Should we try and sell without estate agent in a slow market? Any experiences?

pandapaws

Our house has been up for sale with a local agent since Feb. We're in a nice enough area, nice enough house, but a slow market - smaller houses are selling, but anything bigger than average has been sitting on the market for ages.

We've had 4 viewings, but 3 were total time-wasters, the 4th bought elsewhere cheaper in the end. The agents have prepared brochures (I had to photoshop them as the lighting on them was awful - they couldn't even do that!), put us in the paper a few times, and got us on rightmove. Other than that, they haven't done anything - they don't believe in being pro-active! We knocked £20k off the price to see if that made a difference but it didn't, so we put it back up by 10k again.

We have decided to get rid of them, as they're really not doing anything for us, but now trying to decide what to do: get another agent, or try and self-market?

Has anyone had experience of trying to sell a house without using an estate agent?

Also, are there any legal obligations? We're already on the market, so apparently that means we don't have to get a HIP, but is there anything else that we need to do other than instruct a solicitor if/when we get an offer?

Any advice on the best websites to use? Am I right in thinking you can't get on rightmove unless you're an agent?

Sorry if this has been covered loads of times - I looked back but couldn't find any related threads at all.

Cheers!

Doozergirl

If you're not using a regular estate agent, without a doubt, you need to be at the right price.

Do you have a link to your house? We're always keen to give feedback; much of it is very good, if you can handle the good with the bad!!

There is always a reason why a house isn't selling. Your priority is to find out what it is.

lynzpower

HAve to agree with DG there.

You cant get on RM witohut using an agent. However, there is Housenetwork that me & DG and scores of others have used. it costs 500 quid, once youve sold. you pay 250 upfront for the pictures and them getting it on the market, and then 250 when you complete. If you dont sell with them, you just pay the 250.

As doozergirl says, you need to be at the right price. there is no aggresssive marketing ( they have no shop front, they wont put it in the paper, its rightmove only) Youll do your own viewings.

You do have to make sure your property (IMO) in this sort of market is priced well and views well. If theres properties cheaper than yours out there, you need to ensure yours shows its better value for money, or an excellent buy.

Im not sure on your pricing, why did you drop 20, then put it up again? Could you explain more?

pandapaws

We went with the initial valuation of 287,500. No interest. We saw a house we wanted to buy that was a lot cheaper than we expected because it needed work, so dropped to 269 but still no viewers. We put it back up as we were convinced that it wasn't the price that was the problem. I'll PM both of you the link to the agency page and would welcome any criticism - so far nobody has said anything bad except that the road is a bit busy (it is a little, but nothing serious, 30mph, country town road) and there wasn't enough parking for their 6 cars!

The market around here is pretty much stagnant at the moment - there are loads of houses in a similar price bracket that have been on for over a year.

cells

lynzpower wrote: »

HAve to agree with DG there.

You cant get on RM witohut using an agent. However, there is Housenetwork that me & DG and scores of others have used. it costs 500 quid, once youve sold. you pay 250 upfront for the pictures and them getting it on the market, and then 250 when you complete. If you dont sell with them, you just pay the 250.

As doozergirl says, you need to be at the right price. there is no aggresssive marketing ( they have no shop front, they wont put it in the paper, its rightmove only) Youll do your own viewings.

You do have to make sure your property (IMO) in this sort of market is priced well and views well. If theres properties cheaper than yours out there, you need to ensure yours shows its better value for money, or an excellent buy.

Im not sure on your pricing, why did you drop 20, then put it up again? Could you explain more?

everything has a market price.

If you try to sell above the market price, it will take you a very long time and you may never be able to sell it

if you sell at the market price, it will take you a reasonable time to sell it

if you sell at below the market value then it will sell very quickly.



so to the OP, decrease your price, its not rocket science.

cells

pandapaws wrote: »

We went with the initial valuation of 287,500. No interest. We saw a house we wanted to buy that was a lot cheaper than we expected because it needed work, so dropped to 269 but still no viewers. We put it back up as we were convinced that it wasn't the price that was the problem. I'll PM both of you the link to the agency page and would welcome any criticism - so far nobody has said anything bad except that the road is a bit busy (it is a little, but nothing serious, 30mph, country town road) and there wasn't enough parking for their 6 cars!

