Help please!

pbfhpunk

Hi

Wonder if anyone can offer any advice. I put my house on the market in April for 144,950 and sold it fairly quickly for 144,450 to a developer - a few weeks later as we were about to exchange the buyer pulled out as he'd spent his deposit on a holiday! We stayed with the same agent but were unhappy with them after a few weeks and moved to a new one, the house is now on the market for offers over 140k and although we've had quite a few viewings nothing has come of any of them, it seems everyone wants a house to do up and mine is pretty much done (rightmove link http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-16172201.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy)

We're now having an open house in a couple of weeks and the agent has advised us to lower the price to offers over 137k which I've done because I just want sell it as we're also planning our wedding for Feb and there's so much going on! But I feel a bit narked by this as if people are coming round at the higher price expecting it to be a fixer upper then surely it's worth that at least, plus I did 'sell' it for 144,450.

We've decided that we'll rent for a year as then we're not forced to move quickly and go to somewhere we're not 100% happy with, and we've got the chance to rent an amazing house when our friends move out from November, if we don't sell mine then it means we'll be paying rent and a mortgage for a few months until mine does sell, so I was thinking of upping the term of the mortgage to make payments as low as possible - this also means we could hold out until we get the price we want. A family friend works for a letting agent and she said we could rent it out for £575 a month so there's the possibility of changing the mortgage to a BTL and doing that, so renting paying the mortgage but getting income to cover it. The 3rd choice we have is to lower the price to something ridiculous just to get shot and then invest the profit we make over the year and also make monthly payments into a savings account to get the same amount of money we'd have had if we'd have sold for the higher price.

Can anyone basically offer some advice as to which of the 3 routes you'd take
a) rent while trying to sell
b) change mortgage to BTL and keep as an investment
c) drop the price, move on and accept a loss

Thanks

Helen

silvercar

The only reason to sell quickly at a reduced price would be if you could no longer afford the mortgage/ bills or you had seen a house to buy that you didn't want to lose. As you appear to fall into neither of these catagories, I would stay where you are until you get a decent offer.

Hold the open house at offers over 137k if that is what the agent suggests, if you don't get an offer that you like don't accept it.

rr01

As you quite rightly mentioned in your post a property is an investment, your best option from my point of view would be to rent out the property long term. Whilst the tenants are paying off your mortgage you are benefiting from having a bricks and mortar investment. Review average rental prices of property in the area. Check out what is on the market for the rental price you are looking for. If you can afford to take out some equity to use for your wedding then do so, but only as long as you can manage the mortgage payments comfortably, also remember that any earnings need to be declared and tax payed. The last thing you should do would be go for a quick sale and loose thousands of pounds just to get rid of the property, make the property work for you. Remember once you get off the housing ladder then getting back on is even harder.

lynnexxxo

Hi

I know nothing of property prices in your area but would suggest that the right move photo is terrible! Is the house needing a lot of work done? Why are there no photos of the inside of the property? We recently sold our house and on the right move site there was around 20 photos (not a mansion, a 2 bed semi).

I'd get onto your EA and get some decent photos done pronto - if you want to sell it that is!

pbfhpunk

Lynne

The house is done up (that's one of the main points of my post!), my estate agents - like quite a few - don't post photo's on rightmove, if you click on full brochure you get all the details.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

I currently have an offset mortgage (because we're moving the bank suggested this would be better than being tied into a fixed rate for 2 years as there's no completion and oonly a small start up fee), would I have to change this to a BTL mortgage? I'm just concerned because in the last 4 months I've applied for 2 mortgages already, a joint one with my partner when we'd offered on another house when we thought we'd sold mine and then when my fixed rate ended at the start of this month, although I would probably go with my bank again so they'd know the history? Also I remortgaged to the max I could borrow, would it be worth adding my partner to the deeds to get just a bit extra more - to pay off mortgage, contribute to wedidng and pay off other things £10k max - or would iot be better for him to apply for a loan on his own?

As suggested above I would prefer to stay on the property ladder.

Thanks

Helen

homer_j_3

rr01 wrote: »

As you quite rightly mentioned in your post a property is an investment, your best option from my point of view would be to rent out the property long term. Whilst the tenants are paying off your mortgage you are benefiting from having a bricks and mortar investment. Review average rental prices of property in the area. Check out what is on the market for the rental price you are looking for. If you can afford to take out some equity to use for your wedding then do so, but only as long as you can manage the mortgage payments comfortably, also remember that any earnings need to be declared and tax payed. The last thing you should do would be go for a quick sale and loose thousands of pounds just to get rid of the property, make the property work for you. Remember once you get off the housing ladder then getting back on is even harder.

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