Selling house - viewings dried up in half term

newbutold

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Personally, I'd put a house up for sale now...before this daft Government Help to Buy Scheme gets extended on 1 January to "secondhand" homes.

What is your thinking behind this?

MaxTheCat

newbutold wrote: »

What is your thinking behind this?

I can give you one. If prices are going up say 5% more than they would without this scheme then yes you get 5% extra but you also pay 5% extra if you are upgrading then you end up worse off because in the end you have had to borrow more money than if it hadn't gone up. It is really only good if you are downsizing.

moneyistooshorttomention

I have just sold my last house (ie my starter house) when I did largely because I felt my pool of available buyers would get reduced when this daft Help to Buy Scheme got extended to secondhand houses (ie mine for instance). I felt that some of them would stretch further and go for a better house than mine once the Government threw some HTB money at them. I'm pretty sure the buyer I got would have done so if they could for instance. (NB: I had a 2 bed terrace house - ie starter house - and I know a lot of people seem to want to "start" even with a 3 bed house and/or semi-detached, even if they don't need it).

I think a lot of people will "stretch further" thanks to HTB and those who intend to still look at the same range of houses will find themselves having to pay more (ie because those further down the "househunting ladder" than them will have "stretched further" than they realistically can and thus increased the demand for the "What-they-would-have-had-anyway" level of houses and so on.....)

A lot of people are not very realistic about money and tell themselves they will find a way to manage to pay back money they have borrowed, but they have over-estimated and wont be able to. There are people who aren't even that confident that they can manage it, but will try anyway and not be that concerned about the effect on the rest of us when they come a cropper.:cool:

So, I see people stretching for one bed flats (when they cant really afford a place at all) and stretching for a 3 bed/semi when they can only afford a starter house. Stretching for a 4 bed executive house, when they can only afford a 3 bed semi. The only bit of the housing market I think might be immune from the stretching effect will be the 2 bed terrace houses (ie the starters) and they will catch it too in a year or two's time (which would have been too late for me personally).

That's my take on things anyway and time will tell whether I am right or no.

earlofnowhere

Thanks for the advice everyone, thats definitely helped lots. We did have one offer, the EA said it was a starting bid so we rejected it on his advice but they didn't make another offer.
I'm thinking we've probably had all the current serious house hunters through the door already. Just got to decide when it should go off the market now.

highguyuk

earlofnowhere wrote: »

Just got to decide when it should go off the market now.

Why would you be going off market, do you not want to sell? Also, you'll be tied into the EA for many more weeks yet.

You've only been trying 2/3 weeks, keep going as you are. House selling needs a little patience.

alwaystryyourbest

We have only been trying to sell for 2 weeks now, already fed up I secretly thought it would sell within a few days..
We have had about 10 views ..but none for the last few days..
Hoping things pick up as I rearly want to sell before Christmas..

I now how you feel here's hoping we sell soon..
.
Does anyone else know when things pick up after Christmas ,,is it early January or feb or even march before people start looking ???

moneyistooshorttomention

earlofnowhere wrote: »

Thanks for the advice everyone, thats definitely helped lots. We did have one offer, the EA said it was a starting bid so we rejected it on his advice but they didn't make another offer.

Prior to the bidding war I got in the end when I sold my last house, I had had an offer from someone else that wasn't high enough for me to accept it. That offer was described by my EA as a "starting offer" and I duly turned it down. In the event, that person never did come back with an increased offer. I was quite correct in turning that offer down and would have done so even if I had known it was also their "final offer".

My EA and I realised that what was behind that low offer was an investor who made a habit of going round making offers on houses like mine in my (then) area and never bothering to re-appear. They were just "trying it on" to see if anyone would be mug enough "to bite".

As it turned out, my EA was warning me against investors anyway and said not to take one on as a buyer unless I had to, because (in their experience) they had such a habit of agreeing a price and then picking holes in a survey to find an excuse to reduce that price afterwards quite late on in proceedings. I was advised to take a would-be home-owner buyer if I possibly could, as they were less likely to pull that stunt on me.

Kildare

OP, I don't know which part of Sussex you are in, but where I am houses go under offer almost as soon as they come on, with the exception of those that are overpriced.

I'm in sussex and have missed out on a couple due to being outbid. Have you checked how you are priced up against the other houses on your street which have sold?

We're not sure what to do at the moment. We've missed out on 2 houses we loved (1 outbid and 1 the original buyer came back, thank fully before we started progressing with the purchase :mad:). We're under offer and we stay on the market as long as our buyer is with us, but if they decide to move on then we may come off the market until the new year in the hope they'll be more houses to buy!

I'm also hoping the right to buy scheme doesn't push the first time buyers to go after the size of house we are looking for and pushes the houses up in price!

pawpurrs

Well three viewings booked in today, so maybe last week was just a quiet week!