8 other Houses for Sale in My Street- what shall I do?

nelly_2

Doug its not my fault you take everything so serious maybe you want to calm down a bit and stop acting like a big girls blouse.

And secondly the advice i gave is exactly what most others have said which is drop the price.

You keep getting your knickers in a twist when people say about price reduction because you are our very own Monty Burns.

dag_2

There seems to be a lot of slightly negative posts in this thread; some people are quick to jump to the conclusion that your house is priced too high.

Maybe your house really is priced too high. Maybe the whole street is. But then again - maybe not. Personally, I think there's much more to it.

The fact that lots of other houses are visibly for sale is definitely a problem. But hey - let's look on the bright side. At least the other vendors still live there. If they had all moved out and boarded up their houses, without even bothering to find a buyer - then your problem would be much much bigger.

You see - when people buy houses, they want more than just a pile of bricks on a plot of land. They want to feel as though they are buying into a community. This is especially true for prospective owner-occupiers - but it's also true of buy-to-let investors. If the area looks tidy and well-looked-after, it will be easier to let units in the area, and they will fetch higher rents.

Thing is - if there really was a community in the area, you would have spoken to your neighbours a bit more. You'd be more clued up on the local gossip, including the reasons why the others want to sell up.

Still - it's not too late to start. Places of worship and local pubs are good ways of finding out who's who. Be nosy. If you communicate and work together with everyone in the local community, including the other vendors, then you can improve everyone's chances of selling up - including your own. That's got to be better than viewing the other vendors as your competitors.

For example - does the area have a problem with litter or graffiti? One of you won't make much difference - but together, you can put more pressure on the council to do something about it. Or even organise your own working party.

Or - does one of the houses have a very untidy or overgrown front garden? Whether or not that particular house is for sale is beside the point - the point is, it's a sign that the resident doesn't care - or that no-one wants to live there. And that brings down the whole area. If you all get together, you can all put pressure on that resident to clean up his act.

These are just examples of how working as a team can sell your house - there are many others.

Hope that helps.

Milky_Mocha

kittygalore wrote:

Pal -
I'm fascinated - where in a 'very expensive area' of London can you get a 3-bed (or even a 2-bed) house for less than 200K???
Waltham Forest (where we are) is one of the cheapest, apart from places like Newham, Dagenham, etc. and you'd be hard-pressed to find a 2-bed FLAT for this.

I too was surprised to find that 2 beds are going for that much in East London. In spite of the good transport links and potential for development I don't know anyone (friend or family) who finds anywhere near Stratford to be a "desirable" location. A friend of mine recently got a 2 bed in pristine condition and sought after area in Crystal palace for £160,000 (not ex-local authority). I guess when people do venture out of their zone they come to realise what their money will get them elsewhere. After all, a house is only worth what one is prepared to pay for it.

I do sympathise with your situation as I too am facing a similar dilemma (outside London though). I'm not trying to sell or anything but have become concerned about the number of houses up for sale in my area. Amongst the two or three connecting streets there are at least 10 (Yes TEN!) houses up for sale and about five of these have been on the market for ages. Its baffling as this is a relatively new area with no pollution/crime issues and excellent amenities and neighbours.

I suggest you do some private advertising as well. Your local paper? Ebay? With ebay you get to put as many pics as you want and describe in as much detail as possible. Ebay gets lots of traffic. Good luck

sarah1

Have you thought about changing your agent even if it means taking it off the market for a few weeks. change it to one that has not got a property for sale in your street.smaller companies seem to make more of an effort to sell your house i have found.
I wouldn't reduce the price just yet , any fool can give there house away! and besides people always like to knock you down a bit and think they're getting a bargain.
Good luck! there's a buyer for you out there, they will walk in and fall in love with it, mark my words.

kittygalore_2

lady123 - sounds like you know the area. We hope to move to the Sussex coast, partly for work reasons and partly cos 'we do like to be beside the seaside...'