The market around here is pretty much stagnant at the moment - there are loads of houses in a similar price bracket that have been on for over a year.

drop the price to 250k and it will sell fast, especially as the buyer then doesn’t pay 3% stamp tax but 1% stamp tax.


So if you put it up for 250k, its going to cost the buyer 252.5k
If you put it up for 269k it is going to cost the buyer 277.07k

Although you get 19k more, the house for the buyer us actually 24.57k cheaper!



Your having trouble selling basically because you are asking to much, and to compound the problem interest rates are going UP as you wait, since February they have gone up from 5.25% to 5.75%, or some would be buyers mortgage for your property has gone up by 10%. To make matters EVEN WORSE for you, interest rates are predicted to go up once or twice more this year so the longer you wait, the harder it will be.

Doozergirl

If you dropped the price of that house to £250,000 it would sell tomorrow morning.

It's an odd one. I think it's worth pretty much the asking price, perhaps a little bit less, but it is a lovely house.

pandapaws

The problem with dropping the price is that we paid 248 for it 3 years ago, and need to make at least enough to cover the selling costs. There's no way we could take less than 265ish for it, and it is definitely worth it.

When we remortgaged last year, the independant valuation was 295k, which he said at the time was 'realistic'. 3 agents all told us that we shouldn't have a problem selling at around the 280 mark, or higher if we don't mind waiting.

We have compared to other houses in the area, and we're actually really competitive. We're in the best part of town, loads of advantages, just nothing in the area selling at the moment.

Totally aware of the stamp duty situation, but there isn't a lot we can do about that. Explained to the agent that we're happy to sell LOADS of furniture if that helps.

We have deifinitely decided that our agents are completely useless (not just because house hasn't sold, but because we haven't heard from them in 3 months, and when we phoned up, they'd never heard of us!), so going to change - just not sure if we should try and go it alone to save the 1%, which we could then afford to knock off the price, or if that's too risky in such a slow market - would it make a difference?

lynzpower

the difficulty is things have changed so hugely in the property market since this time last year. I mean, i can hear my colleagues talking to agents nationawide, as I do, and there jsut arnt the buyers around, and those that are can obviously borrow way less this year due to the interest rates.

I agree with DG, its a lovely house and I cant fault it or the pictures. If anything theres one pic of the lounge that isnt great but the others are good and make up for it. I mgiht be tempted to take an alternative view of the garden.

I agree with DG about your pricing. However, if you cvant afford to drop the price then staying put until someone likes it is your only option. I cant see what else to offer, i think its probably is priced *about* right, but at the end of the day if buyers arnt biting , it could be too high.

Libra1975

I drove past a place that were doing a private sale using this company:
http://www.thelittlehousecompany.co.uk/

pandapaws

Thanks for the feedback on the house. The 4 viewers that have seen it have really enthused about it, but as I said before, 3 weren't in the market to buy and the 4th wasn't able to afford it.

I've just mentioned the idea of dropping to 250k to my husband, and he nearly had a fit! He doesn't think we should have dropped from the original 287k and if I'm honest I think he's right - the house is worth it. We just need the right person to come along, (or any person would be an improvement)! Spoke to a friend who's also selling in the area and she has only had one viewer in 14 months, and there really isn't anything wrong with her house either - as the agents keep telling us, it is just a very weak market at the moment.

Don't really know what to do - we were previously happy just to sit it out, but I'm now pregnant and don't want a repeat of last time which saw us moving into rented a week before the baby was due, and into our existing house 5 weeks later (Xmas eve!).

New agent coming round on Friday, and they specialise in rural aand bigger houses, so we'll see what she says and weigh up the pros and cons of self-marketing. Thanks for all the advice!