have now SSTC and are now proceedable. So By turning away a viewer not in a position to buy now, may alienate someone who is likely to be in a proceedable position in the future.

Jenny

pie81

you can certainly insist that the agents are a bit more picky about who they let view the place. don't forget the agents work for you!!

on the other hand, it does sound like there may be some reason the place isn't selling... either the price is too high or there is something putting buyers off. Have the agents told you what feedback they are getting from buyers? Are there similar properties on the market you could compare yours to?

debpeb

Some of them see the details of the house on paper, come round then pick faults with the kitchen (they've seen the pictures on the details), say the rooms are too small (the sizes are on the details too) and I feel after 8 months I can't take much more :-(

pie81

jenny74 wrote: »

You could but I wouldn't recommend it. We are (just) SSTC (Shhhhhh) to a couple who first came round days after putting their house on the market. They were obviously not proceedable, but have now SSTC and are now proceedable. So By turning away a viewer not in a position to buy now, may alienate someone who is likely to be in a proceedable position in the future.

Jenny

Actually I agree with this. We're currently viewing properties, our flat isn't on the market yet but we've been told it will sell very quickly, so if we did find a property we liked we could be "proceedable" v quickly. don't narrow down your viewers TOO much.

cattie

Yes you can ask the agent to ensure prospective buyer's are in a proceedable position & the more professional ea's will do this anyway to avoid wasting the time of all involved.

You can also stipulate that you will not consider offers below a certain price & to tell the agent not to even bother contacting you about them. This way anybody offering too low will be told straight away that the offer is not acceptable.

cronos

If you're selling I'd say you're perfectly entitled to set a condition that only people in a position to move can view your property.

Whether or not your estate agent is prepared to work that way is up to them. You also run the risk of putting genuine buyers off as you're putting an obstable up to viewing your home.

Cannon_Fodder

You don't have to accept offers that you consider to be low.

Buyers do not have make offers above a level they are happy with.

Over-pricing in January to "build-in" your negotiating room was a mistake. Buyers know what neighbouring properties are worth, and upon viewing - perhaps thinking it must be a really special example of the type - went home thinking "that was over-priced"...

Even if not over-priced, Rightmove says selling prices were 9% under asking prices recently, so your £189k would, on average, only get £172k at best...but that was 6 months ago...meantime Land Registry shows continued price drops in the 6 months since...

If your viewers don't know that you will only accept £171 or over, maybe they feel you are time-wasters, too...they make an offer, expect you to come back with a counter offer, but you don't, so they think you are inflexible...

Stick it on for a couple of weeks at "£172k fixed price".

Then take it off the market, if its making you feel like this.

To be fair to your agents, its a pretty bad time to be trying to sell. A big proportion of buyers expect a lot of money off, knowing that 20% drops have occured.

If your house price, from when you bought it, is visible on houseprices.co.uk or similar, then anyone with a calculator can work out what it SHOULD sell for.

If that doesn't match what you need, then everyone is wasting their time.

debpeb

Cattie i've done this - told the agents not to bother accepting anything under £171,000 but they still contact us to tell us. I think after the fuss I kicked up when I saw the open day had been a waste of time (I also feel sorry for viewers who put in offers of up to £156,000 thinking it was a genuine offer and feel the agents misled them) the agents now contact me or my ex constantly letting us know of any developments even if they're a no-no to us.

payless

well at least ask for your £75 back

debpeb

Cannon Fodder, in January our house was valued at £195k but as we needed £171k we thought to put it on at £189k we had plenty of room for offers lower than what we needed. The estate agents were the ones who put the advert in stating offers over £151K which I felt was a waste of everyone's time and money. Now our property is valued at approx £175k which is still open to offers and is reasonable so we've kind of kept to all the basic rules here and looking at properties around that price i'd say we haven't over-priced at all.
I did go ballistic at the estate agents telling them that if someone was being advertised at £185k, why state in the newspaper that offers were over £151k, but his answer to that was that he'd sold houses like that before. I sent in a complaint but got nowhere and we're tied in until the end of next month :-(
Someone offered £163k the other day saying she had no other funds available and we could take it or leave it, she didn't care as she planned to rent it out anyway! I just feel i'm banging my head against a brick wall and the estate agents have let us down totally but we'll still be expected to pay £3k to them if we get a sale.