Want to sell quickly...how much to reduce asking price?

PasturesNew

I said last month don't buy up there.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=896987

At the moment you stand to lose £12k+ the fees etc to sell the new house if you can't complete. So it'll be more than the £12k. And the hassle etc.

Here are house prices in your road, in order of price.
http://www.houseprices.co.uk/e.php?q=me10+2un&n=100&f=pd

If I were you I'd go for broke now on your current house and put it in direct competition with your nearest geographical rival, who are both on at £168k

1] http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-10221999.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy
2] http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-17753905.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy

As your house is better than theirs, it'd mean that the very next buyer wanting a house where yours is will choose yours over theirs.

So I'd say reduce yours to £168-170k

Even at this price range it'd still be the 3rd most expensive house sold in your road ever. So you're not "giving it away" by any stretch of the imagination.

It's not worth what you're asking in today's market, or you'd have had an offer at least, but you haven't. So even without the pressure, by now you'd have been advised to have dropped it to get interest.

The best way to sell any house is to go head to head with the next house/s down the pecking order. That blows them out of the water for any buyer they might have had ... and you get the sale you need.

Good luck!

dander

In my road 3 similar houses came on the market a while ago at around the same price. One of them dropped their price massively (obviously keen to sell) undercutting the other 2 by around £30k - and sold pretty much immediately. I think with this technique you've really got to noticably price to sell - the odd 5 or 10 grand less, doesn't look like a bargain, it just looks like ordinary price variations.

My feeling is that to get people to sit up and take notice of a price reduction, you'd have to get yourself into the 160s, so 169,999 at the absolute maximum.

I'd be a little concerned that your house is over-priced anyway at the moment compared to those other two - when you think a conservatory is probably about £15k to have put in, a £5k price difference between yours and the other two looks small. Especially when their decor looks fresher and brighter from the pictures as well.

Have you told the estate agent you'd be willing to accept lowish offers? If you make sure they know, they can get your details out to people looking at below your price range, and tell people you're open to offers.

Sorry, probably not what you wanted to hear!

zappahey

dander wrote: »

In my road 3 similar houses came on the market a while ago at around the same price. One of them dropped their price massively (obviously keen to sell) undercutting the other 2 by around £30k - and sold pretty much immediately. I think with this technique you've really got to noticably price to sell - the odd 5 or 10 grand less, doesn't look like a bargain, it just looks like ordinary price variations.

*DING*

Similar houses to ours were on at £245k but nothing had moved since Christmas. We put ours on at £220k and had a full asking price offer within 2 weeks. One of the similar ones has been at £237k for a few weeks now and still isn't moving and, I reckon, by the time they get an offer it will be at less than our selling price.

Unfortunately, people are still listening to bullish* estate agents and confusing asking prices with market values.

*The less charitable might rearrange this word and add a 't' :rotfl:

toomanyshoes

I've amazingly managed to sell two properties in the last two months.

Last month was my buy-to-let. I sold it for £64K after putting it up for £68.5K - others were up (and still are) in the same block from £69995 to a wholly ridiculous £79995. None of the others have sold, I was lucky and got an 'investor' and the sale went through in 8 weeks from point of advertising but I priced it low and accepted a low offer (my mortgage was more than covered).

The other property was a probate property. Three bedroom semi. It was valued by sensible agents last October at £335 - £340k. A different agent priced it well over (£365K) and we had to market it at that price to keep one of the benficaries happy. His greed probably lost us a decent sale just on the cusp of the crunch. We finally dropped it to £325K but sold for £312 this week (to the greedy beneficary in the absence of any offer above £250K).

A similar, but far more modern, property in the same road is now up for £318K and another in poor condition for £299k.

If you are very keen to sell, then I think the previous poster who said put it in the region of the two nearby properties (£170K) is giving the best advice.

My recent experiences as outlined above suggest that the way to go is to slightly undercut similar properties and be open to offers.

The question perhaps is not necessarily how much you want for it, but how much do you want to sell it.