Selling house - feeling despondent!

moneysavermummy2014

Hello,

I'm totally new to house selling; never done it before, but what is a reasonable amount of time to have your house up for sale before questioning what might be going wrong (e.g. why it's not selling!)?

Our house has been on the market for three weeks and we had an open day recently with 7 appointments. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive; but seems to go along the lines of beautiful house, just what we're after, except for......

We had one person second view the same day, and ultimately decided against offering as whilst the house was 'perfect' they don't like the neighbours house (our house is attached). Another viewer said house was perfect for them, but the dining room was just too narrow. Another said the d!cor was not to their taste (it is all white and the d!cor was a positive for everyone else...). Another said it was too big (it's not exactly a mansion!!). Another said it was perfect aside from there being rear access via a gate which they didn't like. Another said it wasn't for them as there was nothing they could 'do' to it......

I know it hasn't been on the market very long, but I feel quite anxious about it not selling now. We had it appraised by 4 agents before going ahead and the overwhelming view was there was absolutely nothing we could do to make it more 'saleable'. I worried it was overpriced, but the enquiries are coming in and we have more viewings booked (although I am still concerned abut the price even though it is in line with what else is on the market in our area....). Part of the problem I think is that my husband has been very over-confident about how quickly it would sell (houses in our area seem to be snapped up in less than a month) and I've always been much more cautious; now I'm feeling stressed that I'm right!!!

We don't have a single second viewing out of all of those (aside from those who did their second viewing on the same day)....

I'm frustrated as not one of the comments is something we can do anything about; nor is there any consistency. I just it's just down to individual preferences but I feel so despondent about it at the moment.

How long should we give it before we look at other options?

Thanks x

Dan-Dan

Post the right move link..........

societys_child

If you're feeling so stressed, it's probably best you're not there at the viewings. You'll send out all the wrong signals . . .

Relax, 3 weeks is nothing.

moneysavermummy2014

societys_child wrote: »

If you're feeling so stressed, it's probably best you're not there at the viewings. You'll send out all the wrong signals . . .

Relax, 3 weeks is nothing.

Don't worry; I'm not - Cannot imagine anything worse for a house viewer than having the vendor lingering - I was 200 miles away for the open day!

good_advice

Hiya. our house took 20 days to sell.
We had 35 families view. Yes! all the comments came out too! knocking down walls and building extensions etc...

The EA showed them round. sometimes we were there. I took to sitting in the conservatory with kindle wile OH walked the dog or vise versa.

I did declutter a lot before viewings.

A quicker sale will mean reduce the price.

Good luck.

kaflinkle

When the estate agent showed people around our house, it didn't sell. As soon as I started showing people around, it sold.

Why? My theory is that it's my house therefore I am passionate about it, it showed and therefore sold.

A faceless estate agent is not going to have the same passion as I am and not able to answer questions about the place like I can.

When I went to look at houses, I preferred the owner was there to answer any questions I had.

Daerve

Generally lots of viewings with positive feedback and no offers means either there's a lot of competition or the price isn't right.

I know from bitter experience that 3 weeks is an age when you're trying to sell but we only had 3 viewings in 2 months and still managed to secure an offer after dropping the price.

Stick with it.

phoebe1989seb

kaflinkle wrote: »

When the estate agent showed people around our house, it didn't sell. As soon as I started showing people around, it sold.

Why? My theory is that it's my house therefore I am passionate about it, it showed and therefore sold.

A faceless estate agent is not going to have the same passion as I am and not able to answer questions about the place like I can.

When I went to look at houses, I preferred the owner was there to answer any questions I had.

Same here

When selling last year the viewings our EA did resulted in zero offers. We only did three viewings and all three resulted in offers....one (at asking price) was made to us whilst the viewing was ongoing. The viewer actually admitted she couldn't keep up her intended poker face and broke down in tears at one point

We didn't accept the offer immediately, but once it had been made through our EA we did and it proceeded to completion within a very short time. Ours was a relatively large and very quirky period property that I believe was shown to its best advantage by those that knew its quirks best.....us

I admit though this doesn't work for everyone and some buyers prefer viewings conducted by the EA.....

red_imps_2003

Our place took 14 months to sell (we couldn't afford to accept much less than what we had paid for it), and we only had about six viewings in that time, so imagine how despondent we felt. :-D

Oddly, it eventually sold when we increased the asking price. We originally set a few thousand below what we needed in the hope of enticing people through the door to see that it was actually much nicer than the photographs portrayed. As you might expect, though, that raised people's expectations that we would accept lower than the asking price and the few offers we received always fell just short of the absolute minimum we needed.

We then increased the asking price to just over the minimum we needed and had a small rash of [three, I think] viewings, one of which resulted in a final [fourth] bid that just met our minimum target. I guess more people must set a 'minimum' price threshold on Rightmove than we thought or something.

roje

It took me a month to sell. I was incredibly worried because I had 1 viewer in three weeks, but then suddenly things picked up in the fourth week and 7 more viewings were booked. The house sold to the 7th viewer. I had lots of positive feedback too but then there was always a 'but....' I showed around the person who bought it and he made an offer the following day. The other local sellers I know (including my friend) who had far more interest in the earlier weeks are still struggling to find a buyer so it can be very unpredictable.