Times: Can't sell? Raise The Price!!!!

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Barbara and Robin Bonner-Morgan have been trying to sell their seven-bedroom, Grade II-listed home in Suffolk for more than two years. The couple, now both retired, first put Brickwall Farmhouse, near Stowmarket, on sale for £695,000 in June 2007, at the height of the boom. It failed to sell, however, and like many frustrated vendors across the country, they began to cut the asking price.

By September last year, they were ready to take just £590,000. This month, with the house still unsold, the Bonner-Morgans adjusted the price yet again, only this time upwards, to £725,000 — £30,000 more than they were hoping for when the market was at its most optimistic.

“It’s a beautiful place, but if you underprice a house, people wonder what’s the matter with it,” says Barbara, 74, a retired ophthalmologist. It may well pay off: since the increase, she says, the number of viewings has risen.

So, if you’re struggling to sell your home, why not put the price up? The tactic may seem counterintuitive, but it is one increasing numbers of sellers are employing as confidence trickles back into the housing sector. After a stream of headlines reporting dram­atic price cuts in the property market, the past few months have seen a shift in sentiment. The latest surveys by both the Nationwide and Halifax show that prices have risen for five months in a row.

While experts are sceptical about how long the rally will last, buyers seem more bullish: 54% of the 34,000 people recently polled by Rightmove, a property website, expect prices to continue rising. This represents a sharp change in sentiment since the first three months of this year, when 75% expected them to keep dropping.

Against this changing backdrop, it is not surprising that some owners, including the Bonner-Morgans, feel that they may be able to get more for their property. Two months after it came onto the market, the owners of a one-bedroom flat on Lime Grove, in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, raised its asking price by £10,000, to £335,000, and promptly received an offer (020 8740 7766, faronsutaria.co.uk). And in Lymington, Hampshire, a seven-bedroom house with views over the Solent is on sale for £940,000, after a £45,000 increase (01590 677233, johndwood.co.uk).

It is not just owners of properties already on the market who are trying their luck. The same tactic is being followed by so-called boomerang sellers, who, having failed to find a buyer, withdrew their homes from sale, but are now trying again. Anthony and Angela Evans put their three-bedroom mews house in South Kensington, west London, on the market in July last year for £1.295m, but after a lacklustre response, they took it off. Two weeks ago, however, the couple decided to have another go — at a more ambitious £1.35m (020 7835 0000, johndwood.co.uk).

“We’ve had a lot of interest,” says Angela, “and a few people have come back a couple of times.” The pair, who are both in their fifties, want to downsize to a flat in the same area, and are hoping to sell soon — for at least £1.3m. Spencer Cushing, associate director of John D Wood’s South Kensington office, who is selling the property, is equally positive: “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble getting this under offer before Christmas.”

Buying agents, whose raison d’être is to get the best price for their clients, are also facing increasingly confident sellers. Peter Mackie, the London-based managing director of Property Vision, a top-end search agency, cites the owner of a large flat in north London, who withdrew his property from the market for four months before bringing it back on for 10% more — Mackie’s client, who decided he wanted the flat after all, had no alternative but to pay.

Is this a realistic strategy, or are these vendors taking a huge risk in a market that, after all, has only recently started to recover? “There is a one-off opportunity right now,” says Lulu Egerton, head of the Chelsea office of Strutt & Parker estate agency. She has just sold a property on Queens Gate Gardens, in South Kensington, which was on the market for £1.35m in February. Relaunched last week for £1.475m, it went under offer at that price the following day.

Egerton warns, however, that any such rise has to be carefully managed. “Your agent has to be able to give a good reason as to why the price is now higher,” she says, “such as the garden being redone, or planning permission being granted for an extra floor — or that the local market has recovered.”

Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank, agrees that the mood is changing. “Nine months ago, agents’ advice was key,” he says. “The past few months, it’s become hard for them to contain people’s exuberance.” This is confirmed by the ratio between asking and sale prices, which has drifted down a few points in recent months to 91%.

“The implication is that people are getting more confident and putting prices up, so, even though they are not getting the full price, they are getting a higher one,” Bailey says.

