House not selling!

wen13

Hi,

I am not sure there is a lot anyone can really say that I haven't thought about, but our house isn't selling and I am getting a bit worried now!

We have a 2 bed starter home in a very good location for the city. It is (in my opinion) OK decoratively - we repainted in neutral creams, made garden nice, cleared spare room out etc. etc. We've been on the market for 8 weeks now with only 1 viewer. Got some feedback from them and they said that it was too expensive and they eventually went for another one in the village which had a garage for the same price.

We took this on board and lowered our price from £138k (what the E.A lured us onto their books with, obviously!) to £134,950. The house we are trying to buy has come back weeks later and accepted our cheeky offer as she too is desperate to sell. To try and get things moving we have now lowered to £132k - but this really is our limit as all our projections are based on requiring a certain amount.

I live in Cornwall and you wouldn't believe the prices down here, so for the area this is pretty much what you'd expect. Have been doing all the right things, keeping eye on market etc. making sure we're not being ridiculous with price, but when I see a friend of mine sell a 1 bed place for £135k recently I wonder why ours isn't selling!

As far as I'm concerned the E.A is brilliant, we're in the paper almost every week, good prominent advert in their window etc. but nothing seems to help!

Anyway as I said I don't expect anyone to be able to suggest anything, I guess at the end of the day it comes down to price and what people are looking for. It would just be nice to have some more viewers as we are in danger of losing the place we want.

Is the market slow everywhere? Can anyone reassure me?!?!

Thanks
Wen13

owey

You could always ask for offers around a lower price and maybe you would get a few people after it, then pushing the price back up. Remember its your house and you don't have to except any offer if its not enough for you to move, what ever the estate agent tells you about your contract with them. We are in the same boat, ours has been up for alot longer a still not many viewing, I just think the market is not there like it was last year, people just cann't afford them.

Stonk

It sounds like you're both over-pricing. Maybe last year you'd have got away with it with all the sheep clamouring to get into the bubble, but things are more realistic now.

Very simply, if you ask a certain price and nobody is interested despite normal amounts of publicity, then *by definition* it is overpriced.

misesther

We have the opposite problem. There are just not enough houses on the market and when they do come on they go very quickly.

owey

Stonk wrote:

It sounds like you're both over-pricing. Maybe last year you'd have got away with it with all the sheep clamouring to get into the bubble, but things are more realistic now.

Very simply, if you ask a certain price and nobody is interested despite normal amounts of publicity, then *by definition* it is overpriced.

I agree with you that we might be over priced, but as all the houses in the area are the same price as mine, and we have a loft conversion, I am happy to ride the storm. Or untill the house prices that I am looking at in Liverpool come down. No sign of that yet though.

Sofa_Sogood

wen13 wrote:

Got some feedback from them and they said that it was too expensive and they eventually went for another one in the village which had a garage for the same price.

Do you think that might have made a difference wen13? Have you got off-road parking at all?

Seems like the garage might have made the sale imo.

We went from having a garage to having 2 designated parking spaces. At the time it didn't seem to make much difference, but with afterthought, we'd have taken a garage.

Good luck anyway

Sofa_Sogood

Stonk wrote:

It sounds like you're both over-pricing. Maybe last year you'd have got away with it with all the sheep clamouring to get into the bubble, but things are more realistic now.

Very simply, if you ask a certain price and nobody is interested despite normal amounts of publicity, then *by definition* it is overpriced.

I can see where you're coming from Stonk, but if an estate agent sets the price, surely there can only be a moderate amount of leeway?

socks_uk

My 3 bed terrace has been on the market since mid june (and is now £72,500) with 4 lots of viewers and we are very keen on a house but obviously not yet in a position to make an offer. The EA of the house we like suggested we pay the 3% or 5% deposit for the buyer (I'm going to ask for other people's experiences of this in another thread). I wish our EA had suggested this in July when we reduced ours by £2,500 because if I was a FTB it would certainly be an incentive for me to buy or at least have a look.

Jill

Woby_Tide

Sofa_Sogood wrote:

but if an estate agent sets the price, surely there can only be a moderate amount of leeway?

With an estate agent setting the price I'd say there's lots of leeway....!

wen13

Thanks for all your advice guys, the E.A is putting it in the paper again this week with the amended price so fingers crossed.

I am amazed that you can get a 3 bed terraced for £72k - here in Cornwall the average price is something ridiculous like £230k in some parts - not even particularly nice ones! There's one village here (Mousehole) where a 2 bed fishermans cottage goes for 1/2 million - no kidding! The average salary down here is around £18k, so you can see we have problems! Wouldn't want to live anywhere else though.

meanmachine_2

To be honest, if your property is on the market for around the £130K mark, I'd be offering £120K to avoid stamp duty.

Unless you were going to offer stamp duty, then I'd be loathed to go above this mark.

Last year buyers were worried that, even though prices were crazy, they thought they'd be even crazier in six months' time.

With prices flat or falling, that urgency has gone.

If you have your eye on a property you can negotiate down throughout the chain (or at least try).

And yes, it's up to you whether you sell or not, but if you don't sell, then it's been a lot of hassle and stress for nothing, hasn't it?