Should we drop the price?

Jen2girls

Our house has been on the market now for 9 weeks. We have only had 4 viewings in this time. Our agent isn't great and has in excess of 200 properties that they are marketing at the moment, so doesn't seem to have the time to provide any feedback or push for viewers etc. I'm getting a bit frustrated. The market at the moment near me however is flooded with properties so buyers have a lot to choose from. We have worked out we can afford to take a 7% drop in our current asking price. However is 7% likely to make any impact? or should we just pull the house off the market? My concern is that if we drop the price by 7% then we really won't be in a position to take any lower offers and a 7% drop really is the most we can go to. Thanks in advance

hethmar

Id feel the same. A buyer will want to knock the price down anyway. Is there anything you can do to the house to make it stand out from all the others? And what about a different agent?

Jen2girls

Yes we are considering a different agent once our contracts up with our current one in a few weeks. As for the house, all the agents who came to view it said there was nothing more we could do to it to add value etc. Its in really good condition. Unfortunately i think this may be our problem as the houses that seem to be selling in my area appear to be the development projects

MegaMiniMouse

Jen2girls wrote: »

Our house has been on the market now for 9 weeks. We have only had 4 viewings in this time. Our agent isn't great and has in excess of 200 properties that they are marketing at the moment, so doesn't seem to have the time to provide any feedback or push for viewers etc. I'm getting a bit frustrated. The market at the moment near me however is flooded with properties so buyers have a lot to choose from. We have worked out we can afford to take a 7% drop in our current asking price. However is 7% likely to make any impact? or should we just pull the house off the market? My concern is that if we drop the price by 7% then we really won't be in a position to take any lower offers and a 7% drop really is the most we can go to. Thanks in advance

How does your estate agent spend his/her time?

Why does he/she concentrate on the 199+ properties which are not yours?

Have you tried some other Estate Agents?

Are you aware that these days houses do not generally sell like Hot Cakes?

How did you you arrive at a figure as precise as 7%?

Do you seriously have the option to take the house 'off the market'? If so, then why would you even consider dropping the price?

MMM

Jen2girls

The agent sent us a letter a few weeks back stating that the market was slow and that we as vendors need to be patient, and would we consider renting as an option. I believe this was a letter sent out to all vendors, however we are not in the position to rent our house out as we need the equity to buy another property. We are tied in until mid September, but after this I will look at switching agent. We are looking to move up the ladder, the issue we have with our current house is that the garden isn't attached which isn't ideal with 2 young children. We could take an offer as long as we could make up the short fall on the house we moved onto. We have a MIP and so know the most we can afford to borrow and that coupled with the equity in our current home will make up our budget for the next house. We have savings to cover legal fees, solicitors and stamp duty etc. anymore than a 7% drop and we wouldn't be able to afford anything much better than what we have now so it wouldn't really be worthwhile selling x

MegaMiniMouse

Jen2girls wrote: »

The agent sent us a letter a few weeks back stating that the market was slow and that we as vendors need to be patient, and would we consider renting as an option. I believe this was a letter sent out to all vendors, however we are not in the position to rent our house out as we need the equity to buy another property. We are tied in until mid September, but after this I will look at switching agent. We are looking to move up the ladder, the issue we have with our current house is that the garden isn't attached which isn't ideal with 2 young children. We could take an offer as long as we could make up the short fall on the house we moved onto. We have a MIP and so know the most we can afford to borrow and that coupled with the equity in our current home will make up our budget for the next house. We have savings to cover legal fees, solicitors and stamp duty etc. anymore than a 7% drop and we wouldn't be able to afford anything much better than what we have now so it wouldn't really be worthwhile selling x

I mortgaged my house 3 years ago at a mere 85% of valuation, but today it is 'worth' less than the outstanding mortgage, and prices are set to fall - I need to sell it within the next year, but I am not hopeful of receiving any offers at all - my calculations so far range upwards from a shortfall of 30% and I will be very surprised if I get anywhere near breaking even. I wish I had the confidence to contemplate a single-figured margin of less than 10%!

I have been roundly abused on this site for my unrealistic expectations, but actually, my expectations are low-to-non-existent.

I think you would be wise to adopt a similar stance...

RX-78

It may be down to the price, market or EA.

You could always ask a friend to be a fake viewer and get a feed back from the friend. It might tell you how good/bad the EA is. I got my friend to do this and discovered how shockingly bad the EA was;

1. they only took her first name and mobile phone number
2. didn't bother asking her circumstances
3. didn't try to sell the house to her at all
4. didn't contact me straigt away to inform me about a viewing
5. when asking for feed back, they left a message to call then back if she was interested. No further contact
6. infact, as we did the "viewing", the EA didn't even check if she turned up at all

tawse57

Which part of the country are you in Jen - I suspect the market is different in London to some of the regions.

riverboat2001

I have been to view a lovely house twice. It's an empty property, the agent just stands there and doesn't say a word! He doesn't attempt to sell me the house in any way!

Jen2girls

Yes my EA isn't great either. For example we were on holiday last week. I returned on Friday to a message on the answer phone from the agent asking me to call. I called them back and was told a lady was dealing with my case and she would call me back. Hours pass by and no call back so I call again to be told by the agent that he really couldn't remember why they called me! Then some time later I was called to say he'd remembered now that somebody wanted to view on Sunday. I was given the persons first name only and they didn't know her circumstances. I had a further call this morning to say that the viewer had cancelled as she had decided to purchase her parents house. The viewers are not vetted at all I could go on about their incompetancy but I would be here all night....

Jen2girls

I'm on the outskirts of Manchester, the market is flooded here. I came back from my holiday to find 10 new pages of properties had been added to rightmove for my surrounding area and I was only away for a week!