Indeed, choosing to upgrade your asking price could depend on where you live. “There is no such thing as a national housing market,” says Alex Solomon, a senior economist at Rightmove: “Positivity around asking prices is evident in certain parts of the country — specifically favoured parts of London and the southeast — but if you’re not in one of those areas, you will still have to price realistically.” Lucian Cook, director of residential research at Savills, agrees: “The risk to a seller in pushing up the asking price is that buyers will take a view that their expectations are out of kilter with the market, and either discount their bid heavily or not bid at all.” It is a lesson some vendors are learning the hard way. The Tower Bridge office of Chesterton Humberts recently took on a two-bedroom flat in an insalubrious part of south London, owned by three investors. It was originally put on sale for £349,950, but one of the owners decided to increase the price to £365,000. A month later, there have been no viewings.

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/buying_and_selling/article6952605.ece

What a delightful artice.:beer:

Property market recovery continues apace, and a year ago absolutely nobody would have thought it possible that such positivity would be the case in the market today.

A few crumbs of bear food in there as well, stating the obvious, that London and the South East are leading the rest of the country in the recovery just like last time.

So Northern Bears (Ursus Arctos Miserablis) may have a little more time to find a cave for the next 15 year hibernation... Southern Bears (Ursus Arctos Skintus) on the other hand, will find all the best deals on caves are long gone.;)

ThrowingStonesAtYou

They should try that with petrol prices. The oil market is suffering and I think you have hit on the answer.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ThrowingStonesAtYou wrote: »

They should try that with petrol prices. The oil market is suffering and I think you have hit on the answer.

Oh, just wait..... When petrol is in as short a supply as houses, they'll go up quick enough.:D

brit1234

Sorry but haven't asking prices been falling last couple of months, didn't Darling say we have even bigger national debt thean previously predicted, isn't unemployment still rissing, haven't interest rates been kept at 0.5% to stop economic meltdown?

However if your house is not selling add £200,000 and people will fight for it. Yeah right :rotfl:

More baseless ramping, go on Hamish add a comment on the article. See who gets the most votes, you or me?

mbga9pgf

lets see where prices go once gilts get smacked down to A-

carolt

I rather enjoyed the article, actually.

If there are people that stupid in Kensington, then good luck to them :beer:

No-one's that barking anywhere I'd want to buy, so it was all rather entertaining.

Emy1501

This is once of the most comical posts I've read from you Hamish and whilst I knew from your HPC days you were nothing more than a wind up this is too funny to believe.

chucky

brit1234 wrote: »

However if your house is not selling add £200,000 and people will fight for it. Yeah right :rotfl:

More baseless ramping, go on Hamish add a comment on the article. See who gets the most votes, you or me?

Poor Brit continuing to make stuff up
when will you ever learn that you haven't got a scooby and all your predictions have been totally wrong :eek:

Emy1501 wrote: »

This is once of the most comical posts I've read from you Hamish and whilst I knew from your HPC days you were nothing more than a wind up this is too funny to believe.

it's not a wind up it really is happening, have to agree with Hamish here

i viewed this in December last year
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-11279784.html?backToListURL=%2Fuser%2Fshortlist.html%3Ftype%3DBUYING%26index%3D20

you'll see it has a higher price now at £950k - £75k more
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-27648833.html?pageNumber=1&fromSummary=true&backToListURL=%2Fproperty-for-sale%2FActon-Green%2Fterraced.html

interestingly the it looks like agents are onto Property Bee and how it works and are re-listing properties so that the history is unavailable as a newly listed property.

ThrowingStonesAtYou

chucky wrote: »

it's not a wind up it really is happening, have to agree with Hamish here

i viewed this in December last year
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-11279784.html?backToListURL=%2Fuser%2Fshortlist.html%3Ftype%3DBUYING%26index%3D20

you'll see it has a higher price now at £950k - £75k more
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-27648833.html?pageNumber=1&fromSummary=true&backToListURL=%2Fproperty-for-sale%2FActon-Green%2Fterraced.html

interestingly the it looks like agents are onto Property Bee and how it works and are re-listing properties so that the history is unavailable as a newly listed property.

You're right, the asking price has increased, which probably explains why it hasn't sold.

chucky

ThrowingStonesAtYou wrote: »

You're right, the asking price has increased, which probably explains why it hasn't sold.

it is happening, i've seen a few like this in London and have sold; there's no doubt about it - i guess it's a way of freshening up the bracket of people that see it so that it appears on the property search indexes and also the new batch of people that are looking at property.

System

I really like that house Someone lend me a million.