House on the market for 5 weeks but only 1 viewing

vratnayaka

Shandz wrote: »

Hello, we are after some advice. We've had our 3 bedroom semi-detached house near York on the market for 5 weeks and only had 1 viewing.

When selecting an estate agent we got 4 valuations which covered the range £300-325k and decided to put the house on the market with the middle estimate of 315k.

We got 1 viewing on the first weekend and but have not had any interest since. From the Rightmove stats we got from our agent we can see that there are plenty of people looking at the house but this isn't translating into viewings.

We have recently dropped the price to just under £300k to see if that makes any difference but so far still not had any interest.

Our house is located in a small village on the outskirts of York and is on Rightmove. The forum won't let me post the link but can be found doing a quick search on Rightmove for properties for sale in Knapton, North Yorkshire; 3 properties come up and ours is the one on the market for £299,950.


Or if you go to Rightmove and paste this into the web address:-

rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56688510.html

Can anyone give us any feedback as to why we are getting so little interest? We're really open to any comments, positive or negative, about the house, price and location.

Thanks very much for any help you can give us .

I Shandz, I posted a similar question some months back. Very similar situation. The market in our area was slow and our property was niche.

We eventually sold, but it took a long time. It takes a while for the property to 'find its feet', we marketed at 315 too and dropped to 300 which got a lot more interest. Then to 290 and even more interest, and eventually sold for 280. The market is a bit funny, at least where we are, it's all relative and we found the properties that we were looking to buy were dropping in price too. So, reducing the price didn't really matter.

One thing I'd say though, don't rely on rightmove stats. They mean absolutely nothing! If anything they will give you false hope. And since you've posted the link here, you will get a massive spike on the graphs. I'm only saying this as I did the same, and learnt to ignore the stats.

Also chase your estate agents weekly to get an update and try and get two estate agents to compete against each other.

It took us a lot of patience, It's a beautiful house, you will sell, it only takes one right buyer to fall in love with it.

Wish you all the best.

Shandz

franklee wrote: »

The listing looks fine to me overall. However I agree with Wobblydeb who said the photos from the last sale are better especially of the front with the sun out. So I would retake nicking their best angles. Their photo of the field is out of an upstairs window which helps put it in context with your house. Plus their back garden photo shows sun on the garden.

You can always take your own photos when it's sunny and ask the agent to use those. We did that, taking many photos when the sun was out until eventually we got some good ones. Our sky was so blue you could pick out our house in the agent's window from across the road.

I agree with you about the angles and the agent did say they would come round and retake when it was sunny but don’t think they managed to find a sunny day. Improving the photos does seem something that we need to look at.

Shandz

getmore4less wrote: »

OK lets do a more like this(lot more than I thought there would be).

£200-£325k 3bed+ 1/2mile

4 for sale 6 SSTC

Out to 1 mile
27 for sale and 44 SSTC

Plenty of people spending money in your price range.

If we change to 4bed+ 1mile we get 3/5 so not too much competition from those 4 beds and 4 of the 8 are at £325k.

narrow the search to 3b+ £250k-£300k 1mile

14/21 that's a small enough sample to check out the 21 SSTC and compare with yours.

map view and you can see where the market is

if we look further out there are some others in the price range out of the city see how they compare.


Given the numbers that are SSTC slow market must have come on very suddenly.

if we look at sold you can see what people bought in the last year within a mile at your price point.

eg this went for £300k

page 2 has the 25 sold between 260-290

watch for any of those SSTC ones as they come through.

Wow, thanks for sharing this, I didn’t know how to do this and something we can stay on top of now you’ve shown how to do it.

Cakeguts

vratnayaka wrote: »

I Shandz, I posted a similar question some months back. Very similar situation. The market in our area was slow and our property was niche.

We eventually sold, but it took a long time. It takes a while for the property to 'find its feet', we marketed at 315 too and dropped to 300 which got a lot more interest. Then to 290 and even more interest, and eventually sold for 280. The market is a bit funny, at least where we are, it's all relative and we found the properties that we were looking to buy were dropping in price too. So, reducing the price didn't really matter.

One thing I'd say though, don't rely on rightmove stats. They mean absolutely nothing! If anything they will give you false hope. And since you've posted the link here, you will get a massive spike on the graphs. I'm only saying this as I did the same, and learnt to ignore the stats.

Also chase your estate agents weekly to get an update and try and get two estate agents to compete against each other.

It took us a lot of patience, It's a beautiful house, you will sell, it only takes one right buyer to fall in love with it.

Wish you all the best.

Basically what this says is that your house was actually worth £35k less than you marketed it at. People are not going to offer £280k for a property marketed at £315k because they think that their offer will be turned down straight away so they won't waste their time even viewing.

middleclassbutpoor

Cakeguts wrote: »

Basically what this says is that your house was actually worth £35k less than you marketed it at. People are not going to offer £280k for a property marketed at £315k because they think that their offer will be turned down straight away so they won't waste their time even viewing.

Not looked at the stats but the principle is something I can agree with. I have been to look at a house today which was on originally on for 45k more than it is today. Im still not convinced its worth the current price - especially as its now empty...

Offers in region of may be a good step before dropping if you don't think the price is right. This may encourage people looking that there may be a bit of negotiation there.

AnotherJoe

middleclassbutpoor wrote: »

Not looked at the stats but the principle is something I can agree with. I have been to look at a house today which was on originally on for 45k more than it is today. Im still not convinced its worth the current price - especially as its now empty...

It would be worth more if it was full ?????

nettie1xoxo

vratnayaka wrote: »

Also chase your estate agents weekly to get an update

Sorry being dim as our house is only just on the market and first time we've ever sold ......what are we chasing them about, surely if folks are interested they would book a viewing??!!

somethingcorporate

nettie1xoxo wrote: »

Sorry being dim as our house is only just on the market and first time we've ever sold ......what are we chasing them about, surely if folks are interested they would book a viewing??!!

Rightmove hits (how many times it appears in searches), how many click throughs etc. You may find a few tweaks to listings may put you more likely to appear on someones search (often price related).


Keeping close to them means they are more likely to push your property if you are being a squeaky wheel.

Crashy_Time

AnotherJoe wrote: »

It would be worth more if it was full ?????

It might be worth more if it was full of tenants?

Sibz

Shandz wrote: »

Well, according to the agent at the time of selling our house they thought we had bought the house 4 years ago at a good price and that local property prices had moved up 20% over that period. Please do tell me if that doesn't sound right though! I do wonder if all this Brexit uncertainty has slowed the market by a lot.


There isn't a business unit next door, just more houses and it is a quiet, peaceful village, which photo were you looking at out of interest though?

I was going to make the same point as lobster in that 50k is quite a jump in 4 years... Have you done any improvement work on the property that would explain that? Perhaps the lack of a bath is putting some people off (though in saying that, there's a big walk in shower that can easily be replaced with a bath for very little work).

Are there any new build developments near you? With the HTB schemes they are very tempting for people.

Mainly I'd think it is the price jump... I was looking for something in the description to explain it more. I'm not familiar with the area, but I think that's an excessive jump for any area