House not selling

MarshallMellow

Hi
Our house has been on the market for a year. Last summer it was priced at 160,000and had some interest in it. One offer, but not good enough. Then person disappeared. Things went quiet, and EA started fo fob us off and we discovered that he had lied to us about following leads up etc...so we moved EA. More interest and one particular person viewed twice however was drawn to a new build. Both these people were looking for a holiday home. The EA we moved to was in a different town from our house and the the office's location was in the town centre however not a main street. This town centre has suffered recently with shops etc closing and the EA admitted that days would go by without any visitors in the office. So we considered moving to an EA in the same town as the house which is a very touristy town, and after doing some research we established 2 or 3 which would be suitable, ie town centre, main street and a good reputation. The one we chose is open 7 days a week, no insertion fee and equal to the cheapest selling fees. We made the plunge and went with this EA in March, we lowered our price to 150,000 as a kind of relaunch. Since then, we have had no viewers. The house is marketed on all websites for the region and this has had plenty of hits and our brochures have been going out. EA says that the house is fairly priced and that he is happy that he doesn't think there is a problem. He did say that the market is flooded with repos and that the only houses selling are 'under value'. He says that if we are in a hurry to sell, we should lower our price, a little over the least we can accept, but I don't feel that dropping price by 3-5k as suggested is going to trigger any interest and we would then be in no position to negotiate.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what we can do to get interest up in our house, as I'm confident that the house will sell itself if we had people through the door?

PasturesNew

Which area is it in?

Prices have fallen off a cliff in some areas, for some types of houses.

e.g. you mention holiday homes, well I know of some which were built as holiday homes and sold 4 years ago at £140k which are now for sale at £80k. Buyers of those would have considered buying a local house instead, increasing competition for houses up to £250k... but as a lot of the market for holiday homes has dropped away, now there aren't the buyers around for the regular houses that those buyers might have bought.

Jugers

I used to be an estate agent and a trick you can use is to drop your price to say £139,950 and market it as Offers Over. Remember you only need to sell for a price you are happy with. The reason this works is because property websites band properties when people do a search (normally in incriments of £10,000). People normally feel comfortable looking at houses that are affordable, but we all know that if someone finds something they really like they will pay more for it. This will generate more viewings and in the best case scenario get a couple of interested people who can drive the price up. If you look after your house and ensure it is sellable (ie clean and tidy for viewings), there should be no reason why you can't sell it this way and still achieve over the £150,000 mark.

PasturesNew

Jugers wrote: »

I... a trick you can use is to drop your price to say £139,950 and market it as Offers Over.

On the other hand, it's well-known that this puts a lot of potential buyers off. I'd never go and view a house at offers over.

MarshallMellow

The house is in N.Ireland. It isn't a holiday house, it just so happened that the two most interested parties were in the market for a holiday home. It's in a residential area which has a safe reputation in area.
Funny you should mention the 'offers over', as that's what the EA has it at the moment, ie offers over 150. I wasn't sure if that was a prudent approach as we would accept a little lower. Does this put potential buyers off? Personally I wouldn't care whether is said 'offers over' or 'offers around' etc... as I would go in with a low offer.

hazyjo

From £160k to £150k in at least a year... so around a 6% reduction. I thought the NI market had fallen more than that in the last year, but could be wrong. It's one of the hardest places to sell in at the moment so, apart from dropping the price significantly, I really don't know what else you can do. Most people just aren't buying there so your market's extremely limited.

I'd take the 'offers over' off, but if that's how NI properties are generally marketed in NI, keep it. Does put a lot of people off here in England.

Jx

Orpheo

PasturesNew wrote: »

On the other hand, it's well-known that this puts a lot of potential buyers off. I'd never go and view a house at offers over.

Nor would I.

OP, your house price is too high. If you dropped your house price to £1 then someone would buy it today, so all you have to do is find the highest point between £1 and £150,000 that will generate interest. I think you need to drop to £130,000,

Jugers

PasturesNew wrote: »

On the other hand, it's well-known that this puts a lot of potential buyers off. I'd never go and view a house at offers over.

Well if you wouldn't look at a house because the price said "offers over", then you're not a serious buyer. The most important thing that people look at when buying a house is the house itself. Then they look at the price and see if they can afford it. Ie people wouldn't buy a house they didn't like just because they could afford it.

To deliberately not look at a house because of the wording on the price is simply unrealistic. This pricing method gets people in your door, and if you can't get people through your door, you aren't going to sell your property, FACT!

Jugers

Orpheo wrote: »

Nor would I.

OP, your house price is too high. If you dropped your house price to £1 then someone would buy it today, so all you have to do is find the highest point between £1 and £150,000 that will generate interest. I think you need to drop to £130,000,

Your explanation of pricing is good, a house is only worth what someone will pay, however I don't understand how you can value this person's house at £130,000? There's much more to estimating a house value than just picking a nice number.

As a seller, sit tight and try not to panic if you aren't in a rush to sell, to get a good price you could be waiting many months, or maybe years

shortchanged_2

Jugers wrote: »

Well if you wouldn't look at a house because the price said "offers over", then you're not a serious buyer. The most important thing that people look at when buying a house is the house itself. Then they look at the price and see if they can afford it. Ie people wouldn't buy a house they didn't like just because they could afford it.

To deliberately not look at a house because of the wording on the price is simply unrealistic. This pricing method gets people in your door, and if you can't get people through your door, you aren't going to sell your property, FACT!

Don't talk rubbish. As if that was the case would I waste my time going to look at a 8 bedroom detached house in the South East and then think, 'I wonder if my £150,000 budget will stretch to this?'

Orpheo

Jugers wrote: »

Well if you wouldn't look at a house because the price said "offers over", then you're not a serious buyer.

You are talking rubbish. That you used to be an EA makes you an expert in what? Sweet FA. You may think that you have some insight into buyer psychology, but you clearly don't. All you have is the same tired old BS.

I am a capable buyer with a liquid deposit of more than 50% in the price range in which I intend to buy. I don't look at anything marked, offers over, fixed price or priced with a faux auction style "guide price" range. Haart do this guide price nonsense, so I never view properties through them. As a serious buyer, I decide on my parameters for spending my money and your unqualified opinion is nothing more than bleating.