house on market - what to expect re: viewings and estate agent practice

carefullycautious

Im another who would love it, however, i cant afford it

bsk198

Hi, having had a look at your photos on Rightmove in my opinion it is the photos of the outside space that are the problem.

The one of the front of the house does not show the full elevation of the house. One of the selling points of the property must be that it is in a grand period property. Whilst I realise that you are on the ground floor / basement, I think that people like the status of living in a 'grand' property which this photo does not sell. For the outside space that is yours it is not really that clear how much space you have. Perhaps a new photo of the raised area might help. Given that you are priced at the upper end of the one bedroom flat asking prices I think people perhaps need to see more what they are getting for their money over and above a 'standard' one bed flat.

I think the internal shots are fine. They show that the flat has plenty of space and whilst the red walls would not necessarily be to my personal taste they certainly would not put me off.

Hope this helps.

goldbyron

Wow - your 1 bedroom is more expensive than my 2 bedroom in a leafy part of London - 20 mins from the City. Is property really that expensive in Bristol! To be honest I have had loads of viewings (50+) and been on 4.5 months. I think my flat was on too expensive at first - encouraged by EA saying it will sell within 2 weeks etc etc. So I lowered it quite a lot - and then feedback became more positive at least - buyers less fussy etc. However still no luck so I am going to reduce even further (less than I paid for it and much lower than average flat in my area) as I want a quick sale. So if you want it quick, lower the price and make it competitive.

goldbyron

Kittenonthekeys - you had 100 viewings in 4 months! Wow that even beats me. How did you sell it in the end?

PottyHouse_2

Red / Green walls would never put me off - a tin of paint costs £10/20 !!!

P.S I like the red !

Kittenonthekeys

goldbyron wrote: »

Kittenonthekeys - you had 100 viewings in 4 months! Wow that even beats me. How did you sell it in the end?

I think we got all those viewings because it was probably underpriced - we decided that for a quick sale, we would take a £32K hit on what we'd paid in 2007 when things were very different. But it didn't really matter because it meant the one the one we're buying was cheaper too.
In a nutshell - along came a young couple, fell in love and offered. Then lost it a month later when their own sale fell through - which we only found out for ourselves by digging around - no one we were paying so handsomely actually bothered to tell us.
We had to remarket, then along came another ditto couple and looks like they're seeing it through. Expecting to exchange *any time now* - just waiting for 3 sets of solicitors to get respective fingers out.
Agent = fantastic until offer, then completely cut off all contact with us.
Never doing this again - ever.

chicacherrycola

Hi,

I can't really throw in any advice or anything but I just wanted to say that your bathroom is gorgeous! And that I can understand the high price tag with your location. I used to live in Bristol and Clifton was always the expensive part of town

Best of luck with everything

xxx

jonewer

Someone mentioned above that the EA is on your side. They arent. EAs are on their own side and they look after their own interests. Sometimes this co-incides with your interests but not always.

With regards feedback - dont be too taken in by lots of positive feedback. I think most people who view a house will try and say something positive simply because its not nice to say horrible things about other people's houses, even if they're complete strangers.

PasseySam

Thanks so much guys for the helpful feedback and for not saying anything awful abut my flat - I was very nervous posting the Rightmove link and worried what people might say!

Very constructive comments overall, so thanks! :beer: And lots of really nice comments about the flat too, made me feel much better about it all.

The update is that we've reduced the price by £10k and have had a chat with the agents stressing our need to sell quickly. This has resulted in a few more viewings being booked in so we'll see how that goes over the next few days.

One thing I wanted to ask peoples opinions on is this - another agent in the area (who we actually purchased the flat from, and who our vendor also purchased it through when he bought!) has been ringing me regularly asking how the sale is going. Tonight he rang and chatted to me, saying how they would love to sell the flat for us and suggesting we go dual-agent with them for a 2% fee in order to maximise our chances of a quick sale. What do people think about this?

I was thinking (and told the agent this) that the two agents would have access to the same market and so i couldn't see the benefit of having a dual-agent agreement. Having said that the second EA does advertise in additional places and have two offices in different locations which would both be working to sell our flat if we did go with them. Overall they have been professional so far, although they have phoned me about once a week to ask if I wanted to give them a chance to sell it. It did occur to me that if they were working so hard to get it on their books maybe they would work equally hard to sell it?

I said we would bear it in mind and he said he would phone next week to see how things were progressing. I am not unhappy with the work the original agents are doing, by next monday we will have had 14 viewings but to date not even a hint of an offer - I just want to maximise our chances of getting a good sale.

Would going dual-agent look desperate? We are on a tight timescale - a week on monday I'll be starting a new job 100 miles away and living in a B&B monday-friday!

Thanks again! :T

goldbyron

Any luck over the weekend PasseySam?