Lowering asking price by £5,000 - is there any point?

WTF?_2

sarah_elton wrote: »

My brother (an EA) and his manager spent two days last week ringing sellers to try and convince them to drop their asking prices. He was happy because they managed to get £137,000 worth of reductions on 82 properties.

Sellers don't want to drop prices, and when they do they're not going to drop by big increments.

A house in my town has been on the market over a year now. Started at £275k which was ridiculous for it. They've grudgingly come down to £250k asking price by now, but dropped in stages.

People are always reluctant to drop prices unless they have to. Currently the economy is still holding out, so many don't have to.

As credit becomes harder to obtain and more expensive to fund and as the economy stagnates with people losing or afraid of losing their jobs, expect many more 'have to sells' to appear.

Right now we have the Mexican standoff. Smarter sellers will know to cut their losses and get ahead of the pack as many people could knock a few tens of thousands off their asking prices and still have made quite a bit on their house. The greedy and stupid will hang on and end up chasing the market down.

Nenen

Whooooo Nelly... that's a lovely house. If only we could get something similar in this area for similar money we'd be laughing! Round here a house like that would be about 300K or in the centre of the city around half a million! :eek:

barnaby-bear

Nenen wrote: »

Thanks Barnaby-bear... good to see you :hello:

We've kept looking on Rightmove and viewed a few... put in one or two offers but are determined not to over-extend ourselves given the current market climate. One offer was rejected at first but then they came back to us four weeks later asking if it was still on the table as they would now accept (25K below asking). However, by that time we'd moved on and thought of all the reasons why we didn't like the house anyway so decided not to proceed. It's still on the market so I guess they're kicking themselves that they didn't accept our offer in the first place! Many sellers are determined to hold out for asking price or increasingly we are seeing price drops of 5K. Don't quite know what is 'magical' about 5K but that seems to be the average drop on property bee for this area in our price range.

I know logically we should wait and see how things develop with the HPC possibility but my heart is just soooo longing to 'nest'! I feel as if I am in limbo and finding it hard to see a way out at the moment. If only dh could get a job in a cheaper area (I'm fairly flexible where I work but it's not so easy for him). I just need more patience.... and quickly!

Wot! No linky to the still on the market one :rotfl:

barnaby-bear

Nenen wrote: »

Whooooo Nelly... that's a lovely house. If only we could get something similar in this area for similar money we'd be laughing! Round here a house like that would be about 300K or in the centre of the city around half a million! :eek:

Or you could have something rundown like this out in the suburbs (Trumpington):
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-20261768.rsp?pa_n=3&tr_t=buy
(no doubt lived in by a dippy academic with so many books)

Nenen

sarah_elton wrote: »

My brother (an EA) and his manager spent two days last week ringing sellers to try and convince them to drop their asking prices. He was happy because they managed to get £137,000 worth of reductions on 82 properties.

Sellers don't want to drop prices, and when they do they're not going to drop by big increments.

That's an average price drop of around £1670! Obviously some people have refused to budge in price and some have dropped more but I'm guessing no more than 2 or 3K in order to get that average. I really can't believe a tiny price drop like that will attract buyers. When we were selling our last house and weren't getting anywhere we initially dropped the asking price by 25K and then another 10K. Finally accepted an offer 5K less than asking price. That seems more realistic to me but maybe that's just because it worked for us!

Nenen

barnaby-bear wrote: »

Wot! No linky to the still on the market one :rotfl:

Here you go Barnaby-bear... and I see they've dropped again too. It is actually a great house with a lovely young couple selling it.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-19117802.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy

barnaby-bear

Nenen wrote: »

Here you go Barnaby-bear... and I see they've dropped again too. It is actually a great house with a lovely young couple selling it.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-19117802.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy

Seems reasonably priced - so why was it a no?

Nenen

barnaby-bear wrote: »

Or you could have something rundown like this out in the suburbs (Trumpington):
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-20261768.rsp?pa_n=3&tr_t=buy
(no doubt lived in by a dippy academic with so many books)

But that house is far smaller than Nelly's and at 395K far out of our price range! Mind you, we could do with the bookshelves... we're dippy academics ourselves!

Nenen

barnaby-bear wrote: »

Seems reasonably priced - so why was it a no?

It is an ex-LA house which automatically reduces the price in my experience... although a fairly small and decent looking estate from what we saw. The difficulty with ex-LA houses at the moment is that they are more likely to suffer greater losses in any HPC and although we want a house to live in for the long term we are a bit nervous about that side of things just in case we did want to move.

The other two things that went against it were
1) it is outside the main village on the other side of a busy road so less convenient for shops etc.
2) It was side on to the main road to Cottenham and you could hear the constant hum of traffic in the garden.

When we first made the offer I thought I could put up with the fairly minor worries/niggles as it was right in many ways for us with space etc. However, when they refused our offer, as time went on, I became aware I was actually quite relieved as I really wasn't 100% sure but would have felt obliged to go through with it had they accepted our offer straight away.

I swing from believing I am being too fussy and demanding for what we are able to afford; to thinking if only we wait a while longer we will be able to afford what we really want rather than a compromise.

barnaby-bear

Nenen wrote: »

But that house is far smaller than Nelly's and at 395K far out of our price range! Mind you, we could do with the bookshelves... we're dippy academics ourselves!

They must have rocks in their heads if they really believe that's a sensible price.... location poor, house tatty, space not great.... and would you believe they were hot on maintenance given they can't tidy before an EA comes up - there's a bulging suitcase of clothes on the table....:rolleyes: