Zoopla is crippling our sales prospects

Icthalian

Hi all,

New to the MSE arena so please bear with me if this has been posted before (I couldn't find anything).

My wife and I are in the first stages of trying to get our apartment onto the market but we're having Zoopla-related issues. Apparently during the recession there was 1 repossession in our 37-apartment building where a 2 bedroom flat was sold by the bank at £58k. We are now struggling to get an estate agent to take us seriously because this is on record on Zoopla; our larger, well kept 2 bedroom apartment is worth in excess of £100k (we managed to get 3 valuations late last year) but we're seemingly tied into it now because of someone else's financial misfortunes. :mad:

Does the MSE-verse have any suggestions on how we proceed please?

kixxb

How many EA's have you spoken too? Who provided the previous 3 valuations if not the EA?

mah_jong

Icthalian wrote: »

Hi all,

New to the MSE arena so please bear with me if this has been posted before (I couldn't find anything).

My wife and I are in the first stages of trying to get our apartment onto the market but we're having Zoopla-related issues. Apparently during the recession there was 1 repossession in our 37-apartment building where a 2 bedroom flat was sold by the bank at £58k. We are now struggling to get an estate agent to take us seriously because this is on record on Zoopla; our larger, well kept 2 bedroom apartment is worth in excess of £100k (we managed to get 3 valuations late last year) but we're seemingly tied into it now because of someone else's financial misfortunes. :mad:

Does the MSE-verse have any suggestions on how we proceed please?

I can only sympathise - the whole street was affected when my husband bought out my sister after the parental home failed to sell after a year. So .... Zoopla and others shows the value of the house being HALF - as this is what was paid. No sign of it being a half share. GGGRRRRRR :mad::mad::mad:

kingstreet

The Land Registry figures are not supposed to show repossessions, so this should not be possible.

There is a Land Reg rep on here and he may be able to suggest something when he sees the thread.

http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/market-trend-data/house-price-data-exclusions

hazyjo

Was going to say the same as kingstreet.

Have you actually compared to similar nearby recently sold properties?

I doubt EAs are using one low price to devalue yours. They would be comparing against other sold similar local properties, surely...

Jx

Gwhiz

Sounds to me like the agents you have spoken to are morons.

A good agent uses their local market knowledge, not some half baked property fortune cookie.

I despair!

kingstreet

Surveyor comparables for a mortgage only include sales of similar property in the last 120 days and within 0.5 miles, so this sounds very odd.

Icthalian

Thanks for the replies folks.

We managed to get 3 Estate Agents to come out to the flat in the middle of last year, and each of them quoted us >£100k having been out to the property. We decided, at the time, not to proceed as this would have put us marginally into negative equity against our remaining mortgage value. We've since cleared a further chunk from the bottom line so decided to re-evaluate as the markets are picking up (additionally, there is a new retail development nearby which is bringing local prices up).
However, when we contacted the same Estate Agents again recently we were told it wasn't worth their time due to the aforementioned £58k sale showing on Zoopla. I confess we have been told it was a bank repo by our neighbours, but bearing Kingstreets' info in mind, perhaps it was just a desperate sale from the owner themselves. That being said, this particular flat, as I mentioned earlier, is significantly smaller than ours and was sold in the depths of the recession in November 2012.
I'm extremely concerned about how this will affect our ongoing sales prospects going forward, if we can't get anyone out to view the property in light of a single sale showing on Zoopla...

Building_Surveyor

How much less did they value it? And how did you get to the figure that it's worth over £100k? ...

D00gie72

Sorry - maybe I'm missing something. EA's don't work out a market price by looking at just one other property. Surely some other apartements have been sold in your area within the last year? How much have other similar apartements gone for in the last year or so? Regardless of this - ultimately you can market your property at whatever price you want - it may not sell of course but if you think your property is worth more you can ask an agent to market it for whatever you think.

danielanthony

Zoopla said my house was worth £210k, I had it valued at £250k and sold for £247,500 in one day.

Zoopla is a 'POS'.