Property on market for too long...ideas???

fionajbanana

I would ask to reduce the price to £250k and the minimum price you will accept is 239,500.

Any properties sold between £250,001 and £500k is 3%, whilst between £125,001 and £250k is 1%. My parents moved house last year and their house was advertised for a few grand above £250k and purchased it a few grand below £250k. They saved over £5k if they purchased it at the advertised amount.

If there are similar sized properties in the area for £245k for example, people are put off by paying another £5.5k in stamp duty.

tim123456789

Even at the current price it's the most expensive 3 bed in the area.

What the heck was it one for before you reduced it.

It has to be too expensive

moneyistooshorttomention

My instant reaction was "I thought that was a cheaper area of the country than mine - I could understand that price here - but I'm not sure about understanding it there".

Re the picky comments on "Get rid of this/move that" etc - I would have thought that that level/price range of house would be one that would be bought by a second-time buyer (and therefore likely someone who is that bit older and "came of age" on the housebuying front before the "stage everything/remove everything" era and that sort of way of thinking is likely to go right over our collective heads). As long as a place isn't madly cluttered up/obviously needing work I doubt very much whether someone in the typical 2nd time buyer agegroup would think twice about a few things scattered round and would tend to regard the "Everything must be minimalist as heck and remove all signs that its someones home" as just a current Fashionable Idea and would be focusing a lot more on whether we felt the price is fair and the house itself is in good order.

I do think its younger/more fashion-conscious/more likely to be FTB type people who will be the ones more likely to micromanage the appearance of every single tiny little thing personally. Gawdknows - as a second-time buyer in a more mature age group its unlikely to even register with me personally whether every single last little personal possession is out of the way - I'll be far too busy checking its a fair price and is the house in a good state of maintenance generally and I would estimate most people who would buy a house in that price range would be not too dissimilar an agegroup/viewpoint to that.

It looks like a nice house - so I would only focus on the price pure and simple myself and as to whether its a fair price (never mind within a quarter of a mile - as I would think a lot of us are well aware that two very very similar streets bang next to each other could be/often are a different price to each other - so quarter of a mile is a heck of a distance apart and could encompass houses going from the cheapest in the area to the dearest in the area).

In fact - in my own area - there are THE absolute cheapest houses by far in the area (the Area From Hell to be precise) literally yards away from some pretty darn expensive houses. Some new houses are currently being built near nearby and it will be the case that two very very similar size houses will be around about £200,000 apart in price according to which side of the "divide" they are. Moreover houses literally at the bottom end of my own road are noticeably cheaper than houses up my end of the road and then you cross the road at the bottom and they are cheaper again...A friend of mine who lives literally across that road commented to me years ago "I'm afraid we could only afford x Street, we couldn't afford y Street (ie yours) when we bought" and we are literally 2 minutes walk away from each other.

I don't know if all areas differentiate on price by a matter of yards - but I know mine does almost to the extent of getting out a measuring tape to work it out - so I assume many other areas are the same.

notanewuser

Bathroom, kitchen and awkward shape of bedroom 3 are probably an issue to be honest.

olias

OP - did your parents in law have a lot of other assets? Only as far as I'm aware, inheritence tax threshold is currently £325000. With both parents dying so close together, that would be £650000 before any inheritence tax was due...

Olias

Tyler119

olias wrote: »

OP - did your parents in law have a lot of other assets? Only as far as I'm aware, inheritence tax threshold is currently £325000. With both parents dying so close together, that would be £650000 before and inheritence tax was due...

Olias

Not sure that is relevant to this is it?

olias

Tyler119 wrote: »

Not sure that is relevant to this is it?

Tyler119 wrote: »

Price has been reduced a number of times already. Not really wanting to go down that route. We are having to pay inheritance tax, and they base than on the valuation of the house (by a surveyor), not the selling price so they could be losing out on money.

????????????????? Why is it not relevant? You have posted that you are concerned about valuation versus selling price and how it will affect the IHT you have to pay, and I was advising you that unless they died leaving more than £650000 worth of assets, then IHT would not be an issue.

Olias

Tyler119

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

My instant reaction was "I thought that was a cheaper area of the country than mine - I could understand that price here - but I'm not sure about understanding it there".

Re the picky comments on "Get rid of this/move that" etc - I would have thought that that level/price range of house would be one that would be bought by a second-time buyer (and therefore likely someone who is that bit older and "came of age" on the housebuying front before the "stage everything/remove everything" era and that sort of way of thinking is likely to go right over our collective heads). As long as a place isn't madly cluttered up/obviously needing work I doubt very much whether someone in the typical 2nd time buyer agegroup would think twice about a few things scattered round and would tend to regard the "Everything must be minimalist as heck and remove all signs that its someones home" as just a current Fashionable Idea and would be focusing a lot more on whether we felt the price is fair and the house itself is in good order.

I do think its younger/more fashion-conscious/more likely to be FTB type people who will be the ones more likely to micromanage the appearance of every single tiny little thing personally. Gawdknows - as a second-time buyer in a more mature age group its unlikely to even register with me personally whether every single last little personal possession is out of the way - I'll be far too busy checking its a fair price and is the house in a good state of maintenance generally and I would estimate most people who would buy a house in that price range would be not too dissimilar an agegroup/viewpoint to that.

It looks like a nice house - so I would only focus on the price pure and simple myself and as to whether its a fair price (never mind within a quarter of a mile - as I would think a lot of us are well aware that two very very similar streets bang next to each other could be/often are a different price to each other - so quarter of a mile is a heck of a distance apart and could encompass houses going from the cheapest in the area to the dearest in the area).

In fact - in my own area - there are THE absolute cheapest houses by far in the area (the Area From Hell to be precise) literally yards away from some pretty darn expensive houses. Some new houses are currently being built near nearby and it will be the case that two very very similar size houses will be around about £200,000 apart in price according to which side of the "divide" they are. Moreover houses literally at the bottom end of my own road are noticeably cheaper than houses up my end of the road and then you cross the road at the bottom and they are cheaper again...A friend of mine who lives literally across that road commented to me years ago "I'm afraid we could only afford x Street, we couldn't afford y Street (ie yours) when we bought" and we are literally 2 minutes walk away from each other.

I don't know if all areas differentiate on price by a matter of yards - but I know mine does almost to the extent of getting out a measuring tape to work it out - so I assume many other areas are the same.

Thanks for your comment. Yeah the house prices can vary a lot from street to street in this town. Now the surveyors valuation is back I can see a problem if someone likes the house, puts an offer in, gets a survey done (for the good old bank) and there is a 30k shortfall which would lead to it falling through.

Need to discuss over the weekend and speak to the EA.

Tyler119

olias wrote: »

????????????????? Why is it not relevant? You have posted that you are concerned about valuation versus selling price and how it will affect the IHT you have to pay, and I was advising you that unless they died leaving more than £650000 worth of assets, then IHT would not be an issue.

Olias

My apologies, someone else had posted that if that situation happened within a time frame then there is form to claim it back.

Apologies again .

fionajbanana

From looking at the sold prices for houses down the road and working out the house number of the house in question, I have found a 3 bedroom property which is 12.5% bigger in floor area and £40k cheaper than the OP property. Its only a quarter of a mile away. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-32232026.html

Just shows how much overpriced the property the OP is selling it for.

Though down the same road, there was a 3 bedroom house with a 1 bed granny annex sold for £283k which is tucked down a little track on a very lot plot.