House sale

Ath_Wat

JReacher1 said:

pollypenny said:

As estate agents in this country tend to push for high prices in initial listing to 'test the market' adding another £100k was foolish. 

I don’t agree it’s foolish. Seven months after a house is valued at 1.9m I think assuming the house has gone up about 5% sounds realistic for the market at that time.  Especially if you’ve done some internal improvements. 

It's certainly possible it had increased by that amount.  Assuming it had without getting a revaluation isn't eminently sensible, though.

Stateofart

If the house is worth 1.9m, it's probably quite easy to over-estimate by 100k, only 5% over what it should be. 

To the point then.  Houses in that price bracket are not shifting at the moment; it's more the smaller houses that are.  Partner will think you are stalling, most do when they think six months and they'll be financially sorted.  Not in my experience.  I'm still selling a house one year later and a friend of mine who is divorcing is still trying to sell theirs after a year.  Husband is with parents and think she's stalling as well.

tightauldgit

ann321 said:

After a divorce of 6 years of marriage,  my x got awarded 500k. I now have to sell my house which is in my sole name and the x paid zero towards it.
So I immediately put it on the market 100k above the price the estate agents agreed (1.8995) at the time of the divorce a year ago, as I have increased its value internally. 
After 5 months I have no interest in it and he is threatening to go back to court for new orders. Can he do this  and what should I look out for? I have my 90 year old father and 3 grown up children living with me but they didn't count in the divorce proceedings. 
I have lost 4 houses that I put offers into to accommodate my family.
I can't afford to go back to lawyers as I spent 40k of my savings on the divorce. 

He can go back to court to enforce the existing order but highly unlikely he can change the terms of an existing order. Of course if you owe him 500k from the order then you need to pay it to him, or demonstrate a plan to pay it in a reasonable timeframe. It's not really reasonable to just say "I want X for the house and you can't have your settlement until I achieve it" if nobody is willing to pay X. 

What was the house valued at in the settlement process? I would think that a court would be minded to say if you can achieve that value then it should be sold. If you don't want to sell the house then you need to show how you are going to come up with the 500k in another way. 

Some of it also depends on how much in need of the money your ex is - if he needs it to establish himself then there's a strong case to say you need to sell the house now for whatever you can achieve even if its not the valuation you want. If he can afford to wait then there's more of a case to say you should be given time to achieve a fair value. 

It seems weird to say you can't afford to go to lawyers - if its the difference between getting your house valuation or say 20% less that's a lot of money at stake  

Gavin83

Stateofart said:

If the house is worth 1.9m, it's probably quite easy to over-estimate by 100k, only 5% over what it should be. 

To the point then.  Houses in that price bracket are not shifting at the moment; it's more the smaller houses that are.  Partner will think you are stalling, most do when they think six months and they'll be financially sorted.  Not in my experience.  I'm still selling a house one year later and a friend of mine who is divorcing is still trying to sell theirs after a year.  Husband is with parents and think she's stalling as well.

Well they are stalling. If a house hasn't sold after a year then it's priced too high. Knock 10% off and I'm sure it would sell a lot quicker.

Same with the £1.9m house. If they listed it at £1m I can guarantee you it would sell in a week. Of course the OP might not want to sell at £1m but if they were desperate to sell they'd reduce the price. Let's imagine in the OPs case (and that of your friend) they weren't selling for a divorce but instead for life saving surgery for themselves or their child. I can guarantee you it wouldn't be sitting there unsold a year later. The motivation is lacking and that's why the respective husbands are accusing of stalling and threatening court.

In the OP's case the husband has even less motivation to allow the property to sit there unsold. He's getting a fixed amount of money so it makes no difference to him whether it sells for £1.9m or £1m.