dag - thanx for a very constructive post. I think you're right in that there are more factorsinvolved than just the price.
There is a very good community in this street - it's the friendliest one I have ever lived in, although we're at one end, and tend to know our immediate 8 or so neighbours better than we do the other end. Everyone looks out for each other, eg, an elderly gentleman neighbour recently noticed that the young mum next door had gone out with baby, forgetting to close her front door. He waited inside her house until she returned so that she wouldn't be locked out. The street is also fairly unique in that the entire terrace is identical in architecture and looks much as it did when it was built in 1910 - there is no hotch-potch of different styles and periods.
There is very little (or no) crime - certainly nothing obvious, no litter and no graffiti. Everyone does their best to keep their property looking as neat as possible (to different degrees) and there are no empty or boarded-up houses. As far as I know, all are in private ownership.

Milky_Mocha - We are actually about 8 miles away from Stratford.
Whilst I will concede that Stratford and its surroundings cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called desirable (although it's increasingly becoming perceived in that way - watch this space..) I have never claimed it to be. However, no one can deny it is very central and easy to get to just about everywhere from. Probably none of East London is, or ever has been considered all that 'desirable' but a lot of it does have a certain charm and character; but then I'm probably biased as it's my home!
(I personally hate Knightsbridge, even though it's probably got some of the most expensive and 'desirable' real estate on the planet! It's soulless and I wouldn't live there if you paid me.)
Thanks for the ebay suggestion - I've already tried it and got nearly 800 hits, but unfortunately no enquiries. The problem with ebay is that they treat property as any other listing, although they charge £35 for the listing yet only give you the usual 3, 7 or 10 days. Sadly I couldn't afford to keep doing that. A month or two for the £35 would have been nice. I did email & suggest it to them but........
The agent rang tonight to say 'we haven't forgotten you' and to confirm it's going in the local paper on Thursday.

meanmachine_2

Wow. I really am astonished that intelligent people - ie those who visit this site - aren't aware of the huge glut of properties there are on the market right now.

Why is anyone surprised that there are houses that have been on the market for months, or that there should be dozens of properties up for sale?

The facts are these: traditionally people move in the Spring...traditionally people look to buy in the Spring, hence the spring bounce.

Properties that were put on the market before Xmas still haven't sold, and have been joined by a whole slew of properties since January. Very few of these have sold.

Meanwhile, potential buyers have been priced out of the market, or are worried about tax rises and interest rate rises (by the way, the US has jyust put up their rates, which means we're likely to follow).

There have been endless reports in the press that sellers are being unrealistic, and yet people on this site still think that price isn't a factor.

Talk about walking blindly into a housing slump.... I give up.

To the original poster, I'm sure your house is charming. But look at it from the perspective of a buyer. There are a dozen identical properties in your area also up for sale, plus thousands of others that you're in competition with in your local borough alone.

It's a buyer's market. And will be so for many years to come. Sellers have to get their heads round this, otherwise they're NEVER going to sell their property. Sorry. But that's the way it is at the moment.

Pal

Milky_Mocha wrote:

I don't know anyone (friend or family) who finds anywhere near Stratford to be a "desirable" location.

My thoughts exactly! Then again, Kitty appears to believe that everywhere with a CR postcode must look like Croydon, so I guess that my negative impression of Stratford may also be wrong.

I do however think that the emphasis on being close to a tube station is misguided. For some people it will be very important, but for many it will not. Lets face it, if you are spending almost a quarter of a million pounds (spend a minute thinking about how much money that is, then add on mortgage interest for 25 years) for a small house in east London, then you probably aren't going to be going out in the west end a great deal for a while! If you work in London, the difference between a 25 minute tube journey to work and a 35 minute train journey isn't that great.

In the end though Kitty has to rely on the experts, the estate agents. If they have priced it at that level then presumably it isn't far off what the market will bear (no pun intended). It is just a case of waiting a few weeks to see what happens before making a decision on whether to drop the price.

Finally, the objective of buying a house is not necessarily to "make a profit". If you have to sell at a lower price then presumably the house you are buying has also dropped in price, leaving the overall position neutral.

cgnao

Aren't April-May supposed to be the strongest time of the year for the housing market? With another rate increase in the pipeline and the usual slow summer months we will soon see panic begin. If I were you, I'd be dropping the price as necessary to sell it as soon as possible. Get out quick while you still can.....

slater14

I've been watching this post unfold with some interest.

Kitty, As another poster has said, your position (with lots of other houses up for sale) is not unique to your road. It is becoming a countrywide phenomon.
Can anybody else remember the last time we had a situation like this?

As you say "some have been on the market since last year" yet they still havent sold...interesting AND NOT UNIQUE. read the Rightmove monthly reports.

On one road where I own property (a very small road, 76 houses total) I had to go and do a small job there on Sunday, I literally could not believe my eyes - 16 houses with boards up from 2 just nine days ago!

2 weeks is not really a long time as the average time on market today is up to around 96 days (check Rightmove website - monthly report)....up from 64 days last year!

I've sold some property recently and realise if I wanted to sell any more I have missed the boat by 6 months. If I were you I would have a back up plan of staying in the property if you really cant afford to sell for less.

Doug,

Ever the optimist.
1. Interest rates are rising - that is not up for discussion that is a fact.
2. Houses are taking longer to sell, if they sell at all - that again is not up for discussion read the Rightmove reports and thats coming from the largest property website in the country with a vested interest in the market.
3. FTB'ers cannot afford to buy - that is not up for discussion. it is fact.

When I read your posts I thought YOU were being sarcastic, then it dawned on me that you were serious! Doug me old mate, when will you see whats before your eyes?


THE PARTY IS OVER.

kittygalore_2

Pal wrote:

My thoughts exactly! Then again, Kitty appears to believe that everywhere with a CR postcode must look like Croydon, so I guess that my negative impression of Stratford may also be wrong.

I do however think that the emphasis on being close to a tube station is misguided. For some people it will be very important, but for many it will not. Lets face it, if you are spending almost a quarter of a million pounds (spend a minute thinking about how much money that is, then add on mortgage interest for 25 years) for a small house in east London, then you probably aren't going to be going out in the west end a great deal for a while! If you work in London, the difference between a 25 minute tube journey to work and a 35 minute train journey isn't that great.

Finally, the objective of buying a house is not necessarily to "make a profit". If you have to sell at a lower price then presumably the house you are buying has also dropped in price, leaving the overall position neutral.

Of course I don't think that everywhere with a CR postcode looks like Croydon just as you know that the whole of East London is not like Stratford - it was just that not one of those CR houses I saw on rightmove appealed to me in the slightest!
There is a reason why North of the Thames is, and always has traditionally been more expensive than South and that I think is mainly because of the better transport links - and the London Underground. It's also a fact that anywhere within walking distance of a tube station will be much more expensive.
Plus most tube lines (usually - of course there are exceptions) run a service at approx. 1 to 2 minute intervals, whereas overhead trains are much further apart. I would imagine that most people, given the choice would opt to use the tube to get to work, rather than the trains. Okay it's just as hellish in the rush hour, but over far more quickly! And probably a bit cheaper too.

East London will probably never manage to shake off its Dickensian image but (started by the Docklands regeneration in the 80's) it's becoming an increasingly vibrant, stylish and cosmopolitan - and thus expensive place to buy - and this trend is spreading eastwards.

Taking the 'spending a quarter of a million pounds' on a property argument to its ultimate conclusion, why not buy a place in Paris instead (a lot cheaper) and commute in on Eurostar each day? Only takes 3 hours.......
The fact is that yes, of course you get a lot more house (or at least more bedrooms) for your money the further out you go from the centre of London, but if you are not happy to do that, the fact remains that you will need to pay up.

I agree that the objective for most people is not necessarily to make a profit - and indeed very few can realise one unless they take the proceeds and head off to Timbuktu in a campervan. But I've always found that wherever I want to buy is more expensive than where I'm selling, so I never end up in a neutral